Wow. Holy shit. I did it. I just finished. 442 pages. *makes a vague attempt to figure out how many new words* Oh, hell, I don't know. About 15,000. I ended up with not less than 4000 *more* words than I started out with, and I completely rewrote at least 3 chapters. Enough; it was enough.
A week ago I did not want to turn this book in. Today I am satisfied enough with it to do so. This is an enormous relief. Finishing books--even revising them--is not exactly new to me at this point. Deciding a week before they're due that they need to be shredded and redone is something else entirely. I do not care to repeat that experience.
(Fortunately, I have a new PRINTER, because TED ROCKS, so I don't *have* to repeat that experience.)
Tomorrow morning I'll do my spellcheck, fix my NOTES:, see if there are any transitory scenes I can polish up a little more (I know there are some that need it), and send COYOTE DREAMS off to the agent and the editor.
Wow. Holy cow. I did it.
And when I flipped unexpectedly to the last paragraphs of the last chapter, I thought they were good enough to make me want to stab myself in the heart from the AUGH.
It's either a really good sign or a really bad sign when your own writing takes you off-guard like that. I like to think it's a good sign. 'cause, AUGH!
Two down. Eight to go.
ytd wordcount: 71,500
Ted is the BEST HUSBAND EVER.
He just came home from Dublin with a laser printer for me. It does 28ppm. That's more than 2x what my old one did. It's apparently got a *duplexer*. That means using HALF the paper I usually do! YAY! And he *lugged* it all the way from the office supply shop to the train station and from the train station to home. My husband *loves* me. I love *him*! Best husband EVER!
*squeeee*! Printer! My life can go on!
Ok, so really what my life can do is go back downstairs and work on CD some more. I have to get through rewriting this munged-up bit, and then the next couple chapters will fit back in again, and then I have to ... see if I need to write another one. And I have to go back and write the two pages of a scene I skipped. But it's getting there. It's getting there. I'm on about page 385. There were 413 (A4) pages in the first draft. It's getting there.
Did I mention BEST HUSBAND *EVER*?!
Dad took a zillion pictures of Cobh and the house we'll be renting when he and Ted went down there yesterday. The peektures are here if you wanna look.
10 new pages or so written. Back to the grindstone.
About 60 pages left to do. A third to half of them need to be rewritten entirely. Whether I also need another chapter will depend on those rewrites.
The book is due tomorrow.
This, my friends, is called "cutting it closer than I'd like."
OTOH, I do have the advantage of being five hours ahead of NYC, so if necessary I can turn it in in the evening my time and still deliver it before close of business in the states.
Thank God for editors who accept email submissions. :)
Breakfast, then book.
A neighborhood in Anchorage built a 16 foot tall snowman.
"The kids and I started out doing a snowman, and it started getting kind of big, then it started getting kind of out of hand," (the instigator) explained. "And then (my neighbor), he comes over and says, 'Man, looks like you've got a big project.' I says, 'Yee-aah.' He says, 'Well, I'll help you with it. 'So he jumped in and that's kind of how it went."
The entire neighborhood ended up helping. They were running up and down the street filling buckets with snow to bring back to pack onto the thing. They sewed a carrot nose and made a corncob pipe of manilla envelopes and stuff. He had to use his powerdrill to put the arms in, it was so frozen.
Apparently people are coming from all over the world to see this thing. They've got traffic at all hours of the night, but nobody's complaining. That's just *so cool*. I love people. *beam*
(eta: I love people, take two! Tracy made me an AWESOME new livejournal icon! I can't use it on this journal 'cause I'm stuck with .jpgs, but here it is:
*BEAM*!)
I need to be able to type with my brain. My arms hurt. Well, arm. Shoulder. Whatever. Once it becomes physically uncomfortable to work my brain collapses pretty fast. I might try moving out to the kitchen again and seeing if the different sitting structure helps.
Just made it to page 350, after spending a great deal of time between 290 and 310. Let's hear it for chapters that are easy to fit right back into the story. I have about 60 pages left. I think pretty much exactly half of them need to be *completely* rewritten. I may have to also write another chapter. I am hoping the scene I really love will fit into the end of the book; it needs to, because of where I want Jo to be at the end of this story, but I'm not sure if it strictly fits. I will see. Hopefully it'll work.
Last night, after my brain died, I came upstairs to work on rewriting my Chance script, which is my reward for doing all my big revision work on CD. Trip said, "You're working to reward yourself for work. I think, Miz Kit, that you may have a bad case of Work Ethic." *laugh*
I think I'm going to give myself the next couple of hours off, and go to the gym and stop at the store to buy something to cook for dinner, and get some apples and things. I've hit the minimum number of pages I need to do today, so if I don't get any more done, well, that will be all right. But I think if I take a couple hours off I might be able to work again tonight. Even if I just get one more scene rewritten that'd be a big goodness. :)
I feel like I'm updating this thing every twenty minutes, but swear to God, it's a sanity-maintaining measure. Writing down what I'm accomplishing (or not) makes a significant difference to my brain.
And man. I feel like I have not accomplished a lot today. In fact, I've gotten more than forty pages of stuff revised, the scene that needed punching has been punched and I like it, I think the next scene works even better now, and the all-new scene I'm working on will set up a bunch of the things that I said I'd do in the synopsis and utterly failed to do in the book. Things that should be done. I don't know why I don't feel like I've gotten much done. I'm more than halfway to my goal for the day, and if I can get this scene...and the two after it...done, then it's back to adding in things from the original manuscript and that'll finish me off for the day. I haven't even clawed for the new pages I've gotten today, other than just too many days in a row of doing this, so I donno what's up with my brain. (This is like an internal pep talk that what, like 250 people, get to read.)
I haven't walked yet today. But Ted, who is the best husband, did insist I get out of the house, and we went over to Carlow to see if we could find a printer. We couldn't. Apparently people in this country don't need laser printers to print out thousands of pages of manuscript material in a month, or something. Weirdos.
My right shoulder, from behind the shoulder blade, down through the ulnar nerve and into my pinky, is starting to ache. This is the most annoying and uncomfortable of the signs that Catie Has Been At The Laptop Too Much, and it's compounded right now by sleeping funny a couple days ago and giving myself a stiff neck.
I have, through several years of trial and error, learned to mitigate this as much as possible. The best way to do so is to work at a table, but after four days at the kitchen table in the unbelievably uncomfortable chairs, the rest of my body was so stiff I had to pick up and move into the living room, were I am now ensconced on the couch with various blankets and fuzzy shirts to support the laptop and my arm. The fuzzy shirt does double-duty in support, as not only is it stuffed beneath my right elbow, it also has been stretched across the front of the laptop, blunting the hard (and hot) forward edge. I've also moved the mouse to the left-hand side of the laptop, which usually means I use the touchpad instead of the mouse, but which is at least worth a shot.
Unfortunately, no, I can't do revisions at a better keyboard. The Nook has no setup at *all* for doing revisions (among other things, it has no mouse/pad, and selecting large pieces of text for cutting and pasting without a mouse is just a pain in the ass, but more to the point, it has nowhere at all to pile manuscript pages. This is *wonderfully* useful when writing, because it means I can't possibly clutter up my work space, but it's no good at all for revising.), and the upstairs computer is in a room the boys use. It is better for me to not try working in that room, because it takes approximately one nine-thousandth of a nanosecond for me to want to kill them for daring to be IN MY SPACE when I am TRYING TO WORK. It's just all bad.
So it's the laptop for me. And a profound sense of anticipation about being done and moving back to my wonderful comfy Nook.
(eta: see, there, yes? that's me using the touchpad instead of the mouse. but at least i'm using it with my left hand.)
I will *not* be taking a nap today, no matter how tired I get at 10:30 this morning. Not after the combination of yesterday's nap and talking with Spidey and my brain whirling and whirling and whirling kept me up until after 2am. I will go for a walk, I will take a shower, I will do whatever, but I will *not* take a nap. Jesus.
I will also not work on script rewrites except maybe at mealtimes, which are not allowed to stretch to two hours so I can keep playing. Nor will I log on and chat with people for hours on end.
I *will* get at least 75 pages of rewrites done. (I just checked. Even with as much as I've cut, and all the stuff I've got left to do, I seem to have added about 15 good pages to the manuscript so far. It was not running short, but there are more cuts to come (although practically all of it becomes a big fat rewrite rather than exactly a cut; "this scene doesn't work, it needs to be tossed and replaced with this one"; a lot of one to one replacement), so I'm pleased that I'm not *behind* where I was, and find it satisfying to be ahead of where I was. The book will come in at the right length. They usually do.
I need breakfast.
I got about 60 pages done, up to page 250 (well, 247, close enough), with one entirely new chapter that replaces the old one that just wouldn't work. The transition scene's still rough going into the next bit, but I can smooth it out. The next scene I have to rewrite is okay as it is, but should be really painful and explosive when I'm done rewriting it, which should make the follow-up scene which needs comparatively little work all the more powerful. I hope. I need to work at least one more confrontation with another character in, which should replace a chapter that's currently in place, and then I have to cut away the parts that make the end too easy and make it harder.
The final chapter, at least, while it needs some cosmetic work, will mostly get to stay as it is. That's something, anyway.
I spent far, far too much time today talking about Chance with my friend Spidey. My confidence in myself as a comic writer is now badly shaken and I wonder if I know what I'm doing at all. Or if I can convince someone else I know what I'm doing. *wry look* I'll get over it, probably. I do need to remember I'm doing this for myself as much, or possibly more, than anything else, at this stage. Except, of course, I do want to create a publishable story (which means, one that somebody else will pick up the production costs for).
I should stop thinking now, and go to bed so I can get up and do another big chunk of book tomorrow.
I have got the particularly huge sleepies today. Possibly because I stayed up til 1am for some silly reason. But it is not good for revisions to have such huge sleepies. I may cut myself some slack and do only fifty pages today, and take a nap. Or something. I don't know. I really should do a hundred. Well, all right. I started on page 191 this morning. I will get to at least page 250 today. I may nap as well, and I think I must go to the gym in order to be functional, but I will get to at least page 250. I have spoken; so mote it be.
I have noticed I'm better at getting things done if I write them down. This is not unusual; it's one of those exercises They say you should do as a recipe for success. My problem is that I tend to write things down on a computer, so if I want to keep a steady record, I have to keep using the same computer or the same online system to write things down. My writing computer, though, isn't online, and my revisions computer is a laptop (the one problem with Nook is there is nowhere at all to put papers to work from), and my internet computer is the desktop, so I can't rely on the internet connection to write something down with, and if I'm doing revisions, for example, I don't turn Nook on because I'm using the laptop. So it becomes very difficult to keep a record of easily-updateable goals to accomplish.
This morning while I was in the shower it struck me that I could *looks around furitively* write it down. On paper. I have many paper journals. I like paper journals. I have, at the moment, more than five years worth of journals waiting to be written in. I could use one of those. Then I could carry it around with me, and write things down in it.
The mind, she boggles!
In a few minutes here I'm going to post the various artwork I've gotten for the Chance project behind a locked entry (or series thereof) on my mizkit livejournal. If you don't have an LJ and would like to be able to see the art, either create an account (they're free) or email me at cemurphyauthor at gmail dot com and I will provide you with a username and password so you can take a look at the files. If you use that username/password and leave comments, please leave a name so I know who's talking! :)
*looks around vaguely* Oh, going to the gym worked, btw. On the way home I figured out what I needed to do with the next chapter. Then I looked at it and realized besides what I needed to do, another chunk had to be totally rewritten because the scene no longer takes place at night, and if it doesn't, there's no point in the scene at *all*, so out with it and in with something else.
Instead, of course, I am doing Chance stuff. :) (I got a hundred pages done today, or very close. And my brain's pretty tired. Start anew tomorrow.)
miles to Mount Doom: 406
85 pages done so far and now my brain is gone. I don't *want* to go to the gym very much, but I'm going to anyway, because right now I can't tell if this stuff should be kept or tossed, and presumably moving away from it for a while will help in that matter. Or maybe I'll just go walk, but anyway, I'll get away from the work and the computer and with any luck that'll help. And if I still can't tell, I'll...I donno what.
Yeah, okay. Just going to go walk now, and stop trying to think.
65 or so pages of revisions done so far today. There's more actual rewriting and new material than I hoped, but it's going well and I'm chugging along and feeling like I'm actually starting to have a *book* here. This makes me very cheerful, and being cheerful makes me that much more willing to keep diving into the story. It's a vicious circle. The good sort of vicious circle. :)
Ted, may a thousand gods rain blessings on his head, has gone into Dublin in search of a new printer for me. I have the *best* husband.
Okay. Lunch has been eaten, some of the dishes have been done, and I have gloated over my artist some more, so I should go back to work now.
Cheeeaaaaarge!
*clutches heart* I got more artist samples. OMG. I think my doom has been resolved. On the one hand, there is unquestionably something to be said for the edgy strong look one artist sent me. There are people who would definetely pick up the comic on the basis of that look, who wouldn't necessarily otherwise. On the other, this stuff *looks* *exactly* like I imagined a Chance comic would look. OMG. *falls over* He even did a color splash of the second page (he's pretty good with colors!), and *clutches heart*
Later today maybe I'll put up the samples behind a password-protected directory, and get opinions, just to see what other people think. I'm pretty sure, though, that this guy has won my little black heart.
Taking my wide-eyed, breathless self to work now. Well. As soon as I've made a background image of these pages so I can put 'em on my computer. :)
Somewhere between 9-12 new pages written today, I think. Over a hundred edited/revised, in total. there is a next long section that is going to be full of rearrangements and stitching, and some new content, but not too much of that, I don't think. It would make me very happy to get through another hundred pages tomorrow. (It'd make me even happier to get through more, but I would not be at all displeased with 100 pages a day through the weekend. It Would Do.) At any rate, it's better. I'm happier with it. I will be much gladder for this push and to send off this manuscript in six days' time than I would have been otherwise. That's good.
I really have to make an effort to get out of the house tomorrow. One of the problems with my revisions mindset is that I do not like to do *anything* else. I don't like to talk to people. I don't like people being near me. I don't like leaving my work, because it's a matter of holding it all in my head while I'm revising, and I'm afraid something will slip out. So I have to make an effort to go to the gym tomorrow, because I also get grumpy and exercise helps that.
Very tired now. Going to bed.
A hundred pages rearranged and revised so far. I have to write an all-new scene now, instead of modifying and rewriting older ones, and I still have some things to add into the revisions, but Is Better. 300 pages and huge amounts of work to go. Feeling good about it, though. *chugga chugga chugga*
I went through about the first half of the manuscript (a little shy of it) earlier today and decided at that point I needed to actually put the changes into the manuscript so I had some sense of what I was doing. I'm almost certainly going to need to get access to a printer by tomorrow evening. Hopefully by late tonight, actually, as I'd like to get through these first fourteen chapters today. I'm going into chapter ten now, so I might do it. But it'd be a hell of a lot easier to wrap my brain around if I can print out the changes I've made so far.
Well. I'll worry about it tomorrow. Right now I gotta write a new scene.
(I imagine my mom is reading this and thinking, "Writers are weird," just about now.)
Six days before a book is due is probably not the best time to decide thirty thousand words need to be ripped from it, the rest needs to be stitched together and re-written, and the end needs to be completely fixed.
On the other hand, I'm getting an increasingly solid handle on what needs to be done, and I'm feeling rather perky about my doom. It's going to be a very busy weekend, but the book will be much much *much* better for it. I may or may not get it out to the people who've volunteered to be beta readers, though: my talents are many, but I don't think rewriting 30K in *one* day is among them. Three, yes. One, no.
Too bad I didn't get a printout a month ago when I was feeling uncertain about the bloody thing's path.
Back to hacking and chopping.
It is fairly clearly going to kill me to choose an artist to work with, if Chance goes forward. I've gotten two samples from the five artists I've narrowed it down to; one is very American Superhero, with a lot of fluidity and grace in the work. The other is angular and strong and at just a glance stands out from the crowd as a different style, which is appealing in and of itself. Email from a third promises roughs in the next couple of days, and *that* artist's work is the epitome of Jim-Lee-style American Superhero, really clean lines and beautiful people, so I'm expecting sheer agony when I get those samples and have to decide.
Hm. Truth is, I expect it to be down to those three, I guess. The fourth is a real pro with a slightly more realistic bent to the latest of his work I've seen, and I really like what he does, but I don't know if he's going to have time to do samples. (The burden of being a professional artist!) Even if not he's somebody I'd like to keep in contact with. The fifth is a solid artist whose stuff I'm not quite as excited about, but I do want to see what he comes up with.
Yeah. It's gonna kill me. This is great. :)
i have regained most of my temper, at this point, and feel less screechy. this is in large part because i have the best daddy in the world and he got me a printout of the manuscript, which means i am now capable of doing meaningful edits on it. i will work very hard tomorrow and friday and send it to those beta readers i have contacted friday evening (my time).
which translates to: thank you, *all* of you, who volunteered as beta readers. i've got my victvolunteers, and i have notes back from one of them on the Absolute Crap Draft already, which is going to be insanely useful tomorrow.
i am, at the moment, pretty much emotionally exhausted. i actually napped on the train on the way into dublin, which is completely unlike me. i hoped to work on the ms on the way back, but the train was chock full, so no room to do so. rather than try to get myself involved in it tonight, i'll just go to bed early and work hard tomorrow.
i had no idea how critical the printed manuscript stage was to me. i mean, i knew i needed it to do decent edits, but i did not know my brain would seize up and send me into a raging fury/panic/freakout/whatever. gah.
it was good to see mom and dad. they cheered me up. :) so did tammy, who was silly at me until i was more chipper. i have good friends and family.
bed now. so tired.
miles to mount doom: 404.5
God *damn* it god *damn* it god *damn* it god *damn* it, I just fried my motherfucking printer's power source and I need to print this piece of shit book out and read it on paper so I can fucking rewrite it and *god damn it*, god damn it god *damn* it.
i'm emailing it to dad who is going to get it printed out in dublin. hopefully today. guess i'm taking the next train in, although i guess i might as well wait to see if it can get printed out today or if i'm going to have to wait. god *damn* it.
anybody want to be a beta reader? i need somebody who doesn't mind spoilers for thunderbird falls, because there are spoilers in this book for it, and who can read the fucking book in, oh, the next 24 hours and give me real, genuine, solid feedback, not just 'i liked it', because i know there are things wrong with it and i even know what some of them are, but if i could get any feedback on 'this didn't work for me' it would be incredibly helpful. it's a 420 page manuscript and it's rough and i am full of hatred for it right now, so it's possible it's not as bad as i think it is, but ... anyway. email me or leave a comment if you'd like to beta read. if i don't pick you, don't get offended, because i won't have time for more than one or two people's feedback.
i cannot believe i blew up my fucking printer. i shipped it from alaska for the express purpose of rendering it FUCKING USELESS.
(eta: dad just called to say the manuscript was being printed even as we spoke. i will go into dublin and get it. i am still not happy, but that helps a lot. i cannot do edits onscreen. my brain doesn't work that way. i *need* the printout.
i think i may cry.)
I have begun laundry and swept the downstairs, collecting enough fur to make a small dog in the process, in order to avoid going to work. The next things I can do to procrastinate are vacuum the stairs and change the kitty litter. I really hate vacuuming, so I'm going to work instead. :)
The boys are off to Cork to look at houses. They're staying overnight, so I am AWWW AWOOOONE til tomorrow evening, probably. I'm going to have to *cook* for myself. How awful is that, I ask you? :)
Off to work!
We went to a *movie* tonight! Ted rented a car so he could go down to Cork for the next couple days and look at houses, so we took the car over to Portlaoise (pronounced Portleesh) and went to Aeon Flux.
I expected Aeon Flux to be as bad as I expect X3 to be, except without the emotional investment. To my surprise, while it's not as good as X-Men was, it was considerably better than it had any right to be, and given my low expectations, even managed to hit the scale at 'pretty good'. This is not to say it's a work of everlasting artistic genius, but it's as good as most sci-fi/comic book sorts of movies, and better than many B-grade ones, even if I do love the B-grade films.
There were things that struck me as odd: the editing, the monotone line delivery, some of the shots, but basically I figured they were taken from the anime, and didn't worry about it beyond that. Well, no, not true: I would've liked more emotion in the line delivery, but I actually think there's an in-story reason for the flatness, so while it's not really what I wanted, I understand it.
Then we picked up a Papa John's pizza and came home to stand around the kitchen and gobble it.
I have not had pizza since I left America.
*tud*
I was very restrained. I only had two pieces. But hoo boy. Pizza good. Especially rarely, but gooooood.
Oh. And I went to the gym this afternoon. Go me. :)
miles to Mount Doom: 402
ytd wordcount: 56,500
I am finally writing the penultimate chapter to COYOTE DREAMS, and all unexpectedly, I suddenly like how the story is ending. I've been quite wibbly and dubious over the whole thing, because this is a much more emotionally driven story than the last two, and I have not been at all sure I was approaching anything like a climactically satisfying conclusion, from an action standpoint. (Emotionally I think I've got it nailed, I said modestly. I could be wrong, but telling me that is what beta readers, agents, and editors are for!) But I think maybe I'm pulling it off after all. Which means as soon as I'm done with this chapter, and after I add in a couple scenes earlier in the book, and go through my NOTES, I should be dooooooone! Maybe done today! Definetely by tomorrow! YAAAAAAAAY!
And then I will have fulfilled my first professional writing contract. (I've actually fulfilled three subsequent to signing this first one ("Banshee Cries", "Ill Met By Moonlight", and the two Bombshells), but that's kinda not the point. *grin*) Woot!
Right. Back to the grindstone, then.
We just got a big box of stuff from Ted's mommy. 4 little cans of Crisco, 4 or 5 bags of chocolate chips, some maple flavoring, and a bunch of mail. Now that's love, to send Crisco to the far side of the world. :)
My nephew Seirid is clearly a genius. Apparently yesterday he said to Deirdre, "What are you doing?" She said, "Putting clothes in the washing machine," and Gavin said, "Did he just say what are you *doing*!?", which, indeed, he had. A genius. Obviously. Cute, too. :)
My cousin Moira had a ten pound baby boy yesterday. That's a lot of baby. O.O
I had a terribly strenuous day of watching season two Dead Zone yesterday. In fact, I watched episodes 9-19, because 5 & 6 wouldn't work. Had they played, I'd have probably not finished the season, but, er, I did. :) I did skip 18, because it didn't look like it had anything to do with the continuing storyline, which was not wrapped up as I expected it to be. That's kinda cool, actually. Despite rotting my brain on the boob tube all day, I did manage to get out and walk both myself and the dog, so that's good. :)
I suspect my hair is not, so to speak, long for this world. I'm getting increasingly impatient with having to deal with tangles and having to put it up so it doesn't get in my mouth and with the amount of time it takes to dry and...
I will not, however, cut it until after COYOTE DREAMS and PHOENIX LAW are both turned in, just to make sure it's not displacement irritation. And then I might as well wait for *sigh* X3 (even if it's going to suck), and, see, then I've just got this whole endless chain of events that leads up to a Halloween costume going. *sigh* (My, having come back and read that sentence, I've noticed it ends with a, what is that thing? Participle? Anyway, one of those things that you're supposed to amend, "...asshole," onto, so you don't end a sentence with it. The point more being that the sentence structure didn't make that much sense.)
Right. My lousy sentence structure and I are off to work now.
miles to Mount Doom: 400
Well, that wasn't very successful. :)
The train was nearly an hour late, making us sufficiently late into Dublin that we couldn't possibly catch an early movie. So no Casanova in the morning. Instead we had lunch, where we were asked if we were here on holiday and told that Cork was lovely, and picked up the tickets to Mirrormask. I also attempted to shop for shoes.
Have I mentioned the shoe stores here? They're like crack cocaine. Everywhere you turn somebody's offering you a hit. Ted said a couple weeks ago, "I never realized you were a shoe hound," and I said, "I'm NOT! It's just there's so much supply! They're all OVER the place! It starts sucking your brain!" However, the enormous number of shoe stores have not yet proven (not that I've tried very hard) to carry shoes that actually fit my fat feet, so despite the tantalizing atmosphere, I haven't fallen into that particular pit of doom.
So we went to Mirrormask, which was playing as part of the Dublin Film Festival. It's an odd little movie. Labyrinth-like, in an even-more-surreal way, and reasonably likeable in its surreal way. As likeable as I find any of Neil Gaiman's work, certainly. It didn't really engage me emotionally, except the first back-in-the-real-world scene at the end, but sort of mild intellectual interest is generally my reaction to Gaiman's stuff, so it's certainly no worse than anything else he does. (And yet I enjoy his blog so much. I don't get it.)
After the movie, the star of the movie, Stephanie Leonidas, was there to do a Q&A for a few minutes, so that was pretty cool. She's incredibly tiny, and was very sweet and charming answering her questions (which were mostly along the lines of, "What's it like to work with (insert name here)," and to which she pretty much uniformly replied, "(Name) is lovely, he really is,"), and yeah, that was generally kind of neat. I'm not entirely sure one is supposed to come away from sighting a film star thinking, "Even if I was in the best shape I could possibly be in, I'd apparently never make it as a movie star, because I just couldn't be that tiny," but that's mostly what I thought. :)
Then we failed to see either Aeon Flux or Casanova *after* Mirrormask, because it turned out the latest train back tonight was at 6:25 and there was no way to see a movie and make it to the train on time. So our 3 movie day turned out to be a one movie day, but we generally had a nice time anyway. :)
We came home and I watched three episodes of season two Dead Zone. A good day, in all.
Oh! I just came up with a Plan, a day or so ago. I started my Walk to Rivendell 3 years ago on March 26. It is suddenly my goal to complete that walk--which is to say, arrive at Mount Doom--by March 26 this year. I have...oh, hell. 72 miles. Ack. I thought I only had about fifty. Wow. I'm going to really have to not screw around to accomplish this! Ack!
miles to Mount Doom: 398
We're off to Dublin and the movies today! The plan is Casanova, Mirrormask and Aeon Flux. I expect by the end of the day we'll be all whirly-eyed. :)
Right. We're off!
So yesterday while we were figuring out where the restaurant was, Ted got out his mobile to call and ask how to get there. For some reason, the mobile wouldn't let him dial properly at first, and, being my mother's daughter, I thrust out my hand to make him give it to me to look at. Then I thought, quite clearly, "Well, if he doesn't know what's wrong with it, why would I?" and pulled my hand back.
Too late, though; Mom said, "Wonder where you got *that* from," which made me laugh and say, "What, you mean, "You're obviously incompetent, give it to me to look at?""
It had apparently never, ever occurred to Mom that such a gesture might be interpreted that way. She said, "I never thought that! I'm just trying to help!" I said, "Believe me, that's how everybody else interprets it," and Dad said, "Usually when Rosie wants to help, I just let her have whatever I'm doing and walk away," because he has learned. By that time Ted had made the phone dial properly, so we all quieted down so he could talk.
Except Mom and I went into quiet hysterics. We were back there laughing so hard we were shaking and tears were running down our faces as we mouthed, "You're obviously incompetent," to one another. Poor Ted, having to talk while we were back there gasping in air as quietly as we could and shaking with laughter. We just thought we were so damned funny and arrogant and alike. *laughs and laughs and laughs* The poor men we're married to. *laughs*
The entire thing reminded me of my friend Liam's wedding, during which I also went into hysterics. All of Lisa's friends family were on one side of the church and all of Liam's on the other, as is usual, but the thing was, all of Lisa's people were good church-going sorts and all of Liam's were theatre people and other agnostic reprobates. So the minister calls for a moment of prayer. Our family was in the second row, so Dad looks over his shoulder, then nudges me and I look over mine.
Every head on Lisa's side of the church is bowed in reverence. Every head on Liam's side is poked up looking around like a bunch of long-necked birds, bright-eyed and perky and nosy. I jabbed Deirdre, made her turn around and look, and we both started giggling. Fit to shake the pew and send tears rolling down our faces, being as silent as we could be. Laura, Liam's sister, who is right in front of us, turns to look at us in bewilderment, because she thought it was really *far* too early in the ceremony for us to be *crying*, and I KNEW that was what she was thinking, which only made it that much worse. Oh, God, it was so funny.
Shortly after that, the minister's giving his inspirational speech, and comparing marriage to a long journey down a river in a small boat, and he said, "And sometimes you've just got to bail out--I mean, bail the boat!" to roars of laughter. Fortunately, the bride and groom thought it was funny, too. *grin* That was a good wedding.
Now that I've gotten totally sidetracked, I'm going to stop writing this and go work on my book. :)
Wow. Long, tiring day.
Mom & Dad, who've rented a car for the week, came down from Dublin to pick us up and drive us down to Cork, where Ted had a job interview. Shaun came with, so we all piled into a small car with not-very-comfortable seats, and the 3 of in the back seat had an ongoing comedy of errors regarding the seatbelts. :)
It took about four hours of driving, but we eventually did make it to Cork, where Ted went in and talked with the general manager, kitchen manager, and ... owner? of Ruby Jones, the restaurant he was interviewing at. They invited him to come back after 5 for dinner, so we took a drive around the Cork city center (an lar), which has some startlingly beautiful buildings and generally had a lot of energy, so that made us cheerful. Then we drove back out to have dinner, at the end of which they said to Ted, "So will you be comin' to work for us, then?"
So he will, then. He'll be second in command; it'll be the kitchen manager, then him. The restaurant is a kind of trendy restaurant/bar that seats about 300 total, and it's new, having just opened in October. Ted's pretty excited about the prospect of being in on this from basically the ground up. He starts the 6th of March, so things are going to get very hectic around here for the next several weeks. Mostly, when I say that, I mean, "Ted will be very organized in getting everything taken care of," because I have a book due the first and another due the 15th of April, and two conventions and a visit from my agent during that time as well. It will be madly busy, but exciting! YAY TED!
I also got an ARC of THUNDERBIRD FALLS in the mail! There's a note from Matrice saying she never gets ARCs, so she was pretty excited to get it, but thought I'd be even more excited, so she sent it on to me. *beam* I have a very nice editor.
It looks good. *idiot grin* Like a real book, and everything. I luff it. *beam* Very, very cool. *more beaming*
In completely other news, Seirid has started to talk. The other day he was climbing up the stairs at Deirdre's house unsupported, with Mom in front of him and Deirdre behind him, and he said, "I'm doing it!" clearly enough that Mom and Deirdre both said, "Yes, you *are*!" in response. And Dad picked him up the other night and he said, "Look at that!" and Dad said, "Look at what?" and Seirid pointed at the paper snowflakes on the window and said, "Those!" So he's apparently gone directly for the full-sentence approach. :)
Boy, I'm tired. And I must get up tomorrow and work on COYOTE DREAMS, so it's off to bed with me. More tomorrow. :)
Email from Deirdre much, much earlier today:
dear breic did not sleep until 11:30 last night, and woke up at 5. goodness.
Email from Dad, who babysat last night, in response:
Um, maybe we shouldn't play Attacked by the Dragon as a prelude to bedtime.
*laughs and laughs and laughs*
FIREBIRD DECEPTION edits are turned in. The book is in bed. I am soooo impatient to see the cover for it! *laugh* I keep checking at Amazon, but no luck yet. Sneeef! But it's all done, hooray, and that is good! Aaaand what else. I got the press release for THUNDERBIRD FALLS today. *laugh* It just struck me that last year when these things were arriving--cover flats, press releases, turning final edits in, etc, I kept hardly believing this was happening. It seems I've adjusted. :)
*laugh* I tell ya, this being ahead of NY is very handy. I got the edits off around, I don't know, 3:30 or so my time, which was still *morning* for the editor, so he was all pleased to have gotten them so early in the day. I luff it. :)
One of the pipe-dream "If Urban Shaman goes into a second printing" things that Ted and I had discussed was using some of the hard-earned royalty money to support my comic-book-writer-wannabe career. There won't actually *be* any royalty money from that for rather a while, but with the long-term possibility in place, I've been looking for artists.
The calibre of art that shows up in your mailbox when you say, "I can pay," is really pretty high. I've got a handful of pretty cool potential leads, and I can't wait to see where that goes. Wherever it goes, it'll be slowly, but I think it'll be a fun project to try. *cheerfulness*
miles to Mount Doom: 395
Yesterday I got email from my friend Duane at the University Bookstore, who said, among other things, that his most recent order for URBAN SHAMAN had been cancelled by the distributor, because the book was out of print.
Naturally, I said, "!" and dashed off to the Best Agent Ever, said, "!", and sent her forth to find out more about these words. She just got back to me.
There are about a thousand copies left on the shelves of major bookstores like B&N and Borders. The Harlequin warehouse is empty. They're reprinting in preparation for THUNDERBIRD FALLS' release.
Holy cow!
Just finished what should be the second-to-last pass through FIREBIRD DECEPTION. I enjoyed it, especially the end. Entertaining read, I thought. That's good. :) So now I have to finish up the last stuff for COYOTE DREAMS, so I can write PHOENIX LAW, having got Alisha's story back in my mind.
Then it'll be on to the...well. Immediately after that it'll be HOUSE OF CARDS, the second book in the Old Races series, and then THE QUEEN'S BASTARD, but in time it'll be the second trilogy for Bombshell. Where Alisha has fire running as her element (this was not intentional, but it happened), at least through the titles, the second series' main character is earth-based. I'll probably put forth another title-gathering posting, like I did for the first three, sometime this fall.
I'm in a good mood. :)
I am cheerful and smug this morning. :) I got this nifty calendar for Christmas, a 12 months of chocolate calendar that has recipes. I didn't get to make last month's dessert yet (a honey walnut chocolate torte) due to lack of proper equipment. This month's recipe, though, was heart-shaped chocolate breakfast scones, to be served with strawberry jam and whipped cream.
That I could do. :)
So I got up this morning and trundled downstairs to make scones, but I hadn't found a heart-shaped cookie cutter, so I had to hand-cut all the scones, which was actually kind of fun. And I didn't chill the dough, so I ended up with lots more than they said I'd get, and also they were much less dry, so I think the dough ought not be chilled. And I dusted them with powdered sugar and served 'em up, and told Ted if he got up and took a shower that by the time he came downstairs breakfast would be ready. He was expecting pancakes, so hee hee hee hee hee :)
I'm not a real Valentines kind of girl, as in, I don't expect or particularly want anything for Valentine's Day, but I really quite absurdly like doing things like that to surprise Ted. :) I'm very pleased. *silly smile* Tonight I'll make chicken pot pie, not for any Valentine's thing, but because that'd been the dinner plan, and besides, Ted usually does the cooking, so he deserves a day off, huh? :)
AND! Not that this has anything to do with Valentine's Day, but Ted has a job interview in Cork on Thursday! Or more like a, "Come down here so we can get a look at you and decide if you look trustworthy," I think, since the guy asked him a bunch of questions on the phone already. So that got us all excited and looking at Cork, and wow. Gosh. I think I'm taken with the idea of Cork, anyway. You can live 20 minutes outside Cork on the train for about what we're paying to live here, and there are trains in and out until late, and Cork's a city of reasonable size, so there could be Things To Do and you'd be able to *get* to and from them. Hm! Cork! I was in Cork once! It was...
...well, actually, it was insanely beautiful (at least the area, if not the city itself, and the city was Just Fine) and we had a very good time even though we'd gotten off a ferry and had no sleep all night and couldn't get into the hostel to sleep until like 3pm and so we sat around in a fast food restaurant writing postcards and trying to stay awake and staggering around and I can't remember if we went to ring the bells that day or a different day, but we liked it a lot.
So maybe Cork!
A month or so ago I got the opportunity to join the Girlfriends' Cyber Circuit, a blog-related promotional tour for other women writers. With not having net access, I've utterly failed my GCC roll so far, but now, finally, I've gotten my act together to promote the first of what will be several GCC tours as a catch-up, and then which will be a once or twice a week thing going on. So, without further ado, may I introduce THE MANOLO MATRIX, by Julie Kenner!
Aspiring actress Jennifer Crane knows all about games -- the games girls play to get a guy; the games actresses play to land a part; and the good old game of credit-card roulette. (How else is a girl supposed to afford her shoes?) But she never expected to be playing a game with life-or-death consequences. Unable to successfully score an acting gig, she has, instead, been cast in the role of reluctant bodyguard to a real-life assassin's target -- a dashing FBI agent of all people! -- and must embark with him upon a scavenger hunt across Manhattan in search of the ultimate prize: survival. Before this, Jenn's definition of fighting dirty has been elbowing her way to the front of the line at a Manolo sample sale. Now, if she wants to stay alive, she's going to have to learn a few new uses for her stilettos. . . and they ain't pretty.
Fast, flirty, and full of great footwear, The Manolo Matrix is another electrifying adventure in this breakout series for fashionistas who love a perfectly appointed mystery. -- from Downtown Press, February 2006
National bestselling author of The Givenchy Code, Julie Kenner reloads for her second novel of high-heeled thrills as another woman gets pulled into a mysterious world of extreme gaming where she must play or die.
EARLY PRAISE FOR THE MANOLO MATRIX:
"Kenner continues her Play.Win.Survive trilogy, whose first installment was The Givenchy Code (2005), with another delightfully clever mix of chick-lit and thriller. Readers who like their suspense novels with a sexy edge and a wicked sense of humor will find Kenner's latest irresistible." - Booklist
"This time the stakes are just as high as they were in the previous book, "The Givenchy Code", and just as exciting. I found myself hooked immediately and did not stop reading until it was finished. (Okay, I admit it. I took one BRIEF break to hit the restroom and make a sandwich.) Author Julie Kenner's pen must have been smoking as she wrote this suspense filled novel. Fast paced, a bit of romance, and lots of tension! If you enjoyed John Grisham's Pelican Brief, then you are going to drool over this book. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!" - Huntresss Book Reviews
"This is a Wow! book that is exhilarating, non-stop (hey – you snooze you lose), sexy, and fun, fun, fun to read. The MANOLO MATRIX whets the appetite for the next installment of PSW -- THE PRADA PARADOX." - Reader to Reader Reviews
About Julie: National bestselling author Julie Kenner's first book hit the stores in February of 2000, and she's been on the go ever since, with over twenty books to her credit. Her books have hit lists as varied as USA Today, Waldenbooks, Barnes & Noble, and Locus Magazine. Julie is also a former RITA finalist, the winner of Romantic Times' Reviewer's Choice Award for Best Contemporary Paranormal of 2001, and the winner of the Reviewers International Organization's award for best romantic suspense of 2004, and the winner of Affaire de Coeur's Best Supernatural Romance for 2004. She writes a range of stories from sexy and quirky romances to chick lit suspense to paranormal mommy lit. Her foray into the latter, Carpe Demon: Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom, was selected as a Booksense Summer Paperback Pick for 2005, was a Target Breakout Book, was a Barnes & Noble Number One SFF/Fantasy bestseller for seven weeks, and is in development as a feature film with Warner Brothers and 1492 Pictures. Julie lives in Central Texas with her husband, daughter, several cats, and two birds who have decided to make the now-out-of-season Christmas wreath home. Visit her on the web at http://www.juliekenner.com
Thanks to Bryant's Oscar-prediction widget, I am listing my predictions for who'll get what Oscars. Some of them are totally wild uninformed guesses, because who ever sees the best animated short films, or whatever. If I get a chance to see more of the movies before Oscars night, maybe I'll do this again. :)
Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain
Best Director: George Clooney for Good Night, and Good Luck.
Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote
(I really hope Heath wins, though.)
Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line
Best Supporting Actor: Jake Gyllenhaal for Brokeback Mountain
Best Supporting Actress: Michelle Williams for Brokeback Mountain
Best Original Screenplay: Syriana - Stephen Gaghan
Best Adapted Screenplay: Brokeback Mountain - Larry McMurtry
((I don't think they'll win this one.)
Cinematography: The New World
Editing: Crash
Art Direction: King Kong
Costume Design: Memoirs of a Geisha
Original Score: Brokeback Mountain
Original Song: "Travelin' Thru" - Transamerica - Dolly Parton
Best Makeup: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Best Sound: Memoirs of a Geisha
Best Sound Editing: King Kong
Best Visual Effects: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Best Animated Feature Film: Howl's Moving Castle
Best Foreign Language Film: Paradise Now (Palestine)
Best Documentary Feature: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
Best Documentary Short: God Sleeps in Rwanda
Best Live Action Short: Ausreißer
Best Animated Short: The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
So last fall I bought a new laptop computer, because I thought I was going to be doing web work on the side and I needed something more studly than my now 7 year old Sony Vaio. Then I sold six books in December and it became extremely clear there would be no time for side work, so now I've got this fairly decent laptop which, at 6.8 pounds, weighs too much for me to actually carry around comfortably, and which I no longer have any justifiable use for.
Naturally, I'm looking at replacing it with something smaller, sleeker, and more better for carrying around and doing word processing.
The thing is, absolutely nothing on the market measures up to the Vaio I've already got. It has its flaws, sure: it kind of choked when I put the wifi card into it (and now I don't know where the card is), it has no internal CD drive, and ... those are the only two problems. And since I'm using a gmail account for official correspondence now, being able to actually check email with my laptop is less critical, since there's usually an internet cafe of some sort around, and I never needed a CD/DVD drive anyway, especially with the memory sticks that are now available.
There's a new Vaio that's even smaller than Little (who weighs in, fully loaded with her heavier battery, at about 3.1 pounds), but its keyboard is too cramped for even me to use, and I don't have that big of hands. I do have a pinched place in my right shoulder that's aggravated by using non-split keyboards, and further by smaller-than-standard keyboards (hence Nook), so while the adorable new Vaio tempts me like a tempting thing, it would not be good for me to use. Also, it's freaking expensive.
There's a Toshiba "ultraportable" laptop out there, which is apparently the phrase for the kind of laptop that I want, that has excellent battery life and is essentially for word processing and email. It's merely expensive, as opposed to freaking expensive, but I'm not sure there's the slightest reason to actually get something like that instead of sticking with my totally workable Vaio.
I certainly need to get rid of at least one computer, though. I currently own four. That's a little ridiculous. And, okay, I'm not going to own fewer than three, because my desktop is my internet computer, and Nook is my writing computer, and Little is for writing when I need to travel. Three is also ridiculous for one person, but there you go.
This has nothing to do with anything. It's my way of not working on my edits, which I am going to go do now whether I like it or not. (I don't so much mind doing edits. I mean, I don't *like* them, but I don't mind them. What I really hate is getting started. I feel overwhelmed by the prospect of starting. And the only way around that, irritatingly, is to start.)
Oh, God, the farmer's market is there to torture me. Somebody was selling big thick slabs of carrot cake. And the cheese here. Oh, Lord, the cheese. These are cruel and unusual things to place before somebody who's gotten back on the weight loss wagon. I swear to God, if I haven't lost at least a little weight on weigh-in day, I'm going to... I don't even know what. Eat forty pounds of good Irish cheese and roll around in carrot cake. *snivel*
We went into Dublin today for movies. I'd hoped to do a triple header, but Casanova's not starting here til next week, it turns out, so we only went to two. Also, Shaun has a raging headache, and Ted was all movied out after two movies.
I went and saw "Brokeback Mountain" and "Walk the Line." Ted saw "Underworld" and "Walk the Line", and Shaun saw "Underworld" and "Brokeback Mountain".
What I took away was: watching Walk the Line, which is based on real people and a real story, seemed very much like watching a played-by-the-numbers fictional story. Brokeback Mountain, which is entirely fictional, was like watching a story that had really happened. I liked them both very much, but I hope Brokeback picks up the Oscars.
thinks to do over the next few days....
- buy postcards
- get presents wrapped
- get presents SENT
- firebird deception edits
- sweep (thanks, shaun)
- buy cat food
- buy a pooper scooper
- finish unpacking the living room
- find 8.5x11" paper in this country
- fax mail off excerpt agreement for tbf & fd :p
- cemurphy newsletter
- set up maria's newsletter
- gym (today)
- find padded envelopes for shipping books in
- catch up on some email
- hotel room for i-con
- look for cookie cutters
- buy a calendar
- make bread
- do laundry
Despite everything I did yesterday, I did not sleep well and I am very very tired today.
I've just finished the last chapter of COYOTE DREAMS. I seem to have started doing this thing where I get almost to the end of a book, get really grumpy at it, write the last chapter, usually skipping the antepenultimate and penultimate chapters (Henry will never forgive himself for teaching me the word 'antepenultimate', which I like to use at every possible opportunity) and sometimes one or two more than that. Then I go back and do all the rewrites the book needs and then I finally write the missing chapters. I've done this with several books now. I think I'm going to do it with CD, too, rather than struggle through writing those couple chapters. There's not *huge* amounts of rewriting to be done earlier in the book, but there's enough.
I suspect this is going to go like this: rewrites tomorrow, edits on FIREBIRD next week, finish rewrites the following week, start PHOENIX the week after. It'd *better* go like that.
Other good things I forgot to mention yesterday:
A swell Gallery developer fixed my art and photo galleries for only a small fee, which makes me very happy. I need to fix the skins, but at least they're functional again. Yay! :)
And...there was something else, but I'm forgetting it. The weather is not as nice as it was suggested it would be, so no going out to take pictures this morning, which is fine. Going to go work on this book, I am.
Oh, I remember the other thing.
Something Very Strange has happened to my hair.
I have stick-straight hair. Determinedly straight hair. Hair which, when introduced to a curling iron, agreeably bends to the will of the heat, then laughs maniacally and makes the curl all fall out. The amount of hairspray necessary to keep a curl in place would frighten Tammy Faye Baker. Like many people with straight hair, this has been the bane of my existance. I have always wanted curls, or at least waves. For over thirty years, I wished futiley for such things.
Sometime in the last couple of years, my hair has developed waves. When allowed to dry naturally, it is no longer stick straight. It bends. Not a lot, but it bends. At my temple and nape I get pincurls, which never used to happen. I have *no idea* what's going on with my hair, but ironically, I'm now afraid to cut it for fear I will lose my waves! It's some kind of PLOT!
Okay. To work now. :)
It turned out to be a pretty good day. In fact, it turned out to be a very good day. I wrote 5200 words. Sadly, only 3600 of them were on COYOTE DREAMS; the rest were "gosh I wish I were RPing" words, but they were fiction, anyway, so they count. Neener. Two or three or four chapters left. We'll see.
I did not get out in time to do any photography, but my goal for tomorrow is to do that. Get up earlier, write, and get out while the light is good, or if it's good when I get up, go out first. Something.
Tangently, my friend Spidey, who helped me buy the new camera (through far mroe trials and tribulations than one would expect for buying a camera; all hail Spidey), was appalled when he found out how much I was paying for a camera. I tried explaining to him that I'd been pretty good at photography, back when, and that I really wanted to get back into it. It didn't make much of an impression until a couple of days ago when I sent him to go look at kitsnaps. He was not expecting me to be a good photographer, and spent rather a lot of time exclaiming in genuine surprise and delight over the photos I'd posted. (A few more are up, or will be in the next couple days; they're more snapshotty, but since the idea behind kitsnaps is "picturing my world", it's not just about the artwork for me. It's also about the every day things.) He thinks I ought to do a calendar for Christmas. I'd actually been thinking of it. Maybe later in the year I'll run a poll or something and see if people might actually be interested in buying such a thing, come the holidays.
Back on track, then. Midway through writing, my contracts for the next Strongbox Chronicles arrived. Also in the envelope was, from Jenn, an ad she'd cut out from the Publisher's Weekly (preview?): a full-page color ad for THUNDERBIRD FALLS!
*beams*! Best agent EVER, for sending that to me!
After writing, I went to the gym, where I had a reasonably decent workout. The guy who runs the place gave me some fairly killer crunches to do, which I can barely, barely, barely do 75 of. I have to rest during the last set of 25. My goal is to get up to 150 of them. Oif.
Came home, had dinner, and in a fit of something, then actually hauled myself off to the pool and *swam*. Only a thousand meters, because I must finish a book this week and really do not want to wear myself out, so I was trying really hard not to overdo it (anything less than 2000 yards/meters isn't really worth getting wet for, IMHO, but see above). The pool is too hot, there are no lap lanes, and I was by far the fastest person there, so I kept wishing people would get out of my way, but for all of that it was a decent swim and I intend to go back tomorrow. Plus I've now shamed Trent, so he *has* to swim tomorrow. Muahahaha.
Then Ted and I watched an episode of MI-5, which was as usual very very good, and now I am going to *bed*. G'night.
miles to Mount DOOOOM: 383.5
ytd wordcount: 45K and something
Email from Deirdre this morning:
This morning Breic said, "Yesterday we were chasing that dog, but then he clambered away."
o.O
I am suffering badly from almost-finished-itis. I have reached the point where I feel I have done enough on this book and it should be done. For some reason, it is not done. Sitting at Nook writing other things has not, for reasons that are beyond me, caused it to be done. Making bread has not caused it to be done. Making new webpage icons has not caused it to be done. Writing a complaining entry on my blog hasn't caused it to be done. Overall, I find this vexing. Even more vexing is knowing there's a cure for all this, and that cure is not going out into the beautiful day to take photographs.
However, if I want to do that at all, I'd better go write. Fnrt.
I've got to change nameservers for my domains sometime in the next 24 or so hours (not exactly sure when it'll go through), so this is mostly a note to tell people the site might be down for a while and nobody needs to send me email saying, "Did you know mizkit is down?" I know. :)
Okay. To work now. Even later than yesterday. Let's hope I have the same amount of productivity regardless of the late start.
To my complete astonishment, I ended up with 4700 words today. I figured it'd be a good day if I got to 3K, since I got started so late. Wow. Go me. :) I'm 300 words short of 90K, for heaven's sake, but I don't think I'm going to sit down and write those 300 just for the hell of it. I'll settle for breaking 90K tomorrow. And hopefully charging along to about 95K. I think I have about five chapters left, which would be just exactly perfectly right. Woot. :)
.So. hungry. Nothing here to snack on, either. Drinking water has not made a dent in my hunger level. Rrrr.
So yesterday we went into Dublin to return the archer and since we were there, to go to a movie. We got there just in time to see "Walk the Line", which was starting at 1:10. We scurried up to the theatre and sat down, where for 20 minutes the lights didn't go down or anything, and we got increasingly impatient, but they'd been having computer problems and we just sort of figured we had to wait it out. Finally, they went down, and we had a really weird set of trailers for "Walk the Line": X3, MI3, Two For the Money, Aeon Flux... well, okay, whatever. Then the producer credits started to come up, and Ted leaned over and said, "...are we in the right theatre?"
No. We weren't.
*exasperated look*
So we sat there another couple minutes to see what movie we *were* at, which turned out to be "Get Rich or Die Tryin'", which I didn't want to see, so we left. By then it was 40 minutes into "Walk the Line", so we just left the theatre and felt like morons. I remembered thinking there was something weird about the time or something on the marquee outside the theatre, but it wasn't until this morning that I realized what it was.
It *did* say "Walk the Line", but it said it was at 1:30. I'm pretty certain, now, that Walk the Line had played in that theatre at 10:20 that morning, and that the computer problems had screwed up the marquees, so it had the wrong title for the movie at 1:30.
Now, granted, if we'd looked at our tickets we'd have seen we were supposed to be in theatre 17, or something, and we'd gone into 15, but 15 *did* say Walk the Line and it was right when the damned movie was suppose to start, so we just rushed right in. Bah!
My parents and uncle did something similar when they came out to Athy last weekend, but I have to go to the gym now, so they don't get told on. :)
ytd wordcount: 39,900
Got up late and got started writing late, but I'm moving along. 1300 or 1500 or something words so far. But I did kind of figure out that I need to go back and write in some scenes in order to set up the last few chapters of the book properly. It's probably not more than six or ten pages total, and it'll smooth the whole story out, but I do wish I'd thought of how to handle this earlier. Oh well.
...still have other things to write on the blog about, but if I hang out here and do that I won't get my chapter(s) finished, so I'll have to write more later.
I haven't exactly declared defeat, but I have declared redesign, after spending a bunch of time futzing with embedding LJ and not having it react the way I wanted. (Deborah, when I said, "Fine, I'm REDESIGNING," said, "Inevitably. How's your hair?" *laugh* These people, they know me too well.) Anyway, I've tested the design on all four browsers I have and it works, so if you have problems, shift-reload.
I have things to post about. Adventures At The Movies, and ... other stuff. But instead of doing that, I'm going to bed, because I have to get up and write a lot in the morning. I promise that tomorrow I'll try to have some *interesting* postings.
Oh, wait, I do know one interesting thing. Because Ursula posted in search of a book she'd read as a kid, somebody started a new LJ community ... which I see has already been disabled because they found another community that did the same thing. Oh well. Find_A_Book is still cool.
After far, far more trouble than it was worth, I learned how to embed my LJ into mizkit.com. I am now attempting (for some value of now) to make it a seamless integration. None of this is happening on the front page, and for the moment I'm still using MT. If I do a switch, I'll, I don't know, announce 24 hours in advance that I'm going to, so people can sign off the mizkit_feed if they've got LJ accounts and can just get the updates through friending mizkit.
In the meantime, after everything yesterday, I forgot to bring Breic's archer in. *sheepish look* So we're going back into Dublin today. :) Oops. :)
We, indeed, have net! We've had net since about 2pm, and the entire family has been in the computer room All Day Long.
My personal accomplishment for the day was launching kitsnaps.com, a photo blog site I've been talking about doing for years. Well, I got an extremely spiffy camera for Christmas, and I'm going to make a go of doing photography regularly. I'm hoping to post about three pictures a week (though I posted a bunch at once today, so it wouldn't be hanging around with no content at all). I've created an LJ RSS feed for it at kitsnaps, and I fear the first pick-up will spam you, so if you want to add it, you might wanna wait til tomorrow, or something.
Um. I started moving my art stuff over to a deviant art gallery, but the upload process is such a pain in the butt I decided to email the gallery people and see if I could just pay somebody to fix my damned galleries. Again. What else. I made a cemurphy LJ so I can pull it into cemurphy.net and update it more easily. Assuming it doesn't prove to be a pain to pull it in, anyway, and I suspect I'm going to end up pulling the lj mizkit account over to the mizkit site, because it'd be *really* *nice* to just have all comments in one place.
But that, apparently, is a task for tomorrow, because I should go to bed now.
*laugh* We were planning on going into town tomorrow anyway, to watch movies, but this afternoon Breic called me (with Deirdre's help) and had a meltdown on the phone. Last weekend he left the elfin archer that came with his wonderful castle that Uncle Shaun got him for Christmas at our house, and apparently he REALLY MISSES it. So he called to ask if I could bring it to him. I said I'd bring it to Grandma and Grandpa's tomorrow, okay? and he said, "C-c-c-ould you bwing my archew to G-wanpa and G-wanma's to-o-o-morrow pwease?" I said I could do that, and then he WAAAAILED, "BUUUT I JUUUUST WAAANT IT NOOOOOOW!" It was very very funny. :) Poor little guy. :) So I have to bring the archer to Gwanma and Gwanpa's tomorrow. :)
Oh dear. This is the second day in a row I haven't left the house. That can't be good.
Ok. Bed, and Dublin in the morning.
OH OH OH TALK ABOUT NOT FAIR. The Yale blues bar in Vancouver has *finally* started posting sufficiently in advance their upcoming acts that a person who lives a long way away, say, in Alaska, or, god now forbid, Ireland, could conceivably buy plane tickets for a weekend in Vancouver and a couple Jim Byrnes performances. And wouldn't you know it but Jim is playing the weekend of March 10th and 11th, the same weekend as the Phoenix Science Fiction Convention in *Dublin*. It is obviously *far* more practical to go to P-Con than VANCOUVER, for heaven's sake, but this is the first time in literally *years* I've had enough advance notice to *get* to a Jim performance! ARGH!
*flings self in a pit*! ARGH!
(feb 3, 8:32am): I said, on my way to bed last night, "I have to go to bed now, so I can get up and write 4500 words before the internet comes."
Apparently I sounded much more pathetic than I'd intended to, because Ted and Shaun both *roared* with laughter. *laugh* We are going to be a very sad household (*vewy* disappointed, as Breic said when *they* didn't get the internet) if our DSL connection doesn't get turned on today. We did get the wireless modem they promised to send out, so we have hope.
The squacking in the chimney reminds me that yes, the birds which are too large to be crows and too small to be ravens are without question rooks, which we determined from "Neverwhere", in which there is a fine headshot of a rook and you can clearly see the odd grey speckled pattern at the base of its beak, which is the thing (along with the size) that was making us uncertain of whether those were ravens or not.
I was an utter sloth yesterday. Aside from writing, I did nothing at all of any worth. I watched "Phantom of the Opera", because I was in the mood for pagentry, and you don't get much more pagentry-y than Phantom. It's a much better movie if you can fast-forward through the far, far too-long "Masquerade", "Primadonna", and "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" scenes. Shame they didn't cast somebody who could actually sing the role of the Phantom, but once more I was struck with how this was the first performance of the show I'd seen where I had any sympathy for Raoul at all, and in which I really believed Christine was under the Phantom's spell. I'd like to see it on stage from good seats sometime, though, 'cause I've only seen it from the nosebleeds and that might be why I've never believed in those two roles. Mmm, but Raoul in "The Point of No Return", and the lovely devastation as he realizes how completely he's lost Christine to the music and the Phantom, and that he never stood a chance. Mmm. Lovely, lovely, lovely.
If there is no net today, and I am still in the mood for pagentry, I'll watch Moulin Rouge. And go to the gym, not for the pagentry, but because I should. :)
(*Man* I hope we get net.)
ytd wordcount: 35,150
(written feb 2, 8:24 am): The pancake fairy came this morning, so I have less time to dink around and write a journal entry than usual. I mostly just wanted to recount a story Deirdre told about Breic. :)
The other day he was eating some cereal, and suddenly said, "Damn, that's good!" Then he got very big eyes and said, "I said damn! I said damn, 'cause, damn, that's good!"
Gavin said Deirdre nearly ruptured something, trying not to laugh. :) :) :)
To work. :)
(five minutes later): Shaun just came downstairs. Shaun's rarely up at 8:30 in the morning, so I said, "Are you a pod person?" by way of greeting.
He put his index fingers up against his head in little antennae and said, "What makes you ask that?" *laughs out loud*
written February 1, 7:38am): Ye gods, how did it get to be February already? This whole writing journal entries in the morning to wake up my fingers will be so much more satisfying when I've actually got net....
Anyway, so standing there in the shower this morning, I contemplated something I've contemplated before, which is why do I not just use my livejournal and draw in journal entries from there instead of maintaining a separate MoveableType system?
Back In The Day, the answer was sort of MT maintains my geek cred, along with LJ's servers being more hit and miss than I wanted, and not actually knowing how to code an LJ page to look like I want it to. The latter two things have pretty much been dealt with, and I'm less and less interested in maintaining geek cred these days. (This, I suspect, comes hand in hand with the revelation of a few days ago that I no longer can't believe they're paying me to write. Don't get me wrong: it's still the greatest job in the world. But I've come around to believing it's actually my job, and that it's not going to go away any time soon.)
I have this idea that the new MT deals with comment spam and threaded comment conversations, which are two LJ features I'd really like to have. OTOH, MT requires me paying for it, then configuring it to deal with those things, wereas LJ just requires me paying for it, which I'm doing anyway. I *don't* think the new MT has the tidy cut feature that LJ has, which is another thing I'd like.
LJ's one major flaw is requiring an ID to comment in order to avoid spam. I don't actually object to that, and I think I can set it to allow anonymous commenters to be screened, or there's the OpenID option which I know nothing about, but it is a bother for people who don't have LJ accounts (like my Mom).
If I'm giving up pretenses of geek cred, I could switch my art and photo galleries over to snapshots.com or whatever it is that people are using that actually works, too...
I donno. I'll have to think about it some more. I'm sort of afraid that using the LJ means I really have no excuse for maintaining mizkit.com, since it's the source location for...well. 90% of my net presence, and 90% of that is my journal. And now that I think about it, that may be the real reason I've never switched over. Hrmph. Stupid internet. :)
Well. It's been a very very nice weekend at the Murphy-Lee-Sandness household. Friday, a friend of mine from high school (I said, throwing relationship terms and time frames around casually; this was without question the first time I've ever exchanged more than five words with the guy, and he graduated before I *entered* high school, but he was a drama student and I knew who he was, and we've emailed casually since 1994 or so when he discovered the first web page I ever had, at the NeXT lab in Fairbanks, and dropped an email to see if I was Tom Murphy's daughter, and we both lived in San Francisco for a while but never actually met up, and when I told Shaun I was meeting a friend from high school, he said, "...in *Ireland*?") was in town, so Ted and I went in to meet him, and rather than try to squish meeting and maybe dinner and all that into the time before the last train left for Athy, we decided to stay in town. (My, what a long sentence that was.)
Since we were staying in town, we went out with Deirdre and Gavin to the traditional music festival that was going on in Temple Bar, and listened to music for a couple hours, then wandered around Temple Bar looking for more music. Eventually we found it, but it was standing room only and between not being able to see the musicians and being shoved violently every few seconds, I decided I wasn't having enough fun to stay. Deirdre and Gavin did stay for a while, but Ted and I trundled on home. Ted'd drunk four pints of Guinness and a glass of wine, so he was quite cheerful. :) I'd called my friend to invite him and the guy he was staying with to meet us at the pub we were at, but then I didn't hear my mobile (mobile! see! i'm learning irish!) ring, and while apparently they did make it to the pub, we never saw each other. Oop.
Complete tangent: Irish as a language has no definitive word for "yes" or "no". (Wow, we all said, that explains a lot.) The Irish as a people base their English phrasing on the Irish language, which explains why if you ask someone if they're going to the store, they say, "I am," or, "I am, so I am," or, "I'm not," or, "I won't be." It also explains why they say, "Will I be putting gravy on that?" instead of, "Do you want gravy?" and many other things, including why it's sometimes completely impossible to understand what an apparently-English-speaking Irishman is saying. There's a Dublin accent that sounds Cockney, and between that and the phraseology, it really is a different language!
Right, then. :) Saturday, rather than manage to get up in time to go to a movie, Ted and I decided we'd go to the farmer's market, but instead we went to lunch and wandered through a bookstore and forgot about the farmer's market. Oops. :)
Hm. I have many other things to write about, but I've spent my allotted fifteen minutes on this journal entry, and my fingers are all warmed up for typing now, so I'll have to write more later!
I've been busy writing updates for my webpage and leaving them at home on the other computer. At this point, since we theoretically get net on Friday, I probably won't bother bringing them in. There's only a couple of them anyway.
Nf. The problem is once I get to the internet cafe I can't remember anything I'd been going to talk about.
Holy cow! I just read that Shannon Butcher, who I hate to define as Jim's wife even if it's the easiest way to provide a frame of reference, sold two books to Warner! Wow! Good for Shannon! Woot!
Um. Let's see. Went to the gym on Monday. Going again today. I was going to swim last night, but dinner ended up running unexpectedly late 'cause the landlord came over and was working on stuff, so I didn't. We finished watching Neverwhere, which is very Neil Gaiman. I'm still not entirely sure if I liked it, though Ted liked it quite a lot. But then, I generally find that I like Neil Gaiman's blog better than Neil Gaiman's books and things, so it's perhaps not surprising that I'm a bit ambivilant about the show.
Good writing day so far today. 4600 words, which kind of makes up for playing a zillion games of solitaire and not doing much else yesterday. I might write a little more after gymming/dinner, 'cause I'm relatively close to 80K and that'd be a nice landmark to hit today. It'd be a nice landmark to hit tomorrow, too, but I'm reluctant to really start reading anything (I'm reading Isabel Allende's APHRODITE, but it can only be digested in small chunks, so it doesn't exactly count) because if I don't finish whatever I'm reading in one evening, I tend to want to finish reading it in the morning and that blows the hell out of the writing schedule. And everything I've got handy to read is sort of big, so, eh. Not really looking at reading right now. Which means between no net and no reading and a limited desire to watch tv, one is left with...writing. So maybe 80K is a nice number for today.
The J. Peterman catalog doesn't have anything cool right now. :P
Ok. Going to ... wander mindlessly down to the gym, I think. Bye!
ytd wordcount: 27,300
miles to Mount Doom: 375