Book Update

Disenchanted, and a Viral Giveaway

Well, it’s Thursday. I woke up disenchanted and suspect it’ll only get worse, though I did figure out that Sons of Ymre wants to be two books instead of one, and the gobs of wordcount I’ve been producing are because my brain is trying to finish a zero of book one before it will let me move to book two.

I wish the Muse would have let me know before now, purely for scheduling reasons, but her ways are not our ways, and heaven help those who expect them to be.

Today, once I get the dogs walked, is all about proofing. I don’t care what the Muse wants, this book has got to get proofed, and I’ll thank her to let me get it done so we can eat in the near future. I can’t work starved, and she should know that by now.

The spirit might be super willing, but the body has its own needs.

Anyway, it’s Subscription Thursday and everything is prepped and ready for that to drop. And I have news for you all–a brand-new giveaway for February!

Viral Agents

That’s right! Two lucky winners will receive signed, personalized copies of my Viral Agents books–Agent Zero and Agent Gemini, sent media mail anywhere in the world.

I love these books, and I’m excited to be sending them as prizes. You can enter daily, and there are all sorts of fun things you can do to get extra entries. The giveaway ends on February 27, 2020.

So if you’re interested, just click here or on the book cover to the right, and enter to your heart’s content.

I have coffee to finish and the dogs to walk, then it’s settling on the couch with tablet and pen, tricking my brain into thinking I’m proofreading on paper. For some reason I don’t “see” the errors the same way if I’m looking at a vertical screen; I need the horizontal and a pencil-shaped object clutched in my dominant hand. So much of this writing gig is figuring out how to game your own brain and responses to get the effect you need.

Of course, that’s life as well as writing, so I’d better get to it. The world–and the Muse–doesn’t wait for our pleasure, more’s the pity.

Over and out!

Altered Deal

A cold morning. Not enough coffee. Dogs quiet after they rooted me out of bed with cold noses and the absolute unquenchable commitment to wriggling under the covers with me.

It’s not that I minded, there just wasn’t any room, so I had to get up and make some caffeine.

Today is for proofing HOOD‘s Season Two and wordcount on a couple other projects. I know I swore I’d just work on one thing at a time, and I am. I’ve just altered the meaning of “at a time” slightly; otherwise, I’d never get anything done.1

Mostly, it’s a crisis of confidence. My career is changing, and that means discomfort. I keep thinking nothing will ever get better, I’ll be struggling and scratching all my life, and it’s tiring. Why I expect it to be any different is beyond me; at the same time, there’s only so much well, I knew this when I started can do to ameliorate the feeling of what the hell?

There’s a lot of what the hell going on in my life right now.

My coffee is cooling rapidly, the dogs need a walk, I should plant a few things in the garden to get a jump on spring. The early cherry tree down the road keeps giggling every time I pass. Look, she says, you were so worried, but it’s fine. Leave the worry behind.

I wish I could. Would someone else pick it up if I did? Maybe the worry could carry itself, but if it could, what the hell is it doing on my back?

…yeah, I’m in a Mood. The cure is work, as usual; if I view the pain as labor pangs I can bite down and wonder what might be birthing. It could be that I’m having one of those strange plateaus before the work takes a leap forward, which would be welcome indeed.

Of course, some of this could be the fact that Sons of Ymre is 47k long and just embarking on its last half. There’s so much to be done, and I wonder if the story is top-heavy or just plain stupid. The crisis of confidence on a single story is metastasizing, spreading through everything else I need to get done on a daily basis.

So this is the part where I get stubborn. It might be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad story, but at least it will not be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, unfinished story. Small mercy, but one I’ll take. Ambition and the desire for security has never really moved me, but spiteful stubbornness? That’s the whipcrack I respond to, indeed.

I suppose if I get mad or spiteful I’d be able to buckle down more easily. But I’m so tired lately. Maybe I should blame time off; getting back to work seems an insurmountable chore once I halt. Objects in motion tending to stay in motion, and all that.

I’m even irritating myself with this. Time to gulp the last bit of caffeine, buckle the dogs into their harnesses, and get out the door. A brisk walk in the cold will hopefully give me better things to worry about.

I tell everyone else to just keep writing and trust the work. It’s that magical moment where I have to take my own damn advice or stop handing it out. It’s damn hard to trust the work when one doesn’t even trust oneself, but paradoxically easier than thinking one’s self might be trustworthy at all.

And now that I’ve confused myself mightily, I swear I’m getting out the door. Tuesday has managed to gain the initiative roll, but my armor class is high, I’ve shifted my charisma to dexterity, and I have a few daggers lying about.

The campaign ain’t over yet.

Doctor Sleep, Meet Siouxsie

I’ve completed a website redesign! How do you guys like the new look? Also, there’s a new giveaway; I should just do a dedicated giveaways page, shouldn’t I.

I spent a restless night, falling into the deep well of sleep late. Maybe it was watching Doctor Sleep that did it–I bounced off the book pretty hard, but the movie has some good visuals and I always like Ewan MacGregor. The biggest draws in the movie are Rebecca Ferguson’s Rose the Hat and Cliff Curtis’s Billy, both of whom are much better than the movie deserves. Especially Ferguson; without her the entire edifice collapses.

I could also have been too warm; after a couple nights hovering near freezing and days of raw high-30s (Fahrenheit, of course, America is Still Imperial) it’s a relatively balmy 50F and the dogs are eager for their morning walk.

And the dogs. Boxnoggin isn’t too bad, he picks a single spot and stays there, moving only glacially all night–always towards the back of my knees, the dog has a magnet for them, apparently. But Miss B is an elderly statesdog, and the bed gets too warm and too soft, so she hops down and pads for the tile floor of the loo regularly, then comes back and settles next to me when she’s chilled enough. I don’t mind, but every time she hops down I wake up, thinking she might need to visit the yard.

So I have coffee, and Siouxsie and the Banshees playing. It feels like my early twenties all over again–the good parts, when I could find CDs I liked at work instead of just playing radio roulette. When I began to realize I could live in places where my books wouldn’t be shredded, my journals stolen, my body battered.

I had terrible experiences after I left home, sure. But none of them were bad enough to drive me back, and none were as bad as home even on the worst days. So all in all, that was when I began to live.

Maybe it was the child endangerment in Doctor Sleep that disturbed me. It’s one of the few things I have trouble watching in any movie; I’ll fast-forward through scenes of mounting dread even if I know the child is fine. King’s IT is one of my formative books, despite being nothing but child endangerment, but somehow it’s easier for me to process while reading. Seeing it on a hyper-detailed screen instead of on the screen inside my head, where I can fuzz details and move characters to my heart’s content, might be the problem.

Anyway, today is for me to be gentle with myself and get some more work done. I want the first scene in HOOD‘s Season Three done and dusted today, since so much in the later stream of the book depends on where I start the cataract. And I need a car accident in Sons of Ymre, not to mention more whispering insanity.

The good thing about the sudden warmth is that I’ll be able to get a few things done in the garden when I break from the scenery in my head. It would be nice to get the large beds down the hill weeded and some seeds scattered, since we’re past the danger of freezing. Or so my nose says, and Miss B agrees.

Her nose is much better, after all.

It’s also subscription day, which means around 2pm free fiction will be flying to inboxes–always pleasant. I wish you a happy and productive Thursday, friends. We’ve almost, almost made it through the week.

Still, “weeks” are largely a concept beyond the dogs. They are concerned with the daily, like the walk they want now and are prancing with impatience to get to. I suppose I’d best get started, then.

Over and out.

Perspective and Rescue

Good morning! I woke up with Hall & Oates singing about your kiss is on my list, and whichever one of you gave me that earworm, I will have my revenge.

Ahem.

Yesterday was super productive, mostly because I got a run in. I just work better when I can pound the pavement, for however short a period. Yesterday was also nerve-wracking–Haggard Feathers goes paid-subscription this month, so I was doing the last bit of prep for that. One free post per month, the rest will be paid-subscriber-only, and I’ll be doing an open thread every Thursday for paid subscribers to ask me about writing and publishing.

I figure I’ll try it for a year and see how it works out. I like Substack‘s terms way better than Medium’s, and the fact that the former makes a point of not “owning” my data/content and the latter makes a point in the opposite direction has a lot to do with my willingness to experiment.

I also spent some time procrastinating (after the productivity, of course) with Canva templates. Graphic design is so not my strong point, but I like playing.

Isn’t that nice? It’s something I say a lot–sooner or later, the muscle inside your head that sees good writing material gets hypertrophied (and there’s a great deal of hyperplasia, too, but that’s beside the point) and everything becomes material. Which is great when something hurts like hell–thinking this will be great material helps provide perspective and gives the pain meaning, which is a step in ameliorating it. It’s not so great when one is relentlessly questioning one’s own happiness, but I consider it a small price to pay.

Of course other people’s mileage may vary, but the warning still stands. Sooner or later, all things serve the work.

Anyway, I’ve more Sons of Ymre to get done today–one character is about to rescue another from a burning car–and I’ve got to get some characters in HOOD rescued in their little escape pod. Rescue seems to be the theme of the day, which might bode ill for the dogs’ walk. If all else fails they can drag me home, though.

Let’s hope it’s not necessary; I’ve got so much to do today.

I’d best get started then, hadn’t I.

Maintenance and Morning

So last night, while I was doing some site maintenance, a plugin choked and tossed about twenty old, old posts–from 2017–into the blog-subscription-queue. I’m so sorry about that, guys–I hate getting my inbox snowed under, and I can only imagine how much you guys do. I apologize; that plugin has been told to go sit in the corner and THINK about what it’s done, and that was the end of my Wednesday.

I decided, after that, it was time to go to bed.

This morning went from fog to a pink-striped, cotton-candy sky. I watched the sun rise while lying warm and safe in bed, Miss B snuggled against my side and Boxnoggin snoring in a furry lump, as he is wont to do. Both dogs were worn out after yesterday’s rainy fun and games. I found out that yes, I do still need breakfast on running days, and furthermore found out that Boxnoggin can practically drag me home if necessary. (He didn’t have to… but he could have, and it was a comfort.)

Now I’m up, and have a few toads to swallow before I can get back to Sons of Ymre. I think that’ll be the thing I finish next. I have an idea of what I want to do with the story, which hinges on the fact that the Sons can’t really trust their own perceptions in certain cases. Being under constant siege from the whispers of a mad god has a certain effect on one, and it’ll be a hat trick to delineate the mounting dread of a certain main character. Especially once their safe haven is broken into and it becomes a road-trip book.

Other than that, Damage is with a beta reader, I’m clearing my submissions queue by the end of February (which means nothing will be out on sub come April), there’s Season Two of HOOD to CE, proof, and format, the third installment of Hostage to Empire to write now that I have the structure of the book decided, a monthly price on my writing advice column to decide upon–I’m thinking $6/mo–not to mention Season Three of HOOD to get underway–and Guilder to frame for it.

I’m swamped.

You know I like the feeling of having too much work; it’s oodles better than not enough. Some exciting stuff I can’t talk about is coming down the pike, and I might, might be able to squeeze in writing a good chunk of The Highlands War (that’s a fresh new Kaia Steelflower book, natch) for upcoming serial purposes. Don’t get your hopes up yet, though–I’ve so much else to do, I might not be able to, and of course the people who write to me demanding (not encouraging, not telling me how much they like Kaia’s adventures but flat-out DEMANDING) more of that world are doing more harm than good.

I haven’t forgotten that one person who was extremely vocal about demanding other Steelflower books/chapters was the person putting them up on thieving torrenting sites. (Yes, I include a nag and specific typos in certain things, so I can pinpoint who’s listing my stuff on pirate/thievery sites.) So, outright demanding that I write more Kaia makes me want to dig in my heels and is extremely counterproductive.

Anyway, the dogs need a brisk walk to shake off morning fidgets, and I need it in order to shake off the logy feeling of not nearly enough caffeine. I might make myself another jolt if I still feel woolly-headed when we come back home.

Again, I’m super sorry about last night’s snafu, guys. I take being invited into your inbox very seriously, and accidents are embarrassing. You can bet your sweet bippy I’ll be deleting that plugin during the next scheduled maintenance session.

And tomorrow’s Friday. It can’t come soon enough…

Soundtrack Monday: Chrysalis Heart

There were a lot of songs on the Incorruptible playlist. (I am now hearing Pete Puma say “a whoooooole lotta lumps.”) But pride of place for that particular book has got to be taken by Delerium’s Chrysalis Heart.

I listen to a lot of Delerium while writing. Sometimes it’s just background, but other times a song will slide through my ears and pierce the throbbing heart of a story, and this was one of those times. I had Michael Gabon first, of course, Jenna had to hang back and see if she could trust me before she’d consent to let a few scenes be told from her point of view.

Reliably, though, I could pop some Delerium on, wait for this particular track, and Jenna would come creeping softly like a stray cat from her hiding place. Patience was rewarded, for once–give her time, Michael kept saying, but dammit, I had a book to write.

In any case, I’m trying to shoehorn another Legion book in this year’s schedule. There’s a certain sassy EMT who knows to keep her mouth shut when strange things happen, and I think a certain Decurion’s going to stumble across her. Those two just need to marinate a little longer before I can find their through-line, I think.

In the meantime, enjoy the tunes.

While They Stay

Roaring lioness
© | Dreamstime Stock Photos

The weekend was… busy. The neighbor’s beloved Big Cat–more properly a dog in a feline body, one of the few cats I’ve ever met whose fuzzy belly is not a trap–came down late Saturday night with what we’re almost sure is saddle thrombosis. The vet at the animal hospital agrees, so now it’s just keeping him quiet and stable long enough to get him to his regular vet, where further decisions will be made.

Poor fellow. He’s got painkillers, so his human is probably feeling worse than he is at this point. I just wish I could punch the offending disorder right in the face, knocking it out of his poor kitty body and restoring him to health. May Bastet watch over him and his human today.

So that’s happening. I did get the winners of the Happy New Strange Angels Giveaway notified, so at least there’s that. And I got plenty of housework done in between trips to the animal hospital and helping with Big Cat. I swear, I need Monday and Tuesday to recover from every damn weekend lately.

I feel like I want to change up some of the Soundtrack Monday vibe, too, so I’ve got to think of that. Maybe I’ll highlight a song on a working soundtrack instead of one for a published book. Hm.

…I’d add more, but I’m too tired. I should probably think about breakfast; 6am was just too early for a nervous stomach to accept anything but coffee. I’m tetchy despite a short run. Maybe wanting to punch intangibles will go away when I get something solid in me, but I’m not betting on it.

The rest of today’s work involves outlining, after a fashion. I know I’m going to throw out the outline halfway through when the true shape of the work becomes visible, but before then it’s nice to have handholds, even if they’re entirely wrong. As in warfare, no plan survives contact with the enemy but planning is indispensable nonetheless.

Hug your furry friends today, my dears. They are with us so briefly, and give so much while they stay.

*sigh* Onwards, I guess. If I sit still and think about it, I’ll drown.