Working madly on Xia, of course. Have thought of a possibly lame title. I need to push on, so back to work. Just letting you-all know I’m still alive. Sort of.
Posts Tagged ‘Xia’
Chugging Along
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
Catching up is hard to do
Monday, March 31st, 2008I’ve been writing madly. The weekend required the machete. Today required the weed whacker. I fixed chapters 21 and 22. Tomorrow I go in after chapter 23, which is either in the wrong place or a mess. I’m not sure which. I have 79.2K words. Close enough to 80K to feel relatively less panic stricken. I still have no last chapter, but then until I finished fixing stuff, I won’t know for sure what’s right for the last chapter.
I’ve heard some preliminary feedback from one of the big Chains (starts with a B) on My Wicked Enemy enough to turn my head. So, all good there!
Also in the good news department (bear with me, it doesn’t start out that way) last night as I was falling asleep after wrestling with chapter 21, I realized the chapter needed to end a different way. Then, this morning I hauled myself out of bed at 4:25 am, etc, and stopped for gas on my way to the gym. It was then 4:50 am. E.G. Cold and Dark. I did not have my purse with me. This makes it hard to pay for gas. I got home at 5:03 am, changed my shoes and did 30 minutes of driveway torture instead of biking at the gym and writing out my fixes to chapter 21. During said torture, I finally got a glimmer of an idea for the historical due in November. Yay!
At lunch, I worked on it, finished when I got home and then fixed 22.
So, I’m in a pretty okay mood.
Off to bed. Chapter 23 awaits me. I have the machete if needed. Tremble in fear, Chapter 23.
Freak Out! Get a Bookmark, too.
Thursday, March 27th, 2008I’m writing like mad. Things are going OK with Xia. Doing a combo-read through and edit. So far no disasters. The machete has stayed in the closet. I need a title for the book though. A few ideas have occurred, mostly lame ones. My Wicked Lover, A Wicked Kiss. Good gosh, I need ideas and have none. Help!!!
In other news, I heard from my editor at Berkley on Scandal which I was panicking about since I’m in the home stretch of finishing Which Wicked Witch Kidding!! and was having nightmares about revisions coming at the same time I’m in the last days of finishing the Work In Progress. (WIP). And, yay! She loves Scandal and has no revisions for me.
I got a wonderful cover blurb for My Wicked Enemy from author Lara Adrian who writes the awesome Midnight Breed vampire series. I don’t know if it’s okay to share the blurb here, but if I find out it is, I will share.
My bookmarks came for My Wicked Enemy. If you want one, and really, how could you live without one? send me an email with your name and mailing address in it.
Back to work.
I’m baaack!
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008Back from visiting my brother and his wife in Santa Barbara. We had a great time, even though I did, sadly, lose my camera somewhere in the SB mountains. Rats. So I do not have any great photos of breathtaking views, although we saw many such views and I’m sure at least some of my pictures were great.
Other than that, I cut a chapter of Xia. Sigh And got up to about chapter 8 or 9 I think on a read through. Which considering that I was doing family visiting stuff, isn’t too bad. Most of that got done in the car on the way there or the way back.
Had to give the Fudgester a bath when I got home. He’d rolled in something v. smelly. Of the not so recently dead variety. He has forgiven me, I think.
I’m in full freak out mode and tired. Back to work.
With a Wave of my Magic Wand…
Thursday, March 20th, 2008I would make writing easier, that’s what I’d do.
I have a chapter that needs some TLC, so I am fixing it in between finding something, anything! to distract me from actually doing it. Only I am doing it. It hurts. It’s agony and then something interesting starts to happen on the page and I conveniently forget all about the mess further down. Fixing fixing fixing.
Tomorrow, my bothers, my sister, me and all the kids are going to visit our other brother and his wife in Santa Barbara. Her mother and brother are here from Denmark, so we’ll get to meet them. Hopefully, we won’t horrify them too badly. Apparently it’s snowing in Denmark and in SB, it’s Spring. They’re enjoying that. I’m not packed yet, but then I’m waiting for laundry to finish. Speaking of which…
Ahh. I have on my jammies now, still slightly warm from the dryer. I am now partially packed.
Back to work. Then I’m going to print off the MS so I can work in the car on the way down. I am not a primary driver in this escape to the South, I will be in the navigator’s seat.
Backward Progress Today
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008Xia is still going well enough. As long as we’re all pretending that writing is something that ever goes well enough. It’s very hard work, and today I did hard work cleaning up crap. So, although I am down about 150 words to 72.6 something, I am able to see a silver lining to being in the red, word-count wise. Namely, that I have reduced the craposity and increased the goodosity. Aren’t we lucky I’m a wordsmith? Oblige me and do not answer that question.
But I’m starting to freak about not being further along. More words. I need more words.
With that, I’m off to bed. Because more words requires enough sleep which I did not get last night.
What a load of horse manure!
Sunday, March 16th, 2008I’m blogging early because I’ve been a writing slug today. Which means I will be writing late tonight and that means if I leave the blogging for last, I’ll be too tired or else I’ll blog anyway and be too tired tomorrow. Take your pick as to which is worse.
Yesterday I had to get new tires on the car. Oy. Money flying out the wallet. So sad. Today I had a flat tire. Sigh. The bright side is I discovered this while I was at home. So I called AAA to make them come and change it — got my money’s worth for the membership at least. The tow truck was so big he almost took out one of the posts down at the gate. The plan was to put on the spare (duh) and then my dad would take the flat NEW tire to the car place tomorrow allowing me to go to work in the morning as per usual and stop off afterward to do the switcheroo. This plan confused the AAA man who was otherwise pleasant and jocular. He tried to put the tire in the back of my car anyway. Then he wanted to put the tire in my dad’s car. But, as I said, "My dad’s truck is full of horse manure right now, so just leave the tire there (me, pointing) and we’ll move it later." Seeing as how he didn’t want to go near a truck full of horse manure, he allowed that our plan was okay after all. He moved the tire to the side of the driveway and managed to get his behemoth truck turned around and all the way down the drive without taking out the gate.
That was our big excitement today. AAA man scared by truck full of horse manure.
I have 70K plus words for Xia. I’m working up to the planned 3-way with Kynan, Xia and Alexandrine which I’m quite interested to know how that works out. There’s only one way for me to know; write it. Rats.
Off to work.
Thoughts on Freebies
Thursday, March 13th, 2008Today I was at a Microsoft product launch in San Francisco. I now have some idea of what SQL Server 2008 has to offer (a lot it seems) and some expensive software; Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 — latest release candidate (kind of like an ARC), and Windows Vista SP1. All free.
Why give away very, very expensive software? (SQL Server is typically $10-19,000, depending on how you license it. Can be cheaper, but not a wise choice in the Enterprise.) Well, because the kind of people who go to such events are typically the very people who will show their comrades in geekdom the cool stuff they can do. And they will tell their friends they have Vista. Probably a very good investment. It will lead to more sales down the road.
So, writers do have giveaways. But do they do enough, and do they (we) give away the right stuff? I have all these ARCs. Should I be giving them away to readers or reviewers?
All righty, I’m tired because I had to go to SFO and back today. But, then, I was right down the street from the Marriot where RWA will be, and I can tell you, it’s going to be totally awesome there. I remember in NYC, downtown Manhattan was SHUT DOWN over the weekend. DEAD. This will not be the case in San Francisco. That city is hopping with fun stuff to do within easy walking distance.
I managed to get Xia back to 69K even thought I deleted a lot tonight.
off to bed.
Who wants an ARC and what are you willing to do for one? Email me. Or leave a comment.
Uh oh. I thought I had something to say!
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008I made back the 1000 words I cut yesterday. I rejiggered chapters 12-15 which were all in the wrong order and started writing the new bits. Alexandrine is turning out to be quite the interesting woman. First off, which I may have mentioned, it turns out she’s a former teen drug addict. Second, she has no problem whatever taking action to get what she wants. And she wants Xia. Today at lunch time, she got in the shower with him.
I’m trying to think of a Romance in which the sexually assertive one is the woman. I know there are some. But not so many. Most of those women are Evil Exes or just Evil. That’s always bugged me, so I’m happy to be writing a heroine who takes charge of herself without de-alphabetizing the hero, too. (Xia loves it, by the way.) Especially since all my heroines start out their lives as total wimps. This is my writing challenge.
Anyway, I’m in the middle of The Ritual scene which, I am happy to report, does not end at all the way Xia and Alexandrine hope.
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Monday, March 10th, 2008That was me today. Rowr! Chapters 12 and 13 completely turned upside down and backwards. I made a trash file for the first time with this puppy. As Xia would say, Boo hoo, you effing witch. You did what had to be done. So f*ck that. or something a lot like that anyway. He’s out somewhere up to no good, or I’d ask him.
Still, I’m only in the hole a thousand words. More R&S tomorrow though.
To bed for me.