The first book I wrote, NO SONG BUT SILENCE (which I presume is terrible, and am afraid to look at), I wrote sitting at the end of my parents’ living room couch in Alaska, a word processor balanced precariously on the arm while I typed away.

Sixteen years and sixteen novels later, I’m sitting at the end of my own living room couch in Ireland, a laptop computer balanced on precariously on the arm while I type away.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

ytd wordcount: 212,000
miles to Minas Tirith: 508.7

currently: satisfied

TWO. HUNDRED. THOUSAND. WORDS!

Jesus flipping Christ. I only wrote 265K *total* last year. I will be well past that by *June* this year. Jesus flipping Christ.

Oh, also? THE PRETENDER’S CROWN is done. I’ve still got to rewrite the prologue per editor request, which is tomorrow’s job, but the last chapters and the epilogue are finished. 724 pages. 179,500 words. Holy *jeez*.

I only got about 70 pages of AAs done, though, which means I’m going to have to go downstairs and work on them this evening, at least until I’m so bored with it I fall asleep.

Ted has made pork & beans in the crock pot today, so dinner will be wonderful. And I had a nice lunch with Myles and Kate, and…now it’s time to go back to work.

ytd wordcount: 200,400
miles to Minas Tirith: 404.8

currently: satisfied

The astute among you will notice that it is once more past midnight and I am once more up and posting. *snorts at self* The con doesn’t start til 10. Maybe I can sleep in a bit. :)

I got to meet and hang out with Juliet McKenna and Charlie Stross, the latter of whom was accompanied by Feorag and Fluff Cthulu, whose mission in life is to eat people’s brains (a kindred spirit, Trip!), and say, “Shit,” in admiring disgust at the story of how Paul Cornell got to write comics, a story which 1. I will relate later, when there has been more sleep, and 2. he said, “I know, that’s what I kept saying!” happily when I said, “Shit,” about it, and briefly met Susannah Clarke and Leah Moore, and less briefly, Colin Greenland, who looked pleasantly surprised when I said, “Oh yes, I know who you are,” upon being introduced to him; PNH commented on my Joss Whedon is my master now t-shirt, and I apparently came in just a moment too late to participate in a Joss discussion, but maybe another one will start up; and there was a very long discussion about writers and cats and exchanges of cat stories, and I staggered out around 10:30 and yet somehow it is still 12:30 when I’m posting this and by God I’m going to bed now. -.-

(In other words, that was a lot of fun, and it was just hanging out the evening before the con!)

(Also, I have really cool friends; both Jess and Silkie gave me a bunch of URLs for the kinds of t-shirts I’m looking for. Thank you both. *beam*)

miles to Mount Doom: 426

Gawd in nose-stuffy heaven. I keep trying to explain to this cold that I’m nearly out of cold medicine, so I ought to be nearly out of cold, but it’s not taking. I’ve been forced several times to buy more cold medicine, and I suspect it’s going to happen again.

The most annoying thing (in some sense, anyway) is that unlike normal colds where I don’t feel like eating anything for five days, I’ve been starving all the way through this one and so instead of losing weight I think I’ve gained a couple pounds. That’s *totally* unfair. I’ve been sick for three weeks. I should be skinny by now!

We are, or will be when I post this, in Dublin, where we are awaiting the arrival of the THUNDERBIRD FALLS manuscript, which was overnighted from New York last Thursday. The astute among you may note that this is something more than ‘overnight’, so far as delivery times go.

According to UPS, our address doesn’t exist. *exasperated look* Once we found that out, we sent them to Mom & Dad’s, which, with any luck, they will be able to find. Production gave us an extension. The copy edits are now due Friday. Thursday is going to be very busy, and by the end of it I expect I will hate the book a lot, since I’ll probably have to read it three times in twelve hours.

I’ve dyed my hair back to more or less its natural color, since I never actually intended to become a redhead in the first place. Right now I’m vaguely irritated with it in general, and the only thing keeping me from chopping it is the fact that I will have wasted five years of more or less constant hair-growing (I have done a couple of several-inch cuts in that time, so my hair is not nearly as long as it would be in five years if I hadn’t done that) leading up to X3 (which is going to suck) if I cut it now. I do not, however, have the slightest faith that re-Roguing it is going to go over well, with three different colors of hair dye in it. Perhaps I need to get Angie to come over in mid-May and we can do hair things together before the movie. :)

Right before Christmas I was feeling really energetic and excited about starting to lose weight again and starting to go to the gym. Just all full of vim and vigor and enthusiasm for the whole project. Three weeks of being sick has completely wasted that anticipation. I have some small hope that when I actually *feel* better it’ll resurface, but I’m thinking it’s probably going to take something more significant than just feeling well. Electroshock therapy, maybe.

All right. A five hundred word journal entry ought to be enough for my fingers to have gotten used to the idea of typing. No need to turn this into another Marvel-rant-length mini-epic. The only other thing I’ve got to say is yesterday a raven (or a crow; we’re still debating which species exactly the bigger black birds hopping around here are) stuck his head down our chimney and cawed and clucked and hollered for a while, evidently because he liked the echoes so well.

That’s all, then.

miles to Mount Doom: 322
ytd wordcount: 13,300

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

Okay. I’ve found a place to let. It’s in Athy, County Kildare, and that’s pronounced “Athigh”, not “Athee”, despite how Americans read it. Athy’s about 45 miles southwest of Dublin, is about 55 minutes on the train, is large enough to have community theatre of its own, and has a swimming pool across the street from where we’ll be living. The train station is also across the street. The town’s at the convergence of the Wiver Wiffey and the Grand Canal, and is quite pretty.

I don’t have pictures yet, but the house is a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath house with a decent kitchen and a nice back yard, which they call a back garden, and it’ll be ready to move in on the 1st. It’s further out than I’d initially planned, but as I looked both at houses and at potential Tedjobs, it became increasingly evident that unless we wanted to live in Dublin proper, we were very probably going to need a car no matter what. So getting a place in a cheaper town, even if it was further out, seemed practical, and it’s a nice town.

And I’m very relieved to have a place. There’re about five … wow. I have no idea at all what I was going to say. Oh. Five trains in and out of Dublin a day, during hours that are reasonable for normal commutes, so that’s all good. The only real problem is whether or not we’ll be able to get broadband access, which is just an incredible crapshoot in Ireland, despite the country being promoted as the IT center of Europe. There’s no phone line in the house, so when I call to have one put in, I will *specify* that it needs to be DSL-capable (because apparently if you don’t, a new phone line will not necessarily be, and frankly I’m not sure specifying it will do the trick, but it’s all I can try), and hopefully there won’t be a broadband issue. It would be quite a shock indeed to go cold turkey on net access after all these years.

*closes eyes* That’s taken care of. I can concentrate on writing, now. Thank *God*.

My J. Peterman order has arrived. To my delight, everything, including the size 8 skirt-trousers fits, except one blouse that I wasn’t sure of to begin with and which not only doesn’t fit, but wouldn’t look good on me if it did. It would’ve been fine if it’d been the kind of material I thought it was, but it wasn’t, so. Anyway, that’s maybe the only problem with J. Peterman’s artistic renderings of their clothes instead of photographs. All I need now is a professional photographer… :)

It’s gotten too bleeding cold outside to walk without gloves, and I can’t find any. I must get some this weekend. My poor fingers are getting frozenated, and Chantico is getting extremely impatient about being house-bound. Poor puppy. :(

I didn’t get a great deal done today, but I *did* finally get my comments (or more accurately, rewrites) on cover copy for THUNDERBIRD FALLS and THE CARDINAL RULE off to my editor. Hopefully they’ll be timely enough to be of some use still, though I was woefully late in responding to emails. I also got my 200+ inbox down to 70 or so messages, and must perform the same triage on my cemurphy account soon. But not tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m housecleaning, because I really know how to have a good time. I’ll finish dealing with the office, clear up the rest of the downstairs, and perpare for some heavy-duty cleaning once the boys get home in the evening.

I’ll also make some raspberry jam. :)

Today I felt something I hadn’t felt in some time: the desire to get back to writing. I was out for my walk and really looking forward to finishing up the PHOENIX LAW proposal, which, once done, clears the way to let me work on COYOTE DREAMS. That will be Most Excellent.

miles to Mount Doom: 95