Yesterday was the first day that I didn’t make my words. I got stuck on a couple of sections, couldn’t figure out the fix-it puzzles to everything I needed, and just generally struggled in a sea of freaking frustration.
I am officially behind on the count, though not by a great deal. I wrote one scene, (out of the three I finished) that I don’t like very much in retrospect, so I may be behinder that my current pages would indicate. Today I play catch-up, which is a game I hate.
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I was up until 2:20 a.m. working on a new scene. Bounced ideas back and forth, used just about every plot trick I know (including finishing up a pair of Dark and Stormy Night Socks I was knitting. It’s amazing how two or three rounds every time you get stuck ads up to socks in a hurry. And knitting is nowhere near as distracting as solitaire for trying to kick ideas loose.), and finally figured out how to solve one particularly thorny problem. Created a monster who gives me the creeps—especially since I know how he became a monster (a bit of horror that will come out later in the book). I’m making excellent progress through the story—I’m still on schedule to finish on time, and I really like the depth the new material is adding. I’m not having an easy time, though, and the 24th is creeping up inexorably. Long days and the unending puzzle of figuring out where to add in new scenes, how to blend them with the old ones, how to keep the very tight story timeline smooth and untangled, how much new worldbuilding to introduce, how and where to deepen characters, and on and on are taking their toll. I’m just constantly tired.
I think my goal after I wrap this up is going to be about three days of straight sleep. |
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I finished yesterday’s work at 12:12 this morning. I was ragged and bleary-eyed, but I got the words for the day, added a new scene that I’m fairly happy with—though I’ll add things as I do the type-in—and I fell into bed and dreamed that I was the last vampire hunter, and I was constantly surrounded by monsters, and I was endlessly fighting. Everywhere I went, beautiful homes would turn into ruins as I reached them, indicating that vampires inhabited them. Children would grin at me and flash fangs. People I had once known and liked would walk up to me smiling, then try to kill me. I realized that there were no people left, that the world was inhabited by nothing but the walking dead. That there was nothing left to save, no one left to save it for.
Grim way to wake up.
Hard at work again, but taking a break for lunch—two slices of toasted Ezekiel bread, tahini, and kim-chee. I’m down thirteen pounds in the last couple of months, and feeling better than I have in a long time. Discovered that if I focus on eating low-glycemic foods, I feel better, I work better, I don’t stay hungry, and the weight comes off without me actually having to work at it. At the moment, that’s a big deal.
Anyway, back to the pages.
I debated doing a Friday Snippet this week because the last couple of entries, tied up in HAWKSPAR mess, I haven’t kept up my end by reading everyone else’s. I apologize. I know this week and next, due to the RUBY KEY deadline, I still won’t be able to do that. But before the linky thing came along, I was doing Friday Snippets anyway, and this way, you’ll still be able to put links to your snippets here.
| NOTICE: This material is copyrighted, uncopyedited late draft, probably buggy. Do not quote or repost anywhere or in any format. Thanks. |
Intro: Genna and her brother Dan have been whisked away from Kai-lord Letrin, ruler of the nightling domain of Arrienda, to be prepared for the feast he is having in their honor, and for the negotiations that will come after. The nightling slave who has led them to a dressing room makes sure they are alone.
Our guide turned to us. “Quickly, tell me what you want. What you will ask him for.”
“Our mother’s life,” I said without even needing to think about it. “Our father’s, if he still breathes. The lives of our brothers and sisters, and the people in our village. And their freedom. These were not things that were the new caer’s to offer.”
Dan nodded. “And for protection from the caer, for each of us.”
“No immortality? No riches of the seven kingdoms? No flying chariots or crowns and thrones?”
Dan said, “No,” and I said, “Of course not.”
She looked at us for a long moment, studying us carefully. Then the nightling said, “I believe you. Very well. If you do exactly as I say, I will make sure you have a fair chance to make your bargain.”
Dan and I both nodded.
“First, drink only from the cups I bring you—and should anyone else refill them, do not drink from them again. Eat only from the plates that come from my hand, and if you are offered a bite of anything not from me, refuse it, no matter what the person who offers it to you says.”
I started to say something, but the nightling put a finger to her lips. She stopped far down the row in which we had been walking, and said, “There it is.” She pulled down a dress for me, a gown of palest blue samite—rich, heavy silk woven through with threads of gold and silver that gleamed in the pale light—and blue slippers that seemed far too tiny and delicate for my feet. For Dan, she gathered up tunic and breeches of black velvet, and velvet-edged boots with workings of silver. Then she turned to me and said, “Wear your hair in a single braid down your back, and if the kai-lord says anything that upsets you, pull the tip of the braid around to your mouth and brush it against your lips.”
I frowned, puzzled, and she said, “If we get through this night unscathed, I will explain everything to you. Along with the things you have asked for those you love, however, you must ask for two other things. You must ask that your own lives be spared. And you must ask for the ruby key.”
[blenza_autolink 42]
The RUBY KEY edits are eating my life, but I’m getting good stuff for all the work. I’m about where I should be, and writing like mad, but I was going crosseyed, so I decided to stop in and say hi.
Posting a couple pictures of the birthday present I finished for my daughter (belatedly) just before the deadline clobbered me.
Knit shrug, made with the same Noro wool as The Sweater. (I way overordered.) My design. I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out–if it fits her when she gets it, I’ll be thrilled.
Front
Back
She gets cold while she’s writing. I figured this would fix that.
Back to work. A ton of pages await. Finished at midnight last night. Will probably wrap up at about the same time tonight.
It’s going to be a race–I have to have the revised RUBY KEY edits done by July 24th, and I estimate that I’ll need to add about 30,000-40,000 new words to the project to tell the story the way my editor and I have decided it needs to be told, while updating and reworking the existing 60,000 words.
That’s 14 days, including no days off. Between 2142 and 2857 new words a day, plus about 20 pages of existing material.
At this point, it’s doable, if very difficult. I dare not fall down, or it will become impossible. If I can do it, there’s good stuff at the other end, though–good enough to make it worth my while to give up most of my sleep and all of my free time for two weeks.
I’ll do updates as I can.
The GREEN MAGIC I proposal left at the beginning of the week, unmentioned and unlauded, but done at last to my satisfaction. HAWKSPAR is unresolved–I won’t know anything more about it until I hear back from my agent, Robin.
And I am in the midst of happier–much happier–things. THE RUBY KEY, you see, felt short to my Scholastic editor, and since the thing I wanted most when I sent it in was more room to write it, and since all the things she asked if I could expand were things I had kept very tight for length reasons originally, I’m now coming up with cool, exciting ways to get all the stuff in there that I had to leave out initially.
BOOK GIVEAWAY UPDATE
Along with that, I got the last two US book boxes out the door this morning. My one paid-for foreign box will go tomorrow. The plastic things came in, finally. Turns out I had to have them, but because I do the postage online, I didn’t need the freakin’ forms.
ANYway.
FOREIGN SHIPPING
Deedlit
WritingAngel
lacysavage
shay
You can now use the PayPay button at the top left to pay the shipping on your box of books. Postage to England, Australia, and all other UK addresses is 36.15, which includes one dollar toward PayPal fees and tape and packing peanuts. Shipping to Canada is $22.85, also including one extra dollar.
THE REST OF THE BOOKS
I have boxes. But now I’m waiting for packing tape and a big bag of packing peanuts in order to get everything else out the door, so it will probably be next week before I get any additional boxes packed.
HOW MANY BOOKS ARE LEFT?
Maybe enough to finish off the first list, but probably not. Barring some loaves-and-fishes miracle, not enough to get anyone who isn’t on the first list.
Some significant editing problems surfaced during my revision of the copyedit of HAWKSPAR. I’m on hold on the revision while we sort them out. So this week I’ll be finishing the type-in of the GREEN MAGIC proposal, and getting back to the revision concepts for RUBY KEY.
The following snippet is the beginning of Chapter Two from The Ruby Key, the first book of the MOON AND SUN series. This is YA. Genna, the heroine and narrator of the first book, is fourteen, and her brother Dan is twelve.
| NOTICE: This material is copyrighted, first draft, probably buggy, and possibly not even going to be in the final draft. Do not quote or repost anywhere or in any format. Thanks |
All I remember of Letrin in that moment is his eyes. They seemed to me deep as the oceans of fable, as if, should I dare to step toward him, I would fall into them and meet my death by drowning. Those eyes, cold as deepest winter, sent a chill through me that I can neither explain nor fully recall. Dan’s hand slid into mine again, and we locked our fingers together.
“A different deal,” Kai-Lord Letrin said with a slow, careful smile. “Surely you do not wish to make good on a deal that will result in your deaths and those of your siblings at the end of it. For even if you save the village, the caer will not spare you. He cares not for your mother, or for your brothers and sisters, or for you, or for anything but that he become an immortal with the world in his hand. But you …” And he looked at Dan, and then at me, and tipped his head slowly to one side. His smile grew a little broader.
He stood before I could think of words to say, or even before Dan could—and that is a trick—and said, “You will be my guests at dinner tonight. We will feast you, for so few of your people brave Arrienda.” He swept a hand out and around, encompassing the great city in which we stood, that we might know by Arrienda he meant the wondrous realm over which he ruled. “And while you prepare for the feast, you must think of what, exactly, you want.” His smile gone, he said, “In the meantime I will be thinking of what I want. And once we have eaten and drunk and sung together, we will sit down, just the three of us, and we will see if we can come to an agreement.”
Then he was gone. I cannot say how he left us—only that one instant he stood before us and the next he did not. Behind us, the black-robed nightling who had led us to him cleared her throat and said to the nightling girl—who had been, I just realized, nowhere near us while we talked to the kai-lord—”Take them. You know what to do.”
[blenza_autolink 42]
Okay. The Mac sending mail sound has just echoed across the computer, which means the finished Ruby Key is on its way to my agent, Robin. I’m pretty wiped out, but very happy with the book. It wrapped at 63,000 words, which was well within my target zone, the new ending worked beautifully, (though I was revising and adding and changing things right up until the last word).
I’m done. It’s sort of starting to sink in. I’m done. (Until the revision requests, anyway.)
I have to do income tax stuff next—never fun, and that will take me about three days, I’m guessing.
And then?
Well, the Create A Plot Clinic.
Revising chapters two and three on the Green Magic proposal, and sending that back.
Hawkspar, when I get the revision requests.
Outlining the sequel to The Ruby Key.
A couple of Cadence Drake novellas or novelettes.
C.
The Sympathy for the Devil screenplay, which will probably undergo a title change to The Devil and Dayne Kuttner.
Lots of things to do. Figuring out priorities and scheduling all of them will be…interesting.