Tag: WIP

Let Your Love Flow

Thursday morning of being without Paul and I woke up with a head full of congestion, something bizarre going on in my stomach, and running a fever. Today is also supposed to be a heavy weather day in New Orleans; there has been a string of horrible storms passing through the Southern states this week, and today is apparently our turn. I am writing this from my bed, with my Macbook Air (which I love love love) and probably am going to go back to sleep soon enough…I totally and utterly despise being sick. But fortunately I have a lot of chicken soup in my cupboards (that hoarder thing) and so once my stomach settles a little bit i might make myself some soup.

I did manage to get some work done on the book yesterday; another 800 words or so, which simply will have to do in the meantime. I felt fine yesterday–I had actually slept deeply and well Tuesday night, after two nights of bad sleep–but last night as I watched The Real Housewives of New York I could feel it starting; that feeling as your head starts to fill with congestion and your throat gets scratchy and dry and your eyes start to feel hot. I went to bed early, hoping a second night’s sleep and a dose of NyQuil would solve the problem, but instead I woke up feeling worse than I had when I went to bed.

An alert for a tornado warning for St. John the Baptist and St. Charles parishes just popped up in the corner of my computer screen. It’s very still here; no wind or anything. The trees outside the window aren’t moving at all, which is unusual–there’s always a breeze of some sort.

Definitely weird weather.

Being sick means I probably won’t be able to work on the WIP today, either. I can try, cuddled up with Needy Kitty in the bed, but I find trying to create when my brain is thoroughly distracted by not feeling well–and then there’s also the possibility that I might have to throw up suddenly and who wants to have that happen to their laptop? Yeah, maybe it’s better to post this and put the laptop back into its sleeve and be done with it.

Heavy heaving sigh.

But it’s getting really dark outside which means some kind of storm is almost here.

I think I’ll go lie down and finish reading my book.

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Dream Weaver

It’s Wednesday and the week is partially over; Paul departed for New York this morning and I am alone in the Lost Apartment with what I assumed would be a very needy kitty, but I haven’t see him anywhere yet since I got out of bed twenty minutes ago; he’s either sulking (he starts sulking/being needy once he sees the suitcases) or he’s completely forgotten about everything and is sleeping, thinking it’s just another normal middle of the week day.

The real test, of course, will be tonight.

I was terribly tired all day yesterday–another long day at the office–and as such was unable to get more than 700 words or so done. I am highly annoyed at how far behind on this manuscript I’ve fallen; but it’s fine, I suppose. I was so tired yesterday there were things I couldn’t remember if I had actually written and added to the manuscript already, or if I had just thought about writing them.

Ah, Scooter just howled at me, so he’s around–he must have just gone back to sleep after Paul left (I didn’t even hear his alarm, that’s how deeply I was asleep) and didn’t hear me get up. Scooter was supposedly two years old when we rescued him, which would make him round eleven now; sometimes I wonder about his hearing, but then he’s a cat and they have had millenia of experience ignoring humans calling them, so there’s that. How would one tell if a cat is losing its hearing?

So, while Paul is in New York getting the Leadership Award from the Publishing Triangle tomorrow night, I’ll be here in New Orleans trying to get caught up on my WIP, and trying to cross off all the other things on my to-do lists. He’s coming home Saturday afternoon, so it’s not like he’s going to be gone for a long time, but that gives me some quiet downtime–although, to be honest, other than watching our shows together in the evening, he’s spending a lot of his home time upstairs working on his own writing projects on his computer, which pleases me.

I am feeling more ambitious about my work these days, which is part of the reason being too tired to work much the last two days has been so aggravating. I am getting good work done, but I guess I also need to remember as I get older that the days of cranking out anywhere from three to five thousand words in a day, several days in a row, are probably not as likely as they used to be and I need to stop holding myself to that standard..which is self-defeating. Any work done is a step forward–perhaps not as big a step as I might prefer, but it’s still a step and a step ahead is better than not taking a step–just like with working out: three times a week optimal; two times better than one; and one is better than none. I need to get back to the gym; perhaps this weekend I can just go ahead and carve out the time. I think my writing work comes easier when I am working on my body as well; the two are so intertwined that perhaps part of the lost feeling I’ve had with my writing and my career over the last two years has had something to do with the fact that I don’t go to the gym anymore. I fret about the loss of time, but also need to realize that it’s not a loss of time; getting my body into better condition and shape is an improvement on my health, will probably help me sleep better, and increase my energy so I don’t tire as easily.

And I really do want to feel better.

And on that note, I need to dive back into the spice mines so I can get some writing done before I head to work this morning. Happy Wednesday, Constant Reader!

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Moonlight Feels Right

And just like that, it’s now Tuesday.

Yesterday, rather than my long day, I only had to put in seven hours rather than eleven. (I work half-days on Friday, but it was a holiday so got paid for eight, which meant four hours had to go from somewhere; Monday was the easiest choice for the testing schedule) I worked on the WIP and faced up to the fact that the reason I didn’t work on it Sunday was because the next chapter to revise (Chapter Four, to be exact) really needs to begin with a nightmare and the main character being woken up from it by a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. Heavy sigh. I was resistant to writing the nightmare scene  because it felt lazy to me; I’ve done the woken-from-a-nightmare-by-a-thunderstorm in several books now, and it’s kind of become a trope in my works that have a touch of the paranormal to them–I think I even did this in The Orion Mask, which didn’t have anything of the paranormal to it.

I hate being aware of tropes in my own work…my own personal tropes?

I am sure this has something to do with getting a D on a story for that wretched writing instructor (the one who told me I’d never be published) that included a dream; take that, asshole professor who has never published anything; another novel by me in print with a dream sequence.

But in this case, the nightmare is necessary foreshadowing, not just lazy writing (or so I am convincing myself, at any rate). I need to create a mood in the book, and the nightmare plays into this feeling that something just isn’t right at my main character’s grandmother’s house. I’ve also worried that the story is too similar to Lake Thirteen, that I might be repeating myself, but I think that is also part of writing another ghost story. I’ve already written one, and so there’s always going to be the fear that I am just retelling the same story again. It isn’t quite the same story, but there are enough similarities that I delayed writing this book for a very long time because I simply assumed they were too much alike. But that’s also the challenge of writing this one, and why I decided to go ahead and write it: for the challenge of writing another ghost story without repeating the same story and scenes.

I suppose once I finish writing this draft I should probably reread Lake Thirteen just to be on the safe side. It’s been years since I wrote and published that particular book and so it’s entirely possible my creative mind could be taking shortcuts. But this is a more complicated and complex book than Lake Thirteen; it’s also a lot more ambitious. I am trying something with the voice I’ve never done before–first person present tense–and that is, in and of itself, hard to keep track of and it’s very easy to slip into past tense, which is my usual go-to. Again, trying to challenge myself with this voice and character and tense; we shall see how it works out, I suppose.

Thirty-odd books and a ridiculous amount of short stories later, and it never gets any easier. Oh, the self-doubt and constant evaluation of my abilities as a writer…it never goes away, and it’s something I’m trying really hard to work around and ignore. I think part of the reason I am so bad about self-promotion is tied not only into the entire concept of modesty that I was raised to believe in but the self-doubt and self-deprecation that comes along with who I am as a person.

It’s a wonder I’m not in a strait-jacket.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines.

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(Shake Shake Shake) Shake Your Booty

It’s Easter, and of course there are parades all over the city at all different times. New Orleans is a city that likes to celebrate, likes to have parades, and likes to dress up, whether in evening attire or costume. It’s one of the things I love about New Orleans; the absolute dedication to dressing up and how seriously it is taken here. For me, it’s just the final day of a three day weekend in which I have to run an errand at some point and most likely will spend the rest of the day writing while trying to get ahead of things for the week at the same time.

Multi-tasking, as it were.

I managed to write fifteen hundred new words on the WIP yesterday; replacing the 300 new words on the jump drive I forgot at the office and the story, chapter, and book are all the better for this work. It took longer than usual to get the words done, and I found myself staring at the screen and not typing for longer periods of time than usual when I am writing, but yet I still got them done and I am most pleased, not only with them but for the accomplishment.

The gears are a little rusty, but they do still work.

It does feel a rather long time since I’ve written anything new. It has felt like an eternity since the WIP  stalled out while I made excuses for not only not working on it but not even looking at it. I have been working on some other projects but there’s nothing serious there yet, just amorphous ideas and plots and characters and settings that are coming together into my head. But that’s also a part of me avoiding the WIP for some mysterious, self-destructive and self-defeating reason I have yet to get to the bottom of; perhaps someday I will understand how my mind and personality and ambition and insecurities all work together in some bizarre fashion to keep propelling me forward for some reason while also finding reasonable excuses not to move at all. I may never fully come to a complete understanding of myself; or at least one that cannot simply be reduced to needs medicating for the benefit of all.

But it felt good. It always feels good for me to write. It’s so undeniably a part of who I am I cannot imagine ever stopping permanently. The damage to my identity would be so overwhelming–but I also cannot ever imagine not creating. Even when I am not actually writing stories down, I am thinking of them; I am creating characters and settings and situations and titles and thinking about conversations and effects and damage and recovery. I’m not sure why it’s so hard for me to actually sit down and start putting words together into sentences and constructing paragraphs that become scenes. It is hard to get started; I always open up the document I am working on and look at it, see what’s come before and try to remember where it needs to go from where I am at. This is a revision so there’s something already there; I am adding things that I now know are necessary and removing things that I’ve decided aren’t actually going to go anywhere. And that makes this draft–which will be a combination of second and first drafts; the first ten chapters will be second drafts while everything else will be a first–much stronger.

I also want to work on short stories some, if not today, then the rest of this new week. I want to send some more stories out for submission, which means one last polish on the ones that are, at least I think, close to being ready–“This Thing of Darkness,” “And the Walls Came Down,” “The Snow Globe”–and some others that I would like to finish the first drafts of–“Please Die Soon,” “Never Kiss a Stranger,” and “Once a Tiger”–and others that are in various stages of the process. “Moves in the Field” probably needs another once over as well.

And on that note, this spice ain’t going to mine itself.

So Happy Easter!

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Sweet Love

Saturday morning and feeling fine. Another good night’s sleep is in the books, and I am swilling coffee and looking forward to getting some things done today. I have to make groceries (I wound up pretty much effectively blowing most of yesterday off–who saw that coming?) and I need to get some work done on the WIP. I did get all of the laundry–including bed linens–done yesterday, and the dishes, and some cleaning and organizing done. I also pulled the WIP out from the back-up, and sure enough, the 300 words or so I’d one on Chapter Three weren’t there, since they are on the flash drive.

But as I said yesterday, reconstructing the revisions I’d already done turned out to be easier–and better–than the revision I’d done already; and while I simply added a different three hundred words to that chapter, this 300 is better than the last 300 and I also restructured the opening of the chapter so it makes better sense and works better. So leaving the flash drive at the office was, as I thought it might be yesterday, for the best. I intend to get that chapter finished this morning, perhaps move on to the next, and then perhaps get a short story reworked before retiring to my easy chair with Alison Gaylin’s quite superb Never Look Back, which is quite superb, actually. I thought her last two novels–What Remains of Me and If I Die Tonight–were marvelous; this one looks to be even better than both of those….which means hours of reading bliss for me. Gaylin is an author who always outdoes herself with each new work, like her peers Megan Abbott, Laura Lippman, Lori Roy, and Alafair Burke.

And I think the next book up with be something by a gay author, as I continue working on the Diversity Project. I also need to get back to reading Murder-a-Go-Go’s, so I can keep writing up the stories in it. I also should be doing more promotion for Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories. I’ve done a terrible job of pushing the book thus far–even forgetting the publication date–and yeah, it’s a wonder I still  have a career to speak at all in this business.

But it’s great to feel rested and relaxed; that happens so rarely that having several good nights’ sleep under my belt has me wondering, is this how everyone else feels? Don’t take the ability to sleep for granted, Constant Reader, if it is something you are blessed with; it can be taken away from you before you know it and you’ll really, really miss it once it’s gone.

We watched some more of Kim’s Convenience  last night, and continue to enjoy it. I do want to get back to watching You and The Umbrella Academy at some point, but neither show crosses my mind when I am flipping through the Apple TV apps trying to find something to watch. I also never finished watching Pose, and there’s also Fosse/Verdon, which I’d like to take a look at as well. And I barely ever think to go to Amazon Prime…primarily because their television app isn’t really user friendly. (I’ve still never forgiven Hulu for changing theirs from something incredibly intuitive and super-easy to use to the more complicated version they have now.) But there are some terrific films I’d like to see–I still haven’t seen Black Panther, for example–and of course there are some classic films available for streaming.

It’s ever so easy to get distracted, you know?

So, once I finish this I am going to go read for an hour before getting back to work on the WIP, and then I am going to head to the grocery store. I’ll work on it some more when I get back from the grocery store, and then read some more until about five-ish, after which I’ll probably go sit in my chair and scroll through apps looking for something to watch…oh yes, the NCAA women’s gymnastics championships are on tonight, and LSU made it to the final four, along with UCLA, Oklahoma, and Denver. Paul and I are enormous LSU fans, and we watch the gymnastics team compete, whenever possible, on television. And football season will be returning soon…I am already getting emails from Stubhub about buying game tickets. Paul and I are still riding our eight-year streak of never seeing LSU lose when we are in the stadium; let’s hope that streak continues for a ninth year.

And now it’s time to head back into the spice mines. See you on the flip side, Constant Reader!

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Right Back Where We Started From

A very good morning and a very good Friday to y’all. I slept late this morning, which was fabulous. I did wake up once, sometimes after four, but rolled over and focused and was able to fall right back asleep, and yes, marvelous doesn’t even begin to cover how lovely it felt. We had a terrible storm last night–it was much worse on the north shore and in Mississippi than it was here–but there was lots of rain, wind and thunder/lightning. I was able to leave work early–half-day–and came home feeling exhausted, so I went right to my easy chair while getting some laundry going. Paul and I then finished watching the third season of Cardinal, a Canadian series that it quite excellent–Bill Campbell is exceptionally good in the lead–and then watched a few episodes of a cute comedy series, also Canadian, called Kim’s Convenience, also in its third season. I then went to bed after folding a basket of laundry; the second basket is currently tumbling dry in the dryer. At some point I need to run to Rouse’s–although I am trying to stick really hard to the “don’t be a food hoarder anymore Gregalicious” mentality I developed thanks to the Termite Armageddon.

I really am going to make it a goal to clean out the kitchen cabinets more frequently; perhaps once a quarter?

So, the three day weekend looms large before me. I realized last night I forgot my flash drive at the office, but never fear…this week I managed to back up everything, including the flash drive, to my back-up hard drive AND the cloud, so I should be able to access everything I’ve been working on. I may not have the three hundred or so words I managed on chapter three of the WIP, but I have also found that reconstructing work I have already done sometimes–not always, but most of the time–turns out better than the work I’d already done. So, yes, I am going to try to do that this weekend, and get some other work done. I have more things on the “get done” list than is likely to actually get done (as always), but hey, it is what it is, you know?

Obviously, as always, there is cleaning I want to do, and there are some books I want to read–Alison Gaylin’s Never Look Back in particular, which I’ve started and is amazing thus far–and I also need, at some point, to do some book review blog posts. I think I may have taken too much time between reading the last two books I read and writing about them; we shall see, I suppose, once I actually start writing about them.

But this morning I feel good and ready to go; rested and better and all about getting things done today, which is quite lovely. I hope this motivation lasts, frankly–although it’s pretty easy to see it going south fairly soon–it doesn’t really take very much for me to get off track. But this morning I am going to do some writing and do some laundry and some cleaning and perhaps some organizing and we’ll see where the day takes us, shan’t we? I am also going to spend some time writing answers to my emails, which I will send on Monday morning (email begets email; so I stopped answering emails on the weekends several years ago and it felt marvelous; it still does, actually).

And now, back to the spice mines. Have a lovely good Friday, everyone.

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You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine

It’s Thursday. The last day of my work week.

Huzzah!

Alas, this afternoon we are supposed to have horrible weather–rains, possible street flooding, high winds, and tornadoes!

AIEEEEEEEE!

But it’s also my half-day, and tomorrow is Good Friday (thank you, Catholic New Orleans, yet again), so I am slipping into this day like it’s the last day of my work week before a three day weekend because it is.

I have gotten, somehow, absolutely nothing done this week. I wrote maybe two or three hundred words on the WIP, answered some emails, and finished reading a book, but outside of that I’ve really done not a whole hell of a lot. Oh, I also paid the bills Wednesday morning. So, this whole week has been pretty much written off as a loss. I suppose it’s okay, but I kind of have a little bit of regret for not working a lot harder this week on my writing. I did some brainstorming on another couple of projects as well, but you know, that’s not quite the same as actually making serious progress and moving forward on projects.

I am up early this morning because i am meeting a friend for breakfast at District Donuts at eight; again, something that rarely happens. Maybe this week has been off because I’ve been doing things I don’t normally do? I had dinner with friends on Monday night; I am having breakfast with another friend this morning–that’s two social engagements in a week whereas I usually have absolutely none. And of course last Saturday Jean and I spoke at the library–so my routine has been a little off.

I can always find a reasonable excuse as to why I am not working.

But I am hopeful that today after work I can get some writing in–perhaps even finish the revision of Chapter Three that’s kind of stuck in place for the last two weeks–and do some more work on the other projects, in addition to getting some cleaning done. I also think I am going to try to  make it back to the gym this weekend, get my workouts started over again and try to keep making progress on those goals so by Decadence I can be in reasonably good shape again; not that I will be participating in any Decadence activities, but I always used Decadence and Mardi Gras as my exercise goal endpoints, and it always worked, so why get away from what worked before? After all, going back to how I used to do things with my writing has significantly paid off–other than the lack of getting anything done over the last two weeks. I had hoped to get this draft finished by the end of the month and I am still going to try to get there. You never know.

I also need to review and reread some of my short stories this weekend so I can get back on the submissions treadmill again.

Yay!

And now back to the spice mines.

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More More More

Monday morning, and I overslept a bit this morning. Not a good start to the week, but the week is also only a four day week, as Good Friday is a city holiday (one has to love Catholic New Orleans, doesn’t one?) and so it’s a short week for me. Perhaps not off to the best start, but it’s off to a start at any rate.

In other exciting news, some of my computer issues have been solved, My friend Stuart, whose company is exclusively Mac and therefore is a sort of non-Apple-employed genius genius, is in town and we spoke on the phone yesterday (we are having dinner tonight) and he explained to me what some of the issues I have been having might have been…and he was correct. I worked on correcting those issues yesterday, to a point, and now my desktop computer is operating a little more normally than it was–it’s certainly faster, and the program crashing issue, at least for the last twenty-four hours, has apparently corrected itself–or my actions have corrected it. We shall see how long this lasts, shan’t we?

I also managed to get back to work on the WIP yesterday. I only managed about 400 words, but it was work and it was progress and I am definitely counting that as moving forward. I also did some brainstorming on the potential new series I am considering writing, which was lovely. The more I think about this new series the more I like it. Hopefully, it will work out and turn into something truly terrific; one can hope, at any rate. We shall certainly see. The goal for this week is to get several chapters on the WIP done, and to get some more work done on the two proposals I am writing. I am excited about both, even though they are both new things that I hadn’t even thought about it two months ago–which is pushing other projects I want to write further back into the ethereal future–but there you have it. That is this writer’s life, and someday–someday–I hope to have written everything I want to write.

I also managed to get some serious cleaning done yesterday. I had a great night’s sleep Saturday night, and therefore yesterday had more energy than I was expecting to have/thought I would have/have had on a Sunday in quite some time. So the kitchen and the living room look really lovely; I am hoping to use the extra day this coming weekend to do some other, more serious cleaning (oy, my ceiling fans are filthy, and I don’t even want to discuss my kitchen windows). So, in other words, Sunday was a much more productive day than I’d thought it would be, and it turned out quite nicely–particularly after I didn’t get anything really accomplished on Saturday, other than finishing Steph Cha’s wonderful book, which I greatly enjoyed (more to come on that later). So…despite my late start to the day–which I am not letting discombobulate me at all, instead of stressing about being late I am going to just get the things done I need to get done before I leave the house this morning and let the day play out as it may.

The premiere of the penultimate season of Game of Thrones  last night was a bit slow, but it was also a set-up episode, setting the stage for the big finish of all the stories that are currently spinning out and coming to their inevitable end. We did get the big reveal about Jon Snow’s true parentage last night, which was incredibly cool, plus the scene of Jon and Dany riding the dragons (BIG hint, as only Targaryens can ride dragons), and I love how Sansa has turned into a Bad Boss Bitch. The evolution of Sansa as a character, from the wide-eyed innocent girl who dreamed of marrying and being a queen to the calculating, suspicious, trust-no-one Lady of Winterfell has been extraordinary, and bravo to Game of Thrones for this. Bravo.

We also watched the season finale of Schitt’s Creek over the weekend and it, too, was enormously satisfying. Watching Stevie on stage coming into her own as Sally in Cabaret singing “Maybe This Time” was one of those in-your-feels moments that the show does so remarkably well. Schitt’s Creek may be one of the best sitcoms in the history of television; it has rarely missed a beat, has always been funny, and no matter how crazy or insane situation develops in each episode, every character remains true to themselves even as they develop, change and grow. I told a friend the other day that the run of Schitt’s Creek has had some of the best character development and growth I’ve ever seen in a television comedy series, and it’s incredibly true. The fact that there is only one more season breaks my heart more than just a little bit–and while I may have been late to watching this show–well, this is indeed another case of better late than never.

I also hope to start reading the ARC of Alison Gaylin’s new novel, Never Look Back, this week, and am most excited about it.

And now back to the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader.

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Bohemian Rhapsody

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide no escape from reality.

I do love the song. I wasn’t an enormous fan of the movie–primarily because I wasn’t that interested in the trajectory of the bad so much as I was more interested in Freddie and his life–but it was a perfectly good movie about a rock band.

I did finish reading Steph Cha’s Follow Her Home yesterday and I highly recommend it. The writing is exceptionally done well, and her character, Juniper Song, is terrific. I have some other thoughts about the book in my head, but am going to wait until they fully form before I write about it more. But…while I am sure I would have eventually gotten around to reading Steph–I’ve met her and like her–I am glad that I made a point of moving her up in the TBR pile. As I said when I was talking about the Diversity Project the other day, it’s the unconscious bias against minority writers I am fighting against within my own head and within my own choices, and trying to retrain/rewire my brain to not automatically move toward white writers when selecting the next book to read–even if they are women, who are also historically undermined as ‘not as serious as the men’ by not just the industry but by society itself. (I am really itching to start reading Alison Gaylin’s Never Look Back.)

As I’ve mentioned, my reading has always skewed more toward women than men; as a child, I preferred Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden to the Hardy  Boys (although the Three Investigators are my absolute favorite kids’ series, and they were boys), to the point where I was forbidden to read books either by women or about women for a period of time–which quite naturally made me want to read them even more.

The absolute best way to get me to do something is to either forbid me from doing it, or telling me that I can’t do it. Forbidding me makes me want it all the more, and telling me I can’t do something makes me want to prove you wrong.

I am ridiculously excited that Game of Thrones returns tonight for its final season. I am going to be terribly sorry when the show is over; I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the ride from the time Paul and I got the DVD’s from Netflix and starting binge-watching; loved it so much we paid for the HBO app subscription so we could watch it as it aired, once we were caught up. I do want to finish reading the books–I’ve only finished A Game of Thrones–and maybe if I get a long vacation on a beach somewhere, I can finish the entire series that has been published thus far. I really loved the book, and suspect I’ll feel the same way about the rest of the series. Yesterday I spent some time reacquainting myself with some of my favorite moments from the series over the years, thanks to said HBO app–the Battle of the Loot Train, the end of Ramsey Bolton, the trial of Littlefinger, the big reveal about Jon Snow’s parents, the Battle of Meereen, Daenarys conquering the Dothraki by killing all the Khals, Cersei’s revenge on the Sept–and was again, as always, blown away by the sheer scope and scale of the show, and how fucking fantastic it is from top to bottom. Game of Thrones, whether you love it or hate it, is always going to be considered one of the greatest television series of all time, up there with The Wire, The Sopranos,and The West Wing, and deservedly so. We truly are in a marvelous time for television programming.

Friday I was even more ridiculously excited to see the first trailer for the ninth episode of Star Wars and to learn its title: The Rise of Skywalker. I really cannot wait to see this movie, and I suspect we are going to go see it on opening weekend this December if it kills me. It’s very strange to realize that Star Wars has been a part of my life for over forty years now…and while the second trilogy, episodes one through three, aren’t amongst my favorites (I’ve not rewatched them very much), I still have a big love for all things Star Wars, and frankly, Rogue One just might be my favorite Star Wars film of them all.

So, after a really good night’s sleep and waking up later than I usually do, I am going to clean this kitchen and then I am going to work for a while. I might go to the grocery store; we need a few things, but at the same time I should also be able to get the things we need on the way home from work tomorrow, if they are, in fact, so desperately needed. I think I’m going to do that–wait, I mean–because if I’ve learned anything from the Termite Genocide experience, it’s that I hoard food and really need to use the things I already have on hand rather than go out and buy new things to prepare.

I’m actually looking forward to working today, if you can believe that, Constant Reader. I am determined to get the next chapter of the WIP finished, and then I am going to work on these other two ideas I’ve had, and then I am going to spend a couple of hours with the Gaylin novel.

What a lovely Sunday this will turn out to be.

Have a terrific day, everyone–and in one week, it’s Easter!

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Misty Blue

Happy Saturday everyone! I just got home from doing an event at the Jefferson Parish East Bank Regional library, where I talked with Jean (J. M.) Redmann about characters and writing crime. It was quite fun–the Jean and Greg Traveling Dog and Pony Show always is–and the audience was quite lovely and engaged, which is always lovely. One never knows how those things are going to go, so it’s always lovely when things turn out nice.

I did some brainstorming and note-taking both yesterday and this morning, as a new series (HA! I am not telling you more than that) is starting to form in my mind. When the idea first came to me, I wasn’t sure if it was something I could tackle, or even if it was something I wanted to write…or even if I wanted to write it, if it was something I could write. But yesterday afternoon I decided to start writing some ideas down, and it suddenly started to come together in my head. I knew who my main character was and some of her back story; I began to build her world a little inside my head and in my journal, and I wrote some more about it today before the library event, which was also kind of lovely–I am so glad I started carrying journals around with me again last year! They really do come in handy, and I find just having one with me all the time is most helpful. I’ve done a lot of brainstorming in those journals since January 2018…I may spend some time today going back through them and retrieving stuff and ideas from them.

If you want to be a writer I highly recommend carrying a journal of some sort around with you.

I also read more of Steph Cha’s delightful Follow Her Home yesterday, and when I finish writing this I am going to repair to my easy chair and read some more of it–with my journal and a pen handily nearby. I should do some cleaning–the floors are revolting yet again, and the sink is full of dishes–but on the other hand I am also thinking having a day off is kind of a nice thing. Tomorrow is a free day–and the premiere of the final season of Game of Thrones–and so I have all day tomorrow to clean and write and do things. I need to get back to work on the WIP, and I also want to keep not only making notes for this new series but there’s a stand alone idea I also want to work on. I’ve not yet written any stand-alone novels that weren’t classified as either young adult or “new adult”, this would be something for the “adult” audience, with no adjectives out in front. I am excited about both projects, but also recognize I need to get the first draft of this WIP finished this month so I can move on to revising a final draft of the other WIP. (There’s another WIP out there, as well…languishing in the drawer it’s been in for about five years now; someday.)

And on that note, I am heading over to my chair. Have a lovely Saturday everyone!

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