But worthwhile in the end. I have spent a significant amount of the last 24 hours working on an ad for my novels which will go in the back of Chance #1, and I’m pretty happy with the result. The result, mind you, is illegible at size, so this clicks through to a GREAT BIG HUGE version of the ad which is legible. :)

- create an ad for Chance #1
- email Rich the stuff he asked for
- email *more* to FPI
- send photo to CI guy

Now I’m going to go eat something before my head explodes of ache.

currently: pleased

I have not left the house today. On the other hand, I’ve finished one short story, written the entirety of a second (especially remarkable in that the time elapsed from Ted suggesting it to me finishing it was less than 3 hours), and written a third or so of another. This must be worth something.

Now there shall be pineapple upside-down cake.

ytd wordcount: 325,800

currently: accomplished

I’m blogging today over at Simply Romance Reviews. I also got name-checked in a Library Journal article on urban fantasy, which makes me quite happy.

Walked down the canal until I reached the end of the walk today. It was the first time since leaving Alaska that I’d been on a walk that actually felt like it had some element of wilderness to it. It’s nothing at all like the coastal trail in Anchorage or anything (and, y’know, there are horses and cows along the trail instead of moose and bears), but it was really nice to feel like I was a little way outside a city.

miles to Minas Tirith: 480.8

currently: hungry

I have finished my Subterranean Press short story! Jeez, that was 3K that took. All. Day. Long. But it’s done, and it…didn’t turn out to be at all the kind of story I thought it was going to be. But I think I like it, and I’m pleased with having written it. That’s *two* short stories written in the last 6 months! Goodness gracious!

Well. My goodness. I’m quite pleased!

*does a happy dance*

ytd wordcount: 205,400
miles to Minas Tirith: 441.3

currently: happy

I completely forgot that I had an interview going up at Dear Author today. It’s my First Sale Story, which I still think is pretty funny. :) (Dear Author also gave me a quite nice review of TQB, which I thought was, well, nice of them. :))

I actually wrote some New Material today. Only about 1500 words, and I ended up moving what had been the end of this chapter into another chapter, so now I’ve got 10 or 15 pages to write to finish this chapter. Again. But then I’ve also only got that much, probably, to finish the next one, and I’ve got 2700 words or so of stuff I’ve already written that goes into either the next one or the chapter after that, and…and, well, look, I’ve only got 3 squares of the Novelist’s Event Horizon Chocolate left, so I can’t have more than 3 chapters left.

Anyway, I’ve stopped writing for the day but I’m feeling quite enthusiastic about writing tomorrow. There’s a lot of stitching together left to do, but there’s enough material already written that maybe it won’t be too traumatic. I think I’ll walk less tomorrow, and write more.

Now, however, I think I’ll go throw myself on Ted’s mercy and plead for dinner, because SO HUNGRY!

ytd wordcount: 185,900
miles to Minas Tirith: 380.6

currently: bouncy

I was exceedingly chipper yesterday, which isn’t in and of itself especially surprising. But it was an ebullience of surprising fortitude, and I finally figured out that it probably wasn’t just due to having THE QUEEN’S BASTARD hit the shelves. I suspect it also has a great deal to do with having told my editor last week that the fourth Walker Papers would be turned in sometime in early-to-mid July rather on June 1, as it’s supposed to be, and having her say, “Okay!”

I think my good humour is significantly increased by that “okay” sinking in. I think this is probably what A Load Off My Shoulders feels like. I still have a thousand things to do, and the snowball effect is not actually lessened, but I feel a bit more like I’m perhaps frantically skidding along the top of the avalanche instead of being rolled and dumped and thrown through it.

I’m up to about page 350 on TPC revisions. So far, so good: a couple scenes to add and two or three so far to revise, and I *cut one*, yay me! But thus far I’m reading along and a part of my brain is going, “Damn, if I weren’t writing this book, I’d want to know what happens!” (Though as Kate said yesterday, “You *are* writing this book and you want to know what happens!”) It’s going to get stickier from here on out, though; I’ve got new scenes to write and several to revise, and the next day or so of reading is going to involve a lot of margin notes and questions to self and ideas on how to revise and add material. I’m *hoping* I won’t need to do a second read-through before starting to actually rewrite, but we’ll see. Either way, I’m feeling optimistic about it.

Okay. Shower, breakfast, and then off to the mines.

miles to Minas Tirith: 324.1

currently: optimistic

(Um. Reposting this because for some weird reason, LJ ate the post. This is not the first time this has happened. Does anybody have any idea if it’s even *possible* to retrieve a post that LJ has wiped out? I mean, I have no particular attachment to the post itself, but there were comments on it, not all of which I’d responded to yet (ie, yes, mony, you *have* known me a long time, and stuff like that)…)

(…oh, I bet I know what happened. I edited the entry on mizkit, and set it to ‘do not crosspost’. I bet that when you do that if it for some reason goes back to do an update, it sees the ‘do not post’ and it wipes the original entry. Grargh!)

Somehow this ended up seven pages long (I blathered on about many of the books in some detail), so it’s just going directly behind a cut tag.

Read the rest of this entry…

currently: tired

Nabbing this from Karen Duvall…

The Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold writing contest is open for submissions.

Those of you who’ve been around a while might know I’m a bit evangelical on the topic of the RMFW. They’re the organization which lit a fire under my ass to get published: I finaled in the contest in 2002 with a (still unfinished) novel called MANIFEST DESTINY, which got me in to talk to my first editor. She was a small press editor and said, in short, “Go to the big boys, you can do better than small press.” (When I told my Del Rey editor this last summer, she perked all up and was like, “Wait, wait, what? What book is this? Have I seen it?” *laughs* I told her no, she’d see it after the Inheritors’ Cycle was done, and she was satisfied. :))

The conference that year was exactly what I needed to come away really prepared to make a career of writing. The next year, almost on a lark, I submitted RIGHT ANGLES TO FAERYLAND, which, to my astonishment, won. Teresa Nielson Hayden was the judging editor that year, and though I couldn’t go to the conference, I met up with her in New York and had talked extensively about writing in general and my writing in specific.

She said two things about the RMFW: one was that my entry for the contest was the first one she’d read, and that she thought, “If they’re all this good, we (the publishers) are really doing something *wrong*, because all these people should be *published*!”

(Three months later I got my first contract.)

She also said the RMFW was the least neurotic group of writers she’d ever met. That may sound like a back-handed compliment, but in fact I think it’s an extremely front-handed one: the RMFW are in fact incredibly lacking in neuroticism, and *extremely* high in “got our shit together and are six kinds of awesome”. They pride themselves on the quality of submissions to their contest, and I personally know at least three people (including myself) who were published after winning or finalling in their contest.

THE QUEEN’S BASTARD is, in fact, dedicated to the RMFW. I met my Del Rey editor, Betsy Mitchell, at the 2005 conference (which I attended in the express hope of meeting her), and sold her two books a few months later. These people, in a very, very real way, have made my career. I cannot say enough nice things about them, and I can’t recommend their contest highly enough.

Anyway, so there’s more about it at the RMFW website or at Karen’s blog, and I really really do recommend considering submitting something to it.

currently: optimistic

It was a splendid weekend.

We trundled up to Dublin and got checked into the hotel, which gave us a very nice suite (which included its own water feature, as expounded on later), then met my parents for an early dinner. Dinner was overtaken (by our invitation, not by rudeness) by Maura McHugh and, after a bit, Páadraig and Deirdre, and…

…and I can see I’m going to be here for the rest of my life if I keep putting in people’s web addresses. I think I’ll by and large forego that particular indulgence. :)

Anyway, talking and dining with Mom and Dad was very nice, though I think it set what’s an inevitable tone for any convention weekend: not enough time to talk to people you already know, but great opportunities to talk with people you’ve never before met. :) It was fun, anyway. :)

We took ourselves off to Chapters for the book signing with Juliet McKenna and Oisin McGann, which I thought went quite well. Multiple-author signings are always good, ’cause at least if no one comes to buy books you’ve got someone to talk to, but in fact people came to buy books and get them signed! Yay! :) Ted took some pictures, as did my parents, so I’ll post those later. Scurried back to the hotel for the opening ceremonies, and when we went upstairs to the room, discovered a waterfall in the living room area of the suite: a pipe had burst in the room above, apparently, and water was just pouring down. Ted went tearing off to tell the hotel about it, and was left with the impression that somebody’d be right there to deal with the mess in the room, and so in waiting for them missed the opening ceremonies.

Which is too bad, because they were brilliant.

Read the rest of this entry…

Lots of posts today. I guess that’s what happens when your computer dies on you.

(That doesn’t make much sense, does it? Oh well.)

Actually, I’ve got nothing to say in this post. It’s just metrics, and worth posting because I broke out of the terrible teens and surged up to 20K today. Against, I might say, most odds. *waves a little flag*

ytd wordcount: 20,100
miles to Minas Tirith: 30.9

currently: hungry