Edits to the left of me! Edits to the right! And 20 years later…

by | Feb 24, 2005 | Uncategorized

Got the revisions back on my Cavemen anthology story that releases in June. I’m putting aside BIAW temporarily to get that done. It should be pretty much accepting changes (where Wonder Editor fixed my punctuation and inconsistent verb tenses) but I need a new title in a hurry. Turns out there’s a recent anthology with a too-similar title. I had a couple of other working titles for this project that I’ll dig up, and I’ll see if anything better comes to mind while I revise and get it ready to return.

I am still on track for BIAW. Hurrah! Well, I did want to clear the decks and this will do it. I’ll have nothing between me and finishing Jane’s Addiction, the next installment in When Sparks Fly.

20 years later: it’s dawned on me recently that 1985 plus 2005 equals 20 year high school reunion. So I went out and signed up for one of those find your classmates websites and lo, there’s a reunion in the works for August! I posted a thing that said I didn’t know if I’d make it (it’s a month after my due date), but here’s what I’m doing now and love to hear from anybody. Not one hour later I get an email from one of my best high school friends! Turns out she’s living about 4 hours away in the same state so even if I don’t make the reunion we can get together. How cool!

And here’s my public service announcement for the reunion planners: there are about 300-odd graduating members missing and not heard from yet. Soooo…if you or anybody you know is a Capital High School class of 1985 graduate, go register for the reunion! It’s free to sign up with the site, you don’t have to commit to going, but check in and say hi. We’re all curious about what you’ve been doing.

Of course, this led to lots of Deep Thought on my part about what I’ve been doing the last 20 years. “Learning to write” sounds glossed over, but that does sum it up. I’m a self-actualization Mazlow freak and I do believe life is about becoming more your authentic self. My authentic self is a writer so that’s what I’ve been working on all this time. In the process of growing into myself, I’ve been discarding all the pieces that weren’t really me.

Anyway, I’ve put the August reunion down on my calendar with a tentative maybe. If I make the trip it seems I ought to combine it with business, so I will put out some feelers about doing a joint signing at Borders or Waldenbooks or both.

Love and Rockets now available!

by | Feb 23, 2005 | Uncategorized

Today’s the big day. Rockets has been moved from “coming soon” to “new releases” on my front page. Happy day!

BIAW continues to go well. Met day 2’s goal. In fact, if I wasn’t trying to add 10K to Dangerous Games, the revisions would be done and returned already. This is a solid, tight story. I think there were 15 edits in the entire manuscript, which I point to as proof that BIAW works. Yes, I did my own revisions and cleanup before submitting it, but I wrote it fast. That and I keep honing my craft so I make fewer mistakes. I really do believe fast writing gets to good, strong stuff, though. You don’t have time to second-guess or back away from it.

Don’t know how productive I’ll be today but I plan to keep working towards my goal. I am giving myself a little time to enjoy success, though. This is a landmark event and I want to celebrate it, not just rush on. A book I wrote 8 years ago because there wasn’t anything else like it and I wanted to read that kind of book has reached publication after I don’t even remember how many rejections. Whoopee!

You can launch your own fireworks display to celebrate with me. Happy Wednesday, everybody.

BIAW, Rockets release, RTB

by | Feb 21, 2005 | Uncategorized

Day 1 BIAW went well. I started off by doing the math and breaking it down to pages per day to finish the entire project in a week. I met my 1st day goal and I see two key scenes so far that I can expand and enhance to add to my word count. I’ve also been thinking about the final chapter (which may run to two chapters given some of the scenes that have come to mind for it). Lots of good stuff coming out!

Rockets releases tomorrow. I’m very excited about that. There won’t be an RT ad or review until the Sept. issue, but other reviews should start coming in soon. Did I mention I love the cover? There’s a beautiful animated banner, too, courtesy of my genius husband. I’ve been amusing myself by playing it. : )

Other stuff: I’m fascinated by the amount of discussion around blogs about Romancing the Blog. That alone tells me it’s off to a good start. I know I gave a lot of thought to my first column and what it ought to reflect. I finally decided to write something like I’d write for my own blog but that would stand alone on the grounds that I was invited to be a columnist based on the contents of my blog. So presumably that’s what I’m there to contribute. It’s a neat thing, so many different people, different aspects of the industry, different perspectives all giving their view in one place. If nothing else, we can clearly see how broad and diverse the industry is. I’m looking forward to hearing from the other columnists and seeing what takes shape as it goes forward.

BIAW starts today!

by | Feb 20, 2005 | Uncategorized

I’ve joined a new BIAW group that goes once a month on the 3rd week. Thanks to Sally Painter for telling me about it! (Sally also does a paranormal workshop, check her site out.) Dangerous Games is my BIAW project, since I have lots of new words to add in the course of doing the revisions and I’m excited about that.

I love BIAW for many reasons. The goal-setting, the focus, the comraderie. But most of all I love to write fast. There’s no time to stop and self-censor or judge or dismiss something as ridiculous. You just get the words down. So all this week I’ll be enjoying getting the words down, and the following week my focus will be on cleanup and making sure I’ve got a nice, coherent, error-free complete revision that addresses everything detailed. But this week is for writing at high speed!

I love that I get to add another chapter to this book. In fact, I’m trying to figure out how I can add two more chapters. Because I love these characters and their world and I really hated to leave it. I have a sequel in mind and maybe I can use this opportunity to set that up a little more.

Off to write! Happy Monday to everybody.