Plans and Schemes

Gallow & Ragged

I’m halfway through four shots of espresso and the world is beginning to seem a little less underwater. Only a little, mind you. This morning’s earworm is Bowie’s Cat People, which–given the Sekrit Projekt–isn’t a surprise.

Several of you have written me about part of a certain book’s cover being stolen for use elsewhere. Thank you for being so diligent–the publisher has been alerted to the issue, so we’ll see what happens. I appreciate your efforts, my beloveds.

Let’s see, what else is going on this morning? The dogs were positively desperate to get up and get outside, but now that business has been taken care of they’re sacked out for the first of the daily naps. (Must be nice.) They’ll start lobbying for toast-crust and walkies around the time I finish my coffee. The first nap of the day is always short, they’re just stretching out and preparing for the others later.

Yesterday’s Tea with Lili was rather long, since the chat was pretty active. We talked about how writing isn’t like putting together a puzzle, and I went through the various stages a book has to go through for trad publishing. I think on Friday we’ll go a little deeper and talk about how writing itself isn’t like puzzle-putting-together, because it occurs to me I got a bit distracted. And then we’ll have to talk about how self-publishing goes, which is a whole cuppa in and of itself.

It’s nice to have a plan.

I’m also looking at streaming a video game or two to Twitch. Nothing exciting–I think I just want to play Civ V for an hour or so while chatting a bit. I might even play Borderlands 2 eventually, or try things like Undertale. We’ll see. I have hesitated because really, who wants to see me do stuff like that? I play Civ V, in particular, on the lowest difficulty setting and take a great deal of joy in crushing the world under my benevolent bootheel. (The kids sometimes glance in the office door and ask, “Taking over the world again?”) I mean, life is hard enough, I mostly game to relax, not to think. So it probably won’t be very interesting to watch, but it will give me streaming experience, so…I dunno. We’ll see.

Go figure, my agent initially asked me to consider TikTokking instead. I’m sure she probably regrets it by now.

The biggest thing is that I think it’ll be fun, and may help with performance anxiety. If I’m concentrating on the game instead, my nerves might desensitize a little sooner. It’s worth a shot, especially since I have the tech side almost figured out.

I didn’t get any serious wordcount yesterday, since I worked all through the weekend and had to use Monday as a catch-up-on-admininstrivia day. On the bright side, a ridiculous amount of paperwork has been dealt with. On the not-so-bright side, even one day without proper wordcount is physically uncomfortable right now and I’m itching under my skin. Using work as a panacea does have a drawback or two.

So I’ll have to finish the knife fight in Hell’s Acre, shift over to Sons of Ymre #2 in order to stitch in a certain detail that needs to be inserted for things to hang right, and then maybe I can work on the Sooper-Sekrit Projekt a bit. I’ve decided to damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead on the last. Life is short, we’re in a pandemic, nuclear winter could strike at any moment, and I might as well do something that pleases me.

…that sounded a lot more optimistic inside my head. And now Boxnoggin is losing his tiny little mind because a delivery truck just went by. Peace and quiet? Not in this house, my friends. I suppose I’d best finish my coffee and get some toast.

See you around.