Now how did I miss THAT?

Had another one of those clarity moments on waking up about Wolf; I could NEVER have sent it in for Ellora’s Cavemen, because it was part of a series from the get-go. Somehow I missed this essential fact, even though I picked it out as my Cavemen entry story while knowing that I had another werewolf story that I’d been working on all along. It somehow never crossed my mind that the two were connected, because the characters and settings are different. But THE RULES. The fantasy world-building rules? The same.

This somewhat alters my timetable on that other wolf story, because now what I need to do is get them to both add up to 50K combined (or write a third novella/Quickie in the same world) and voila, EC print book.

I really don’t know how I missed that.

Happy anniversary

to my husband. Four years today! You’d think a romance writer would come up with something eloquent and emotional, full of properly beautiful sentiment to suit the occasion, but then, I started off in comic greeting cards. However, we’re moving and I’m so tired it’s painful, so I’ll just stick to the basics and spare the world the results of Tired Wit.

Happy anniversary. Let’s do this again next year.

Wolf status

It’s not done. I realized this morning, laying in bed, that I need another chapter in between the last one and the currently second-to-last. There are things I don’t have room to fully resolve there and I need more room. So, another chapter to add. Which should fix my problem with the ending not feeling punchy enough. I always find if some critical scene feels too soft, it’s because some point leading up to that moment didn’t get enough build-up.

I’m glad I can see what needs to be done there, but I’m nearly certain this means Wolf will NOT be ready in time for the 2006 Cavemen anthology deadline. Which is tomorrow. I haven’t had the time to put in over the last two weeks due to getting ready to move. It’s just bad timing this year, and I knew it would be tight if I didn’t turn a story in before I had the baby. I thought I could make it, but…looks like close but not quite.

There are advantages to this. Wolf is set in a very complex and interesting world and I’d like to spend more time there. Since anthology stories are not supposed to be part of a series, not entering it leaves me free to go further with this world. Also, it removes the 12K limit and means if I need to go longer to fully develop this story, I can. A Quickie can go up to 15K and if I go over that, it’ll be a novella. Also, it’s likely to release sooner if I submit it alone than if it goes into a 2006 anthology. In other words, missing the Cavemen deadline isn’t the end of the world and might turn out to be very much to my advantage.

I’ll see what I can get done in the next two days, but given the level of activity going on with the move preparation and the amount of work still remaining on Wolf, I’m going to mentally write off making the deadline. I’d rather make sure the story is fully told than rush it, and the Cavemen anthologies are a voluntary deadline. I’m not breaking an obligation by missing it.

Cat has a contract and the joy of doing things backwards

It’s official, Catalyst is a Cerridwen Press book. The contract is in today’s mail! Yes, I’d already talked about it with my editor, but then Raelene went on vacation and my editor went on vacation so I thought it might be the end of the first week of October before it was official. I’m very happy it didn’t take that long! Yet another reason I love dealing with EC, that’s how efficient they are even when people are dealing with post-vacation backlog. The business runs on rails.

Catalyst is my backwards book; the first one I ever wrote and the last to get a contract. It probably could have had a contract sooner, but it needed major revision after I learned enough to know how to fix it and I let it sit on the back burner while I worked on other things because last year, I was revisioned out.

Not only is its publication date backwards, but I released it independently before I submitted it to raise funds for Katrina relief. (Glad I did, too; every dollar matters and people arriving at shelters were in dire straits. “Lost their shorts” is not a joke down there right now. It’s the literal truth.) I did everything with this book backwards, but I love it and I love that it’s ending up an official Cerridwen book where it can raise many more dollars, because the double whammy of Rita on top of Katrina means the money is needed more than ever. Every buck I can raise and send on with this book makes a difference. And that’s backwards, too; the problems of fictional people going to work to solve real problems for real people.

This book is not the only backward thing in our lives right now. After owning homes as single people, we looked at the latest batch of places we could afford to own now, looked at each other, and said, “What we really want is to go rent a nice, clean, new, modern, SAFE apartment.” I know, most people live in apartments when they’re single. Then they get married and have kids and buy a house. Well, now that we have kids, we don’t have time to maintain a yard and a house. And we also aren’t in a position to deal well with surprises like a new furnace or a new roof. In an apartment, those things are somebody else’s worry. So we’re taking a step backwards and we plan to be apartment residents as soon as we can sign on the dotted line. We’re incredibly happy about this decision, too.

Doing things backwards can sometimes be the only direction to follow your bliss. Don’t let conventional wisdom tell you forward is the only way. We’re living proof that you can go backwards and arrive exactly where you want to be.

Things that are worse than moving

1. Cancer
2. Triple-bypass surgery
3. I was going to say having wisdom teeth extracted, but on second thought, that came with lots of really great pain killers and moving doesn’t so…
4. Being wiped out by a natural disaster
5. Being stranded on a desert island with only one book, and it’s Ulysses by James Joyce. (Spare me the explanations, I’ve heard them all and I still consider it the most unreadable book ever written.)

OK, so there ARE worse things than moving. Good. I’m all cheered up now. And since I’m going to need more cheering up after filling some more boxes, tell me what book you would most hate to be stranded on a desert island with. And what book you’d love to have most.