(written december 28) I'm a proper writer today. I'm hunched over my laptop, wearing a new flannel nighty and floppy pants under my new robe, and blue fuzzy socks on my feet. No need to get dressed when you're a professional writer, that's what this look says. Do your work in your PJs, that's what this look is. Carefree and anti-establishment, that's me. Nevermind that I felt too pathetic to bother getting dressed this morning. Not the point.
Of course, if I were really a proper writer I'd probably be hunched over my vellum with a quill instead of a laptop, and this orange-zinc fizzy drink (hey, that rhymed!) I have at my elbow would be small beer or whiskey or bourbon, but hell, I'm not in a heatless garrett writing by candlelight in Paris, either, so I'll just go with what I've got.
My sister gave me this drink. The fizz in it at least rips the phlegm from my aching throat, which means it's worth drinking. It also tastes more or less like watery Tang with fizz, so it's not even awful to drink. Shaun thinks it's downright yummy, and I had to leap upon him and beat him savagely with a wooden spoon in order to pry it from his greedy fingers.
I've just finished the fourth Thursday Next novel, and it'd better be the last. I'll be very disappointed in Jasper Fforde if he writes more. Fortunately, the next book of his advertised is a different series, so I trust he's not going to disappoint me. Trent, when everybody in my family has finished reading these books, I'll send them to you. :)
I'm too lazy to even make bread today. Bread is not hard to make. Bread mostly requires no effort on my part. Maybe 10 minutes worth of work, interspersed by periods of waiting. None-the-less, too lazy to make bread today. The long holiday weekend is mostly over (except for cases where people have said sod it, they'll be back on the 3rd), so the supermarket should be open and I can just buy a loaf of bread there.
'course, that requires going out into the cold cold morning (hey, it's frosty! that's cold!) and dragging myself down to the supermarket. Eh, we've got to go see the garda today anyway, so I might as well buy bread.
Tell ya what, though. I'm trying to think of a good reason not to go back to bed, and not coming up with many...
(a while later)
Do you ever experience frustration when there is, say, a book that you want lying a couple feet out of reach, and despite your expectations, glancing at it and trying to bring it to you with the power of your mind does not work?
Maybe it's just me.
Robin tagged me for the 7 things meme...
7 things I want to do before I die:
1. write X-Men comics
2. publish at least 50 novels
3. own a black stallion*
4. record an album
5. be in a movie
6. sell some screenplays
7. produce a tv series
*Some childhood dreams shouldn't be given up. :)
7 things I cannot do:*
1. fly
2. father a child
3. shoot concussive beams from my eyes
4. run a 4 minute mile
5. compose a symphony
6. make a perfect batch of toffee, apparently. *grr*
7. grow my hair in a Rogue stripe
*I find this category inherently objectionable.
7 things that attract me to a guy:
1. Noses
2. skinny white boy-ness*
3. overdeveloped sense of responsibility
4. silliness
5. cooking ability
6. braaaaaaaaains
7. a fondness for roller coasters
*the white part is actually not so relevant, but it's more fun to say "skinny white boys" than just "skinny boys" :)
7 movies I could watch over and over and over and over:
1. The Replacement Killers
2. While You Were Sleeping
3. The Cutting Edge
4. Sliding Doors
5. Much Ado About Nothing
6. Dangerous Beauty
7. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
7 books or series I love:
1. The Dark is Rising Sequence, Susan Cooper
2. Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay
3. The Anne Books, Lucy Maud Montgomery
4. The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley
5. The Secret Country series, Pamela Dean
6. Right Angles to Faeryland, Catie Murphy*
7. The Coldfire Trilogy, C.S. Freidman
*Ok, that one's really obnoxious to include, but I *really* *love* that book!
7 things I say most often:
1. It's hard to be you/me.
2. Writing is hard!
3. MEOW!
4. It's almost as if we're living in a foreign country!
5. It's a *good* life.
6. No video!
7. When I'm rich and famous...
For some reason, Ted thought this comic was very very very very funny. :)
We had a fantastic Christmas here in IRELAND. Ahahhah! Ireland! Christmas! In Ireland! Ahahah! *ahem* :) We all went out to Deirdre and Gavin's and exchanged an enormous number of gifts. The two real highlights were the toy castle, complete with dragons and knights and orcs and wizards and horses and trebuchets and murder holes and elves and dwarves and portcullises and other good things that Breic got from Uncle Shaun, who was so excited when he found it I had to call up Deirdre and ask if Shaun could get Breic the castle, which we weren't sure about because it has cannonballs and things that Seirid might (and did) try to eat. Deirdre said it was okay, so Shaun was very happy and got to get Breic the castle. :)
The other real prize gift was from Deirdre and Catie and Ted and Gavin and Shaun, to my parents. We got them a trip to Venice. :) Dad's jaw fell open when he read the card. Then Mom's did, because she had to take the card away from Dad 'cause he stopped reading it out loud. :) We were very pleased with ourselves. :)
Ok. We're going to go see The Producers, so I have to stop posting and go. :)
*laughs and laughs* It's a very Ursula Christmas for me this year. Over the last 6 months or so, Ursula's done several sketches that I just Had To Have: the dragglerabbit, the Arctic party, and the dwarven baker. I had to have the dragglerabbit because he looked just like I feel on a bad writing day, the Arctic party was obviously meant for me, and the story of why I had to have the dwarven baker is here. I waited until I was in Ireland to have her ship them, and a couple days ago I got them in the mail and I've just opened them up. The dragglerabbit is laugh-out-loud funny. :) They're absolutely wonderful sketches, bigger than I expected and on heavier paper, so they'll frame really nicely in some nice simple frames (sketches, IMHO, ought not be fancily framed, because they're simple things themselves).
Then Ellen sent me the Ursula 2006 calendar, which turned out *very* nicely, and if Ellen does another print run on them I'll link to them. So it's a very Ursula Christmas around here, and that makes me very happy. :)
Homemade marshmallow creme proves to be surprisingly easy to make, and makes extremely good fudge. The too-large crystals of Irish sugar make grains of sugar in the otherwise excellent fudge. I'm going to have to see if I can find smaller grained sugar, or I'm going to have to get a sugar grinder, because this won't do. (I'm a bit of a perfectionist about my fudge.) (Ted thinks I should go to culinary school because he thinks I'd be completely fascinated and delighted with the food science courses and, well, just all of it. I think he's trying to get out of cooking. :))
We discussed going into Dublin today, but frankly, I'm too damned tired. I *do* have a cold, and I'm just worn out from the last week of shopping. Shopping is hard! Let's go writing!
*laugh* Yesterday over lunch Shaun asked, out of idle curiosity, what currently-existing mammals we would choose to be, if we had to choose. Ted, without missing a beat, said, "A Kodiak brown bear." I said, without missing a beat, "A dolphin." Shaun, of course, would be a tiger (giant cats!).
I thought that said pretty much everything about all of us that needed to be said. :)
(considerably later)
I've just done a quite good drawing. I don't know if it'll look as good when I've scanned it in, since scanning always seems to play up any flaws in a sketch, but I'm really pretty happy with it. Lucky for me, I haven't got a scanner right now, so it can sit in its goodness for a while.
Pleased as I am, I'm also frustrated, because I can't do this every time I sit down to draw. I don't want much, just to be perfect at everything I do. :p
(written 12/21/05, 9am) My insanely wonderful husband did a load of laundry last night while I was taking a bath, so that I'd have some shirts to wear. I came downstairs this morning, having fallen into bed immediately after my bath, and got very confused because I couldn't figure out when he could've possibly done laundry without waking me up when he came in and out of the CRRRRREEEEEEEAAAAAAK!ing door. After a few moments, though, I remembered about the bath. :) Anyway, isn't he wonderful? *beam* Best husband ever.
So among other things you can't get in this country, it seems, is marshmallow creme. This has resulted in me learning you can *make* marshmallow creme! Who knew?! Ted and I are going to make some this morning (I'd been going to last night, but instead I bathed), and then perhaps I'll make fudge. And toffee. And Russian tea cakes. Although I probably won't make all of those today. I bought some of the little chocolate chips they have here, and will use those for my fudge, although I'm nervous about them. Fudge ought to be made with Nestle's chocolate chips, and between that and homemade marshmallow creme, well. We'll see. *squinty look*
Good God I'm sore. Between the Curves workout, following it up with a dance barre session, and walking 8 or 9 miles in the last two days, holy cow with the ow. This is why I took a bath last night, although I fear I just don't have Deborah's stamina for them. I didn't even manage to stay in the bath through the duration of one full CD, much less the three or six hours she seems to be able to bathe for. Still, it was a very nice very hot bath, after which I collapsed into bed and slept for nearly twelve hours. Buh. I don't know where that came from, either. (Possibly, y'know, the aforementioned workouts & walks, though....)
Either I have a cold in the back of my throat or I am horribly horribly dehydrated. The latter is almost certainly true. I hope the former is not also true.
I've made a list of people to call in the new year in order to see about getting out of the house and getting a life. These include a college of music and a guitar school, a dance school, going to the pool to swim as well as to talk to the lady about maybe riding her husand's horses, and, er, okay, a chiropractor, which probably doesn't count but is a good idea. Although! I have not been to a chiro since I came here, and so far I'm doing pretty well! I could stand to be crunched, I think, as my back has some thickness to it, but I'm not suffering. Taking baths is helping me loosen up the muscles enough to pop my lower back on my own, if not as thoroughly, perhaps, as a chiro might, but it's a good sign that I can do it at all. Ooh. I should see about yoga, too, although the only listing I can find in the golden pages doesn't appear to be on the train line.
I want one of the little scooters they've got here. :) I have no idea how much they cost, or whether it's freezing cold to ride around on them, but for short trips and exploration things by myself I think that'd be fun. :)
(written 12.18.05) Well, Breic's birthday party went very well. :) I went out to Blackrock on Saturday morning to make a wemon cake, which was Breic's request for his birthday cake, and he was sufficiently excited about the prospect that he didn't want to go with his daddy to turn the movies back in or to play in the park. He just wanted to help Aunt Catie! We kind of compromised on him helping me make the frosting, and he went off with Gavin. He also went down for his nap really fast, thank goodness, and slept a long time, thus making the afternoon a pleasant one. :) Seirid didn't sleep nearly as much, but he was good-natured anyway. My goodness that child likes to bounce. You can bounce him out of almost any sulk. He is the epitome of a bouncing baby boy. :)
Mom and Dad and Ted and Shaun got there around 3, I think, and Breic got very excited indeed. There was going to be a PARTY! *laugh* A friend of Deirdre's from her yoga classes (I assume!) came over with her year-old boy, who is quite a fetching little moppet with big brown eyes and very soft baby-fine brown hair falling into them, so for quite a while there were three little boys running around yelling. Poor Ted, who is sensitive to noise, came away with a headache, but not a migraine, which is good.
Breic *did* help me with the frosting, which is far less disasterous than one might think. He's really quite a good little helper. He keeps his fingers out of the way, but he turned the mixer on and off and put his hand on the handle while I mixed it, so he got to mix it from his perspective, and when I had to do bits that I needed both hands for I'd put him down and promise to call him back for the next mixing bit, and he'd tear off to report on the frosting or other things, and come back when I called. He got to pour the lemon juice into the frosting mix and help me mix it up, and then I said we were done, and he was completely satisfied and went running off while I frosted the cakes. :)
He had a rather overwhelming number of presents, but the undisputed hit was the plastic armor and buckler and sword, which he spent the rest of the evening playing with and running back and forth and telling us how he'd fought the dragon or the sea monster or the giant, but then assuring us the were only *pretend*, so we didn't have to be afraid. Once I accidentally walked through his sea monster, and he told me I had to stand *here* so I'd be *safe* and then he fought the sea monster to save me. :) He was willing to eat dinner, but not enough to take his armor off. The cake and ice cream, however, he was willing to take the armor off for. I gave him three scoops of ice cream. Hey, he's not my kid. I didn't have to put him to bed. :) Far as I'm concerned, Deirdre oughta be grateful I asked instead of just giving him a frosting beater to lick. :)
Midway through his cake and ice cream, he announced, *very* loudly, "This is a NICE party!"
And it was. :)
I'm somewhat less together with this posting than I'd like to be. That's the disadvantage of no net; by the time I get to a computer I'm no longer sure what I wanted to say. I've been working on my 'things that are different' observations, but the only one that's sticking with me now is that the not-as-sweet apple juice is vastly preferable, IMHO.
I finished HoS yesterday, so took the rest of the day off and went for a walk with the boys. We got rained on, but not until after we'd done some exploring around Athy, which we're liking more and more. It's a nice little town.
Today we went into Dublin to do Christmas shopping, which tired us all out and frustrated Ted some 'cause he couldn't find the things he was looking for. I gather there's tremendous shopping out in Blanchfordstown or something like that, but I don't know if we've got the wherewithall to go that far. I, however, found several things I was after, and hit Shaun's carrying capacity before I was done, so I'm going back in tomorrow to do more shopping. I believe Ted and Shaun will be joining me, and I'll get to meet up with Deirdre sometime tomorrow. Today we met up with Mom and Dad for lunch. All v. pleasant. :)
There were Ursula drawings in the mail today, but I had to go down to the post office to pick them up 'cause we hadn't been in when the mail came, so since I was out anyway I went to Curves, too, and had a surprisingly good workout. Ted suggested I do the leg press one leg at a time, which vastly improved the workout there, and then I did barre work before I left, although I forgot to do situps.
Almost none of this was what I'd been planning to talk about. Oh. *laugh* I very nearly had a Moment with a cute girl on the tram today. I tell you, nothing makes you feel like you're on top of the world like a complete stranger intently checking you out. Well, that might also make you wonder if you've got snot dripping from your nose, I suppose, but it being me and my ego, I just assumed she thought I was cute. She even waved at me when I got off the train. That kept me in a good mood for a couple hours. :)
Robin's tagged me for a meme, but I'm too lazy to do it while I'm paying for access. I'll do it later, I promise, Robin!
Okay. I think I'm done now, 'cause I can't think of all the important things I was gonna say. :)
I just thought, "God! I haven't finished a book since July! What've I been DOING all this time?!"
Then I remembered I'd been getting a house ready to sell and moving to the other side of the world.
Oh yeah.
Feel better now. :)
(later)
Ok, I can tell I'm almost done and have reached the point where I just want to *be* done, because I'm fiddling around with the very last chapter, which is not in need of fiddling anymore, and avoiding doing the work on the two preceding it because that's like WORK. It would be easier if there was something large that needed fixing, so I could face the music and rip something out and replace it, but it's detail stuff, adding in layers, and at this point I've added in 31 pages of layers in this pass (and 40 in the last pass) and my brain is all out of layers. o.o
On a completely different note, I was so incredibly tired last night I staggered to bed at 10 to 10 and didn't even wake up when the insanely loud squeaky door opened when Ted came to bed. We *really* need to get some WD-40, or whatever the equivilant over here is. Either that or I need to be that tired all the time, but I'd rather not be. I was so tired I was a whiny-butt, just like my nephews get. Although I was giggling about it instead of screaming.
Six pages. I need like six pages, and I'll be done. *drags brain off to work*
(later still)
Done. Need to write two more scenes and fix a handful of tiddly things, mostly stuff I need to check up on online, and done. Done done done done DONE. Did I mention done? Because DONE.
(and later yet)
Wow. I just re-read the synopsis I rewrote for HEART OF STONE. There's some good stuff in there I totally didn't touch on in my rewrites. It's scene-level stuff, not rearrange-the-whole-damned-book stuff, but damn. Looks like I've got one more revision pass after all. Damn. Damn!
Note to self: keep the damned synopsis handy. :p
(and a bit later after that)
Actually, most of it's there. I'll need to punch up a scene or two, and I rewrote the ending to be different from both the synopsis and the original ending, but I like it better this way; I think it suits the character better. I might have ten or fifteen pages to add instead of the five or six I thought I'd have, but it's essentially okay. Nothing too drastic. So those scenes, a revision on the HOUSE OF CARDS synopsis, and 3 chapters for that, and this lil' SOB can be sent off. Yay!
ytd wordcount: 240,300
miles to Mount Doom: 290.5
Got through another several chapters on HoS. I have to do some fairly significant stuff in the antepenultimate and penultimate chapters, which I left largely untouched due to NOT CARING ANYMORE last time through, and I need to write two new scenes for around the 24th chapter. I'll have to re-arrange chapter breaks after that, and make a couple of other small modifications to a few scenes much earlier in the book, and then by God I think I'll be done.
I'd better be, because I'm at the point of thinking this is probably the worst piece of tripe ever written and that God himself couldn't make a decent story of it. This usually means everything's right on track and going well. (Neil Gaiman wrote in his blog a while ago about how he'd gone to his agent about 2/3rds of the way through his work in progress and said essentially what I just said, and she said, "First, you always say that. It'll be fine. Second, *every* author always says that." He said he liked it better when he thought he was the only one who did that. Me, I take comfort in knowing authors with forty books out are convinced that *this* time is the time it's all going to blow up and everybody's going to realize they're a terrible hack and how could they have not seen it years ago, too. :))
I went to Curves today and had a pretty good workout. I'll get better at using the hydraulic weights, I'm sure, although I'm not sure I can move the leg press fast enough to get the kind of weight I'd like to have. It's okay, though; they've got a dance barre, and I'll use that. I think it'll be a good place to go for at least a few months, while I get back into weight lifting, since I haven't done it at all in months, and not regularly for years. And I'm all cheerful, of course, because I worked out. *snort* Like clockwork, that. :)
Ok, I'm going to head home and watch a not very good movie (xXx) and enjoy the evening. More big work on the book to do tomorrow.
miles to Mount Doom: 288
I'm going to have some more minor edits to do after this pass on HoS is done, but I think this is the last major revision pass I'm going to have to do. The middle of the book got rewritten a lot in the last pass and it's solidified up nicely. I've got a bunch of work to do to the last four or five chapters still, but if the ones between--20 through 24 or so--aren't too bad, the end is in sight and I'm feeling quite smug about all of this. Gotten a lot done the last few days, despite having been all over hell and breakfast in that time.
I went down to Curves today, which actually was "go down to Curves, discover I've gotten there just after the lunch hour's begun, go for a two+ mile walk down the Barrow Way, return, find they're still not open, then meet a very tall man who was struggling with Athy traffic (which is really rather bad) to get back to the shop on time, then spend a good solid 40 minutes talking to him about many things that have nothing to do with Curves". :)
After looking around, I decided two things. One: it's not really my kind of place. Two: I'm going to go ahead and join anyway. Amazingly, one does not need a utility bill to do this. There's a not-too-reprehensible initiation fee which he knocked down another thirty percent because he felt guilty about it starting in January if he didn't tell me about it, and I can pay monthly, which is good since we don't know if we'll be here for more than 6 months. Here in Athy, I mean.
I'm going to join despite it not really being my kind of place because I'd really like to do strength training of some sort, and I think I'll *use* it, even if it's not really what I'd prefer. Right now I'm feeling like wanting to do weights (in whatever format) is a larger want than a specific kind of weight gym. Which isn't available anyway. :)
Arright. Heading home now. Maybe I'll go swimming tonight.
miles to Mount Doom: 285
This post was written yesterday in a fit of whiny self indulgence. Consequently I'm putting it behind the more tag, and if you want to actually read the whiny self indulgence you can. Otherwise, I will just post about how we just went to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and oh my *god*.
I thought it was very nearly perfect. There were lines that came straight from the books, lines that I anticipated--and I haven't *read* the books in fifteen years--and hearing them just about made me cry. I thought the casting of the children was astonishingly good. *All* of them. Everybody's been crowing about how wonderful Lucy was, but Edmund was *perfect*, and I honestly adored Susan, who looked just exactly like Susan ought to have, and Peter homigawdwhataheartbreaker.
And the Witch. Wow. OMG. *biggest eyes ever* OMG. *bigger eyes than that* She. Was. Perfect. Tilda Swinton is my new hero. Wow. She was *magnificent*. Absolutely magnificent.
I went in highly skeptical about Aslan and the beaver family in particular. The beavers were...fine. They were what I expected, with moments of grace. Aslan was much, much better than I hoped and feared he might be, and Liam Neeson was an excellent voice casting for him. The centaurs were good, the fauns were good, and *what* is the name of that cheetah who was wandering around?! I can't remember his name! It's been too long since I've read the books! I really want to re-read them now.
And I *really* want to rewrite RIGHT ANGLES TO FAERYLAND.
I do not remember the last time I wanted to turn around and walk back into the movie theatre and watch a movie again *immediately*. I wanted to do that today.
God, I'm irritatingly predicatable. *sigh*
I'm feeling hideously dissatisfied with my blog. Usually when I'm not happy with my blog I'm displacing something else. Same thing with my hair. As soon as I notice I'm displacing I know what the other problem is, which I do, but that's not the point. The point is that, displacement aside, there's something completely legitimate to wanting my blog to be something ... else. Not the blog, necessarily, but the blog design. I've bitched about the frustration of this before. I want to be better at blog design. I want something knockout and sexy and uniquely me and I don't have the design skill to do that. When I try for it, I feel like I'm leaving me behind somehow, which is a bit asinine, not to mention catch-22y.
Part of the problem is I feel like I should use the sassy lady and "the essential kit" as design elements, because hey, this site has been the Essential Kit more often than not for over five years now. I don't know that there's anything that really summarizes what the damned journal's about, since it's not a purposeful blog, it's just what happens when people I haven't talked to six months say, "What've you been up to?" and I say, "Uh, nothing." Now it's still nothing, but at least you can keep up to date about it on the website. So there's a degree here of feeling trapped by my own website, which has got to be some kind of specialized psychotic.
ART, dammit! I want art! And instead of art I've got...my skill set.
And then there's that I've just moved to the other side of the planet and god, for an extrovert, what an introvert I am. The prospect of going out and trying to meet people is beyond scary. It's, like, overwhelming. I don't know how to do it. I mean, obviously going to swim and going over to Curves and those sorts of things would be good starts. We just discovered a club above one of the pubs here, and they've got a DJ on Friday and Saturdays, and I love going out dancing, so there's something else I/we could theoretically do. There's Christmas stuff coming up in Athy, give-aways and parties and things at pubs, and obviously going out to those would be a good idea. And apparently there's a theatre group of some kind here (the lady at the pool told me so) that I should find out about and go check out. I should find out if there are dance classes in Carlow and see if I could, like, find somebody to teach me guitar, maybe, and I don't know, something else that I've forgotten, oh, voice classes and frankly it's a lot easier to whimper and not feel like going out somewhere new and scary.
So (yes, this ties back in) part of me is sort of thinking that, you know, if I cut my hair I'll suddenly be fifty pounds thinner, only in this case it's if I redesign my blog properly I'll suddenly be fifty percent braver, or if I have the right design it'll push me into going out and being a real live person and doing real life things. So what with all that (and with listening to way, *way* too much Bon Jovi) I've been kind of thinking about a 'destination anywhere' theme for the blog for 2006/until I get bored with it, whichever comes first, but the only imagery I've got of my own that would fit is sort of lonesome depressing stuff and that's completely not the point. Oh no. Me, I want cheerful upbeat poppy enthusiastic inspiring artistic shit.
*facedesk*
AND there's the fact that because I use my site as a bookmark file I can't go 100% artistic because if I can't get to my navigational bar easily I just get pissed off. I suppose I could do without the book links, although I don't know, they seem like good things to have even if this is my personal site instead of my professional one, and *argh*.
*glowers around helplessly* Anybody want to give me a new blog design for Christmas?
Today we all went down to Carlow town (isn't that a song?) and went to see the garda about Shaun's passport. It actually went really well; the essence of it is that Shaun and I (because I'm the citizen in this scenario) need to establish that we've had a long-term permanent domicile sharing in the States, which can be shown by bills addressed to us separately at the same address, and that we intend to continue a long-term permanent domicile sharing in Ireland. They pretty much don't give a rat's ass about anything beyond that. It's a matter of jumping through the hoops, which is exactly what the nice man said, except he used an Irish phrase that meant jumping through the hoops instead of that particular phrase. :) Anyway, we send the relevant pieces of information to the Department of Justice stating Shaun's long term plans and that I (we) intend to continue putting him up, and then, as the nice man said, we wait. :) If his extended passport date runs out before the waiting is done, we just come back down to Carlow with a copy of the letter and paperwork we sent, he gets his passport extended again, and we wait some more. Eventually everything will get cleared and then we go back to Carlow and the nice man gives Shaun an ID card that says he's registered to be here for an extended stay (ie, years). So yeah, that all went really well and we're all very glad about it.
Now Ted and I have to go to the garda and show them our marriage certificate and my paperwork and that should take care of all that. We think we'll be able to do that in Athy, though, instead of having to go to Carlow. We'll see.
Anyway, Carlow was a nice town. Much larger than Athy, about 40,000 people apparently, and we had a walk around and found an internet shop (of course) and the movie theatre, but it doesn't open til 6 on weekdays, so no Narnia for us. We're going into Dublin tomorrow, though, so I expect there will be Narnia for us then. :)
I've completely lost count of my miles. I desperately need a pedometer.
writing this may be a bit of a struggle, as it's a european keyboard and i'm not used to them. at least we found where the at key is at. :)
work proceeds apace. just reached the end of the first third of heart of stone (again) and i'm going to be going through it at least once more. but first, when this revision is done, i must finish writing coyote dreams. this is a very busy few months here. busy is good, but oi, the busy. :) possibly moving across the world in the midst of all this was not the *best* planning ever, but as ted says, hey, live and learn! :)
...jeez. i keep thinking of things to write about, but when i get to an access point i can't think of them anymore. maybe i'll just have to save up entries on my laptop until i can get into town and use mom and dad's connection. anyway, we're all alive and doing fine.
oh! we got a DRYER! it's very exciting. and we got a tv and dvd player, which are also exciting. but you can't rent dvds here without a bank account, and you can't get a bank account without a utility bill proving you live where you say you do, and bills are only sent out every other month here, so, er, it's a little odd. rather as if (we said in a chorus) we were living in a foreign country!
OH!
i am living in a foreign country where my books are not being published. THE CARDINAL RULE is out this week. if people happen to sight it and have a camera of some sort, if you'd take pictures (with or without yourself!) i would eventually get my act together enough to post them to cemurphy.net and i would luff you forever! email to catie at cemurphy dot net or mizkit73 at yahoo dot com (the former is better, though you'll get an email back from an address something like catie at megs dot vogsn dot something or other dot this and dot that asking for you to verify you're a real live person instead of a spambot, 'cause i've got a spam filter running on that account).
'k, getting hungry now and ted says he'll make dinner when we get home, so we better go home. :)
I just got my first royalty statement!
This is for the month of June, as Harlequin's royalty periods end June 30 and December 31. So the book had been out for a month when the royalty period ended. I did not earn out (which is what it's called when you've earned your advance back), but that doesn't surprise anyone. I *did* sell about 7000 books in June. So for all of you who've been asking how the book is doing, there, that's our first indicator. As Deirdre says, "More than 200 books a day!" Hee! I think that's a pretty cool way to think of it. :)
Wow! This is really cool! I mean, sure, it'd be cooler if it had a BIG FAT CHECK with it, but heck fire, that's pretty cool!
Wow. A royalty statement!
Ted came into Dublin last night and helped me babysit today. It's easier with two people, especially when Seirid was being much less charming today than yesterday. Had we been wise enough to get Shaun to come in, we could've gone to see Narnia this afternoon, but there's no way to get ahold of Shaun, and it seemed mean to go without him.
Apparently the internet place down next to our house has turned off their wireless because it was screwing things up, so I'm not going to be able to check email except from in town again. If you really need to talk to me, email mizkit73 at yahoo dot com, and I'll check that email from the shop. I think the handful of people who might have something critical to say have my cell phone mobile number. :)
My laptop was able to pick up the wireless network from Mom & Dad's today. Curses, now I'm online. :) Fortunately, it's still early enough that a lot of people aren't up and about yet, and, well, work to do even with the sweet temptation of internet calling my name.
My tummy is not well today. I though last night it was unwell from tiredness, and I suppose it might still be unwell from tiredness, but I just have this unpleasant bubble of ook sitting in my stomach. I'll do my best to go to bed early tonight, maybe. Blork.
My smaller nephew is lying a few feet away from me, snoring up a storm. It's much cuter when babies snore than when adults do. :)
Babysitting this morning went pretty well. I got to change Seirid's incredibly stinky diaper, O Lucky Me. But he went right down for his nap, and Breic was charming and helpful, and overall it went well. The largest problem was that most of the food in the house was bordering on gone, and by the time Breic had a snack, all that was left to feed him for lunch was raisin bran. Fortunately, that seemed to go over well. Messily, but well. 3 hours of wrangling little boys, though, has made me want a chiropractor more than I've wanted one since getting here. Maybe I can find one tomorrow afternoon.
We're supposed to be getting a washer today. I wonder if we'll also get a dishwasher, or if it'll just be a washer. I guess I'll find out when Ted comes in this evening.
Ok, the tiredness and the icky tummy are sending me to take a nap.
Mom and Dad are flying to Seattle in the morning to visit my grandmother, who is in the hospital again, and so my sister has recruited me for babysitting the next couple of mornings. Since staying in Athy would mean getting up at 6 in the morning to catch the 6:40 train for a 10am babysit, and would be expensive, I'm staying in Dublin til Friday afternoon (my time) and will be around online a little in the next couple days. Ted and Shaun went back out to Athy tonight and Ted'll come in tomorrow evening after meeting with our landlord and hopefully getting a washing machine installed, our master bath toilet fixed, and learning how to put the garbage out. :)
Tomorrow I'm going to spend a *lot* of time on HoS revisions. :)
miles to Mount Doom: 271
(written 12.7.05, 8:51am) Man, I made my hair all cute this morning and then pulled a fuzzy over my head and now it's not cute anymore. :P I need to unpack more so I can find some of the other fuzzies that don't mess my hair up so much (or at all, with the one that's a jacket instead of a pullover). The problem with those ones is I've lost enough weight that they're voluminous. Comfy, but not cute.
My hair has gotten very long. Another six inches and I'll be able to do an Age of Apocalypse Kit costume. Well, another six inches and some massive muscle development. :) Deborah says I have...I forget the phrase she used. Time-invested-to-worth-obtained issues with my hair. Gotta grow it out to do a Rogue costume in May for X3 (all together now: even if X3 is going to suck). Then no point in having lost this much weight and having that much hair and cutting it off before Halloween. By that time I really would have enough hair to do a Kit costume, so no cutting it off until I do at *least* a photo shoot, and if that takes too long, well, Christ, Halloween might be coming up again in, you know, eight months...
The scale in this house weighs you in stones. I think that's very funny. :) I weigh EXACTLY 11 stone, which does not psyche me out into thinking, "Hey! 11 something! I'm thin!" Nope. I know it really means 154, which is, mind you, not bad at all. I've been going between 152 and 154 the last...well. Since I got here. My fat days now are 155 days, which is pretty amazing, when I think about it: my fat days now are the lowest adult weight I've ever *maintained*.
Still haven't gotten down to Curves, or gone over to the pool to swim. Won't get those muscles (or that eldritch 142 on the scale) without doing that.
Ooop, it's after 9, gotta get to work.
This entry brought to you by the letter V for vanity, apparently. :)
(written 12.06.05, 5pm): This is how I revise.
My directory structure's usually set up like this:
Series Directory
Book Title (original files in here)
2nd draft
3rd draft
Once the original drafts are done and I'm going into revisions, I take the latest draft and copy it into a new directory. If, like with HoS, I've done *lots* of revisions already, the old directory usually gets renamed to define what the biggest change I made in that pass was--in this case, it's been renamed "Revisions for Structure". The new directory is "Revisions for Sensuality".
Typically I name my files "booktitle01, booktitle02," with the book titles being nothing more than the initials I refer to them by. HEART OF STONE, therefore, is hos01, hos02, etc.
I open up hos01, then copy it to hos01_revised and keep both files open, side by side. I turn off Word's page-matching scroll, because as I add and subtract words it only becomes irritating to have the old file page lurching around, and if I have to scroll in it to cut something to paste back into the new file, I lose my place in the new file if the page match (which I have now typed as 'patch' twice; if it happens again I'll just start calling it patching!) is turned on.
I open up any other files I need--in this case, a page of notes, and the original scene I rewrote for Luna to demonstrate I could up the sensuality quotient in the book. They're both references, the notes file for things I want to do in the book, the scene so I can remember how I managed to write that stuff. In time, I won't need the scene as much, as I get back into the style, but for now, I actively need the reminder.
At some point, I make a new file for the complete manuscript. If I'm smart, which I never am, I don't combine all the chapters into that new file until I'm actually satisfied with the state of the book. Usually what happens is about 2/3rds of the way through I feel a burning need to see what I've accomplished all in one lump, and put it together. More or less inevitably, I then make major revisions to at least a couple of chapters and end up spending a lot of time muttering and swearing and flipping things back and forth trying to make sure I've got clean, up to date copies of everything in the right places.
I also open up my wordcount file. For revisions, it always looks something like this:
ch 1 original: (original chapter wordcount)
ch 1 rewrites: (revised chapter wordcount)
ch 1 new words: (+ or - how many words)
Further down the page I keep track of the chapter, chapter wordcount, chapter pages, total pages and total wordcount so far in the book:
ch 7: 3700, 15, 100, 22503
ch 8: 3122, 14, 114, 25625
ch 9: 3266, 15, 129, 28891
This usually ends up off by a thousand or two words and a few pages from the actual manuscript, but it's close enough for me to know generally where I am versus where I need to be.
I use wordpad for my wordcounts, because it's a separate window and I can get to it without digging through Word. I name the wordcount files things like hos_rewrites_wordcount, because I used to just name them wordcount and then discovered if you have six files called 'wordcount' you have to go through all of them to find the book you're working on. :) The first lines in the files tend to say things like, "HoS rewrites (again)", or "(yet again)", or "(once more, with feeling)".
(We are, for the record, on "yet again" with this bout of revisions; the next one will be OMWF. I don't know what comes after that; I've never revised a book this many times.)
I open up a calculator so I can keep track of how many new words total I've got written that day, but usually I forget and close it several times, which always annoys me. Still, it's apparently part of the ritual. :)
These days, I'm turning on Bon Jovi to write to. My playlist is called "All Bon Jovi, All The Time", and is missing Blaze of Glory, because I screwed up ripping it somehow, and Keep the Faith, because for some extremely unlikely reason I don't own it on CD. I'm also missing the self-titled Bon Jovi album, and they might've released one more before that way back in the pretty early eighties that I don't know about. Still, it's a lot of Bon Jovi.
(I may be adjusting to this new writing to music thing, which I'm not actually that keen on most of the time. It does, however, drown out any background noise, which can be very helpful.)
Having got everything in place, I then spend the next several hours alternately typing, clutching my head, staring vacantly into space, swearing, and--this, most importantly--taking enourmously deep breaths and letting them out through my teeth in a very loud "TCHHHHH" of a sigh.
This is the sound of revision. It is the sound of trying to hold not one, but *two* entire books together in my head: the one I have already written, and the one I am revising it into. I must remember where things were, where they are now, where they should be, and while I'm doing all that, develop a flow and language consistent to the entire piece.
The good news is that while I'm doing this, I will come across unexpected bits of story that will make me laugh, make me wince, make me gasp, and make me feel that all the work I'm doing is going to be worth it, in the end. I will find places where a tweak to a word or two--or a complete hack and revise of an entire scene--will leave me triumphant with the knowledge I've improved something dramatically, and that its effect is now what I want it to be. I hope I'm going to find those more often than I find the parts that make me swear, but I won't, and I certainly won't find more of them than I go TSCHHHH over.
But finally I'll get to the last scene, the last sentence, and there'll be a little burst of glee behind my breastbone because damn I like that, and then it'll be done.
We're a long way out from that yet, baby. :)
(Just thought people might be interested in the bones of how revision happens for me. :))
(written 12.06.05, 11:31am): Evidently there are monthly (and annual) train passes. This is good. They're expensive, considerably more expensive than the Caltrain equivilant for distance (at least the Caltrain equivilant five years ago, which was the last time I used Caltrain regularly), but they're about half the cost of paying daily, so that's good. It may curtail my plans to go into Dublin a couple times a week down to just once, but that'll probably be okay.
more behind the cut...
Working on my first loaf of unmeasured bread. It certainly looks and feels like bread dough, so I'm not too worried, but I'll let you know how it turns out. :) I may, if I am flush from success, give chocolate chip cookies a whirl, too. :)
But not until I've gotten more writing done. I've done a few hundred words this morning, then stopped to go to the store with Ted, as I didn't want him to have to lug six bags worth of groceries home alone. Then I made bread and now I'm writing a journal entry. My, how easy it is to procrastinate. :)
CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES! Ye gods! It's very difficult to find semi-sweet chocolate chips here (they call semi-sweet chocolate 'plain' chocolate here), and when you do, it's in 6 oz bags that cost ... crap, I've forgotten the HTML for a Euro symbol. They cost E1.70! That's two dollars! For six ounces of chocolate chips! Ye gods!
Know what the other Christmas-critical thing we can't find here is? Crisco. They've got solid vegetable-oil stuff, but it's nothing at all like Crisco and the pie crust it makes isn't as tender (although mind you, Mom's crust was still considerably more brilliant than anything one could get at a store). Would anybody with a Costco's card like to send me a care package of Nestle's chocolate chips and Crisco? I'll repay you, of course. Email me at open at mizkit dot com or catie at cemurphy dot net if you're that good-hearted a soul. :)
Ok, I better really get to work now. :)
written 12.05.05, 2:14pm: The chairs at our house are not as good for sitting in and writing as the chairs at Mom & Dad's house. Too straight-backed, I think. I note this from several seconds worth of observation, not the hours one might expect me to have put in by 2:15 in the afternoon. But oh, no, I bought a big fat Mary Gentle book last night while we were in Dublin, and made the mistake of not being able to finish it in one evening. (Not, at least, without staying up until 1:30 in the morning, which I wasn't willing to do.) So I had to finish it this morning, and have learned a valuable lesson: only read skinny books while writing books of your own. :)
The book, 1610: A GRAVE IN A SUNDIAL, was very good and puts me in mind of working on THE QUEEN'S BASTARD. Sadly, no one is paying me to work on TQB, so it'll be HoS or CD in a few minutes here. I'm leaning toward HoS, I think. We'll see.
More behind the cut...
I may have made a critical error in housing decisions. I assumed without checking into it that a body could buy a monthly train pass, a la Caltrain or some such, and I am no longer at all sure that's true. Ted & Shaun have gone into Dublin to explore a bit and do some shopping and to check the internet at Mom & Dad's, and they're going to see about the train thing. If in fact there is no such thing as a monthly pass, any profit in living as far out as Athy will be very thoroughly eaten up by ticket fees, and I will be extremely irritated with myself. :P
Other than that, though, things seem to be going pretty well. I keep meaning to make note of Things That Are Different, but by the time I sit down to do so, I've generally forgotten what they are. Oh, but here's something: the fruit and fruit juices are so unpreserved as to border on the bizarre. Apples are mushier. Apple juice isn't as sweet (and is therefore much more drinkable, IMHO). Pineapple juice is thicker and not as sweet. Strawberries, which I don't think are particularly sweet anyway, aren't as sweet. Mom said she got a mango on Henry Street which was the first good mango she'd had since leaving Florida (at age 9). Clementine oranges are exactly the same. :)
Ted and I were in Dublin yesterday, and decided to stop and eat at the Hard Rock Cafe (for two reasons: one, we said, "We'll do it eventually, why don't we get it out of the way now? And then again later?", and two, it was becoming pretty clear to me we were going to go walking down the street, stopping and looking at menus at all the restaurants, and were going to get increasingly hungry and incapable of making decisions as time wore on and we'd eventually be incredibly crabby and hungry and end up eating somewhere we didn't want to anyway). HRC food is pretty much the same everywhere I've eaten it, but holy cow (so to speak), I had beef added to my nachoes and it was *in**sane*ly good beef. This is probably partly due to not having had beef that I can remember since coming here, but also just the wonderful glorious delightful lack of chemicals and preservatives in the meat. Wow, it was good.
*laugh* When we eventually had dinner last night, Ted was going to make rice and realized he had no measuring cups. Then he said to himself, "Are you a chef, man, or aren't you?! It's a simple two to one ratio! If you can't handle that, you'd better get out of the kitchen!"
Mere minutes later, he wondered aloud if not having measuring cups was going to prevent me from making bread, and while I admit that I dug out Mom's measuring cups when I made bread at their house, because I've never made bread with*out* measuring it out before, I found myself pretty offended at the idea that I actually *required* them to make bread. :)
All right. To work now. :)
written 2 December 2005, 1536 hours: Apparently not being online doesn't stop me from wanting to write journal entries, so I'm doing so even though I probably won't be able to post this until Monday.
Good news: the internet cafe up the street has wireless, so we can in fact post and be in at least reasonably regular email contact with our usual email addresses while we wait to get our own network. I'd like to say I'll probably only haul my laptop down there every other day, but c'mon, who are we kidding. Odds are good I'll be there daily.
Ellen: I have not forgotten and I have in fact written the article, which I will send to you as soon as I get online. Of course, by the time you *read* this, I'll have already sent it, but dammit, I didn't forget, and I'm sorry it's late. :P
More behind the cut, because this will all get very long otherwise.
We spent last night in Dublin, partly because it was the easiest way to juggle all the stuff going on with the animals and partly because we had not yet figured out how to turn the heat on at our house, and it was really, really cold. Breic was quite wide-eyed at both Ted and Shaun, although he warmed up very quickly and started making overtures, which went over better with Shaun than Ted, because when Breic finally met Shaun, it was after Shaun'd gotten up from a 5 hour nap, and poor Ted was trying to stay awake while Breic was trying to charm him.
My *goodness* Breic tried hard to impress Shaun! Shaun had a bowl of cereal, so Breic wanted one, and he sat at the table without squirming and ate the entire bowl's worth of cereal, almost entirely with his spoon instead of his hands, and when Shaun got up to make a sandwich Breic asked him to come sit back down wif him, pwease, and when he saw Shaun pick up his cereal bowl he wanted to do the same, and my *goodness* wasn't he just being a little charmer!
Seirid, on the other hand, got one look at both (or either) of them and began to scream bloody murder. Which is what he did when he met me, too. :)
We did get the heat turned on this morning. The landlady called back and we went through everything and finally it struck her that perhaps the fuse for the boiler wasn't on, so sent me to look for it, and lo, it was not. Nor was the one for the cooker (which is what they call stove/ovens; nothing like calling a kettle black, I guess!), which explained why my attempt to heat up at least the downstairs by turning on the oven had completely failed, too. But now everything's warm, except the living room, where the radiator has inexplicably failed to heat up. I'll have to ask about that.
The bed *bruised* me! The springs in it are so stiff, or so close to the surface, or some combination thereof, that I woke up yesterday morning with an incredibly painful purple and blue bruise on my right hip. I typically sleep on my right side, with the left only for variation, because sleeping on my stomach or back hurts my back (and I have bad dreams when I sleep on my back), and the bed *bruised* me! I asked the landlady if it could maybe be replaced, and Mom suggested we flip the mattress just to see if it made any difference, and Ted said we have this soft stuff that went into the bottom of the pets' kennels, and we could put that under the sheet on my side of the bed for padding. I suggested wrapping cotton batting around my hips. :) Ahh, the irony: having lost fifty pounds I'm now in need of padding!
I've been trying to unpack, and have been somewhat thwarted by a lack of hangers. There aren't many chests of drawers, so the lack of hangers is a problem. I went forth to boldly search for some, and came back with some American-style peanutbutter (crunchy for me, smooth for Ted), some mini apple pies, and a package of ... Maltos, or something. Whatever it is they call Whoppers over here. I ate all the Whoppers. I don't feel good now. :)
(In 10th grade, my friend Rhonnie got a 3 pound tub of Whoppers at Costco. She and my other friend Kelly and I ate all three pounds of them in about a day and a half. Since then I can't stand Whoppers, but I'm also drawn to them in this sick moth-to-flame way. Once in a while I give in to temptation and have it reconfirmed that yeah, I don't like those very much.)
Um. I also came back with the information about wireless connectivity at the internet cafe, and knowledge of who they get their broadband through, but no hangers. Couldn't find any! I also couldn't find a mattress pad, which I looked for too.
Oh! But what I did find (buh) was a Curves. I couldn't go in to look around because they were closed, but the last thing I expected to see was a Curves. I'm not real clear on whether Curves uses "real" weights (ie, weight machines that actually employ weights instead of spring-or-band-loaded resistance), though I'm pretty sure they *don't* have free weights. Still, if they've got 'real' weights, I might use that place for a while. Between that and swimming, I might get fit as a fiddle!
Ted, who is still very very tired from the trip to Dublin, went to London this morning to get the pets. I haven't heard otherwise, so I'm assuming they're probably back in Ireland by now and working on moving out toward Athy. I'm sure it'll be probably 5, maybe even a little later, before he gets here. I hope it's all gone well. *worried looks*
Ted called from London. The pets are in quarantine for ~2 days, because the flea and tick treatment expired while they were in transit and so has to be readministered. We don't yet know if one of us will have to fly to London on Saturday and fly back with the pets. Ted was very, very tired and said he just wanted a shower and some sleep. Poor guy. I don't know how Shaun's doing.
I'm thinking if one of us has to go over, it'll probably be me (so if you read this, Geni, check your email), as I have the ease-of-passage passport and won't be coming off two very long days of traveling. It'd only be a day trip, but still.
(A day trip. To LONDON. In ENGLAND!)
On the flip side, we went forth and bought a lot of things for the house: dishes, a couple of pots and a pan (because ours are in transit), towels, an electric kettle and a toaster, pillows, a couple of throws...enough to make the place habitable. I believe I'm going to go out shortly and buy some very basic groceries (like milk, cereal, bread, soup) and that'll get us through at least tomorrow at lunchtime before we have to go any further abroad in search of fud.
Do you think Ted needs this for Christmas? :)