Working my way through everything!

The convention was great. I had a wonderful time. My publisher introduced me at the opening ceremonies as a kick-ass sf writer, so it was hard for anything to be bad after that. I met a lot of people, talked to many old friends, and had a wonderful time! It was a great drive down and a wonderful ride back.

However, not only did it slow me up on NaNo, it put me behind on everything else in life. And I came back with an injured leg that is just giving me hell. Nothing serious, just painful. So much so that I'm skipping turkey tomorrow and doing a pot roast instead. Much easier to cook.

I'm never going to get really caught up, but I'm doing better.

In the good news department -- I have a shot at one of the upcoming Double Dog books (Yard Dog Press 'Ace Double' publication). They still have a few other books in the line up first, but Selina wants me to do half of an sf one. Yay!

And....

The day after I got back I found that I have apparently sold Ada Nish Pura to AIO. The contracts will be arriving, so nothing is absolutely set, but it looks good!

Life is good! What a great way to end out the year!

Much celebrating and general merriment.

Yes, hello....

Yes, I've badly neglected this blog this month. NaNo and all that, you know. But I haven't posted in my NaNo blog for the last couple days, either. I've just been far too busy.

Right now I am waiting to see if Russ makes it home before he goes to teach class tonight. If not, then I'll find something to eat and get back to work. Darkness Falls has reached a very interesting spot, and while the writing is slow, the story is interesting. I just don't want to jump into his part if Russ is going to show up with food. (grin)

It looks less likely, being a quarter to seven now. So I think some soup or something is in order for the night.

I am going to a convention this coming weekend. http://www.pandamonium-okc.org/

It'll be good to get out for a little while, even if it does play havoc with my NaNo project. It already is -- I have a number of things that must be done first, so the NaNo work is falling a bit behind. Maybe I'll get caught up after the convention and maybe I'll just slow down and slide into the end of the year. (grin)

But right now, I think there's some food calling to me....

And Onward!

I have finished my first NaNo novel (Bad Connections, 106,042 words) and started in on Darkness Falls. Right now it's a bit difficult because my brain hasn't quite moved from the Bad Connections feel to this one, which is completely different.

I'm almost purposely slowing down in order to get other things caught up. If I get caught up... well, I might pick up and run again and I might not. I love NaNo, but I do have a lot of other duties to handle.

Right now my plans are to write about 5k a day from here to the end of November. I might push that a bit here this week because I will have about 4 days with only a few hundred words as I head to the convention.

So expect me to not be all here again for a while. (grin) I'm having a great time, though!

Hello!

Yes, I'm a bit behind here, aren't I? Well, it is NaNo month, and all my free time is going into the NaNo novel -- which just hit 80k in 7 days, so no complaints there.

In fact, it has been a remarkably wonderful, quiet week. Very few problems anywhere. I've been watching other groups implode and explode and get very messy over the election, and I have to say that I'm very grateful the people at FM are wise enough to know that not everything in life is about politics, war and religion. Like I've said before, the people at FM have come to the site with a specific interest in mind, and they're not there to berate and lecture others about their political (etc.) beliefs.

I've seen some nasty disagreements at different sites and watched people who had been parts of groups for a long time, leave in disgust. What I did not see, not in a single one of these cases, was anyone change their mind by the arguments. I didn't even see anyone say they'd been undecided and were influenced by what they read.

And the same thing happens with religion and discussion about the War in Iraq. There are other places that welcome such discussions and revel in the gory shouting matches, but not at FM. We're there to help people learn to write better, and I don't care if you backed Kerry, Bush or your mother for president.

And again, thank you to the FM people who kept all their discussions calm and have been wonderful during this difficult year.

Good writing

Tried to get in yesterday, but nothing seemed to want to work, and I didn't have the 'time' to sit around playing with it. (grin)

Yes, the writing is going well. I am no longer worried that I won't make enough words per section -- almost all of them have gone over. I'm inching up to 45,000 words tonight. I'm taking a break now because I need to go eat something and this is a good break point.

The story is going well, too. I had trouble on the third day of writing, and I'll likely end up editing out a lot of that days' work when I'm to the editing part.

So, just checking in. I have snippets in my NaNo blog. I'm pretty happy, over all.

Time to go make dinner.

Well into the first day of NaNo

I'm taking a break for dinner (have to eat to take meds anyway), and to check on anything that has to be done before I go back in for the last six hour stretch of the first day. I've just topped 10,000 words, so I'm not too worried about word count at this point. And I've really fallen into the story, which is nice.

I love the first day of NaNo. Lots and lots of writing. My count generally drops off after the first day, so I have fun while I can.

Don't expect anything coherent from me for the next few days, though.

And off to do more work so I can get back to writing!