Whet Your Appetite

I don't always plug my book releases here, but Whetting the Appetite just hit the distribution markets and I am so in love with this book, it isn't even funny. It's a collection of 46 ultra-short stories (most of them no more than a page or two) written by KT (in her writing disguise of Lynn Townsend) and me over a period of about six months, and trust me, we've got it all!

It's gender-mixed -- the characters are male and female and trans* and up to your own interpretation (and not all of them are even human). It's orientation-blind -- gay, straight, bisexual, or even more complicated than that. Their ages range from new adult to end-of-life seniors. The relationships swing from the barest beginnings of new romance to the ins and outs of long-term commitments. The genres bounce from contemporary to historical to fantasy to sci-fi to steampunk to horror. The eroticism takes you from warm glances to scorching encounters to sizzling BDSM.

There's something here for everyone, and I'm pretty sure I mean everyone. Please check it out and pass the word!

Book trailer

Postcards (Taste-test the entire table of contents!)

Publisher's link (including excerpts!)

Amazon / Kindle

Barnes & Noble / Nook

All Romance eBooks (your choice of format)

MarsCon 2014 Report

This is going to be long. I mean, long. With links and pictures and all kinds of stuff. You are warned.

I don't even know where to begin. I always enjoy cons, but I don't think I've ever had such a great time at one before.

And I'm an introvert, but I think last night I was feeling just a tingle of the phenomenon that KT (an extrovert's extrovert) has told me about so often, where a big event like this ends and instead of being tired and ready to recover, she's aching for more, more, more.

I think it has to do with the kind of introvert that I am. I do not make friends easily. I'm not shy, per se. I don't have a problem talking to people, usually. But I am really bad at starting conversations. It's much easier for me to be in a social situation if there's someone else present that I know who can help me break the ice. Get the ball rolling, so to speak.

And this year, aside from about an hour early on Friday evening before people really started to arrive, I don't think I went anywhere that I didn't encounter someone I knew. Seriously. Half the time I got on the damn elevator, there was someone in there I knew, let alone any of the panels or performances or activities.

And not just the usual suspects, either. Of course there was what I think of as my "usual" crew of friends that grew out of school friendships -- KT and Kevin, DJ and Ora, Greg, and T. Elizabeth, Jenn and Brian all came to MarsCon for the first time this year, and I'm pretty sure they're hooked -- Brian, at least, is already planning a costume for next year. And I had family there as well -- John and Sam, and my kids, and Matt (who I suppose is no longer technically family, but I still think of him that way by way of his being, y'know, the father of my children). And there was also the usual collection of the friends I used to see more often but now run into mainly at cons and the like -- Elliot and Marcy and John D. and John H.

And this year, thanks in large part to KT's obsession with music and filk, I had "music friends" like Jonah and Mikey and Chuck and Bert. And thanks partly to my participation as a guest last year, I had "author friends" like Amy and Kat and Michael. Also, I made new friends of both sorts, like Danny and Nobilis.

There were also random other folks -- people who I've worked with, for instance, and with whom I am Facebook friends, some of whom I didn't even know were geeks, like John T. and Caren and Erika.

There was even an occasion where a bunch of us were sitting around a table and I was the only one who knew everyone.

So pretty much the only times I felt like I was on my own were times that I was actually alone. Which weren't many, because I was insanely busy!

It. Was. Wonderful.

So. Ready for the blow-by-blow? (Click on pictures to embiggen.)

Friday

I took a half-day from work. Came home, ate a good lunch, finished packing, fed the cat, and drove the whopping four miles to the hotel. I got checked in, picked up my badge, and spent most of the rest of the afternoon kind of lounging in my room, until I started to see Facebook posts indicating that people were beginning to arrive. So I changed into my Femme Fatale Red Riding Hood outfit and headed down to the lobby.

This was my one slow period; I did a tour of the public areas and said hi to a few people, then sat in the "pit" (a slightly sunken lounge area in the hotel lobby) for maybe forty-five minutes or so until I spotted some friends arriving.

Around 6 or so, I got a text from Matt that he and the kids had arrived, so I wandered up to the kids' meet-and-greet party. The kids' activities this year were mostly Harry Potter/Hogwarts themed -- the meet-and-greet started with a decorate-your-own wand activity. Then the kids got to choose their Patronuses and draw them on wooden pendants. They had a game that involved using their new wands to keep balloons in the air, and then they had ice cream sundaes.

I left that to go catch the already-in-progress Friday night show (a medley of entertainers), where I joined a whole bunch of friends and we had enormous fun until I had to slip out a bit early to make my way to my first two events.

The first was a re-imagining of the old game show Match Guest. The MC would read out a sentence or two with a blank in it, and everyone in the room would write down our answers to fill in the blanks. Audience members whose answers more-or-less matched what panelists answered got points; at the end, the member with the most points won, essentially, a MarsCon gift certificate. (There were actually two winners who split the prize, because even after three tie-breaker rounds, they were still tied.) This was the "adult" version, in which we did not even think about using any answers that were not at least R-rated. It was hilarious and fun, and I very much hope I can do it again next year!

Immediately following that, there was "Erotic Fairy Tale Rewrites". Each panelist selected a fairy tale to rewrite, and the audience supplied us with: an extra character, a sexy situation, a location, and an object that had to be included. While we wrote, the audience played MadLibs, and then we each read our resulting stories. I was very pleased with how mine turned out, and I'll post it over on the writing blog on Wednesday, so if you're interested, be on the lookout.

That wrapped up earlier than expected, so I gleefully skipped down the hall to jump into Filk and Cookies. I arrived just in time to catch Sam singing her parody of "My Favorite Things" (sideways video posted by my brother), and a bit later, she also sang her parody of "The Impossible Dream" (video posted by me).

Filk and Cookies was supposed to end at 1am, but Mikey and Jonah kept goading each other (and the other guests who brought instruments along) and then there was the whole Corn Palace incident (you had to be there) and they didn't kick us out of the room until well after 2. Still giggling, I stumbled back to my room and went to bed.

You may have noticed that I didn't mention dinner in there anywhere. Which would be because I didn't have any. I had some ice cream at the kids' meet-and-greet, and KT brought me a clementine to the fairy tale rewrite panel, and I had a cookie and some soda at Filk and Cookies, though, so I guess that counts. Right?

Saturday

You'd think that after all that, I'd sleep in, but no; I woke up at about 7:15. I did lounge around in bed for a bit, and then I took a shower and made myself some coffee and got dressed. I left the room around 8:45 or so and headed downstairs to see the kids get sorted into their Hogwarts houses for the day's kids' activities.

I ran into some friends in the hallway, so I missed seeing Penny draw Slytherin, but Matt told me she handled her disappointment with aplomb. I did arrive just as Jess was also sorted into Slytherin, though (which Matt "helped" happen, because after all the Sorting Hat does take your preferences into consideration), and Penny seemed pretty pleased that she'd at least have her friend with her. And then I sidled up to her and suggested that maybe she could pretend she was actually a Gryffindor who was in Slytherin as a spy, and that notion also cheered her considerably. Alex got into Gryffindor, which I think he was pleased about mostly because Penny told him that was good.

A gajillion kudos to the volunteer team who put the "Hogwarts" kids' activity room together, because it was amazing. Not for the first time, I wished I was a kid so I could participate! (I did get sorted, along with several other adults, when all the kids were done and they had a ton of leftover badges.)

They had a "library" in the center, at which each kid was given a small, hardcover blank book. They made their own bookplates for the front, and there were crayons and markers for them to use to decorate it with. Each corner of the room had a "class" stationed there, and they rotated the kids around the stations in their houses, to keep any one station from being swamped, which was a great idea. They had Runes, History, Magical Creatures, and Potions.

Later in the day, they had a Triwizard Tournament, which I gather was sort of a scavenger hunt thing. I missed that because I was sitting on a panel at the same time. It sounded like fun, though.

Right around noon, I wandered back up to my room to collect my publicity handouts and stuff, and also to call my mom (my dad had been admitted to the hospital on Thursday night with several small blood clots in one lung and in his leg, and while he had improved enough for me to feel okay about going to the con, I still wanted to check in). I was in the room for maybe fifteen minutes, and then I went back down and joined a few friends to listen to some music -- the Blibbering Humdingers, Danny Birt, and Jonah Knight.

Then I set up in with a bunch of other authors for signings, though mostly no one even came over to my end of the room -- the people who came in for signings were pretty much there just for the guests of honor. But it was still an enjoyable hour that I spent talking with Nobilis Reed, and toward the end, Caren came in and pity-bought a book from me and we talked for a while, too, so it was still fun.

After that, I sat on a panel to talk about the Hunger Games series -- both the movies and the books -- and that turned out to be tons of fun, too, with a very smart and thoughtful panel and a lively-but-polite audience.

Then I went upstairs to the Con Suite, because aside from that cup of coffee I'd had in my room that morning and a cupcake during Jonah's concert, I hadn't eaten anything all day, and it was now 4 in the afternoon. Unfortunately, because it was 4 in the afternoon, the Con Suite didn't have out any "real" food, so I had some chips and some Chex mix and a cookie. And I sat down with Amy Moler and KT and eventually a whole bunch of other folks as well, including Jenn and Brian and Kevin and Nobilis and I'm absolutely certain that I'm forgetting someone (Greg, maybe?) but the point is: a bunch of us. And we talked about writing and other things for an hour, until it was time for Amy to go collect her family and get some dinner, and the rest of us headed off to other assorted entertainments. Primarily, the big Saturday night entertainment, starting with Mikey Mason's concert, and then segueing into the costume contest.

Alas, technical difficulties in setting up the stage kept us standing in the hall for almost 40 minutes after the concert was supposed to start, and made the concert run well over its planned time. I had to leave as soon as Mikey finished playing in order to get to my evening panels, where I sat at the head of a table with several other romance and erotica professionals to talk about writing and publishing, and the appeal of fairy tale erotica, and sex in roleplaying, and by the time we got to the panel running from 11-midnight, we were so tired that it turned into us just taking questions from the audience and talking about whatever we all felt like talking about. (I'll probably go into a little more detail about these panels over on the writing blog post later this week. And Nobilis recorded some of it for his podcasts, so eventually he will post that, and I will probably put a link over on the writing blog as well, if you're interested.)

I was so tired when that ended that I went back to my room and went straight to bed, without looking around for other activities or parties.

Yes, I missed dinner again. After also missing breakfast and lunch. But I'd had a cupcake, some snacks around four, and I had a drink -- the hotel bar named a delicious fruity concoction after Mikey Mason, and he spent the whole weekend reminding everyone to "put Mikey Mason in your mouth" and that "I'm delicious!" -- during Mikey's concert.

Sunday

Once again with the not sleeping in. I woke up even earlier, not long after six, though I stayed in bed for a good while again.

Sunday is usually a lot slower, programming-wise, than the other days, so I took my time getting dressed and packing up, and I reminded myself to go to the Con Suite for breakfast (whoo, an actual meal for the first time in nearly 48 hours!) where I ran into KT, so I sat down and chatted with her while I ate my eggs and ham. (MarsCon has the best Con Suite ever; I was just too busy to visit it at mealtimes.)

Eventually, I took all my stuff down to the car and plopped down in the lobby to wait for the panel I was interested in actually being an audience member of, but Nobilis came over and talked to me for a while, and just as he was leaving, Matt and the kids came in, and the kids piled on me, so I sat and played with them for a while instead. Eventually, I walked them back down to where Matt was volunteering in the family-oriented games room, and schlepped back across the hotel (it's a huge, sprawling building) to be on the panel of writers for the PG version of Fairy Tale Rewrites. (That one wasn't quite as good -- possibly because I was sleep-deprived -- but I'll include at the end of this post because I thought it was still fairly clever. Though if there had been judging of any sort, I'm pretty certain that Danny Birt would've taken the prize for his extremely dark and grim version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears -- or more precisely, Goldilocks Gets Her Revenge.)

Then I wandered on over to the main programming hall for the closing concert, featuring the Blibbering Humdingers, Jonah Knight, Mikey Mason, and Danny Birt (yeah, the same Danny who'd just kicked my ass at flashfic; he's a talented guy). Everyone was punchy and tired (except Jonah, who had more energy at this show than he'd exhibited all the rest of the con) but that just added to the fun; they were teasing each other and playing around and being silly and it was brilliant.

I took a video of Mikey's trademark 80s Cartoon Theme Songs that, I think, really captures the essence of the whole concert. (That little "ho" contest? Was sort of instigated by me, because I'd been talking to Mikey about it earlier in the day. And that's Sam -- my sister-in-law -- who won it.)

When the con was over, Elizabeth, Jenn, Brian, and Jenn's cousin Chris (who came in just for the one day) and I all went out for a late lunch/early dinner, and that felt pretty con-like, too, even though we weren't in the hotel anymore.

(And after that, I went down to the hospital to visit my dad, who was doing oodles better, and bored enough to be happy to listen to me babble about the con for an hour.)

I'm already looking forward to next year, and I really feel rejuvenated and re-inspired as a writer.

It was the Best Con Ever.

MarsCon 2014 fairy tale rewrite

Original story (chosen by me): Aladdin
Additional elements (chosen by the audience):
A character: Ninja
A setting: Titanic on a good day
A problem: No light
An object: Picture of Mary Todd Lincoln (a callback joke to the erotic rewrites on Friday night)

The story (written in about 20 minutes -- typos are fixed here, but nothing else):

The ninja lurked in a shadowy corner of the Titanic's empty ballroom, and concentrated on his mission -- the theft of a valuable portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln. The gentleman who owned the portrait kept it with him all the time, except during his nightly promenade of the deck. During that time, the ninja would crawl from the ballroom's vents into the gentleman's stateroom, take the portrait, and stash it in the hiding place he had prepared in the second dining room.

The hour was at hand. The ninja crept from his corner and toward the vent... When suddenly, the lights extinguished, all at once.

The ninja was well-acquainted with darkness, being a ninja, but this sudden loss was a bit surprising. Before he could react, though, a brilliant light appeared in the center of the room, brighter than any electric, billowing smoke began the fill the room, and a booming voice declared, "I claim this room for the palace of my master, Aladdin!"

"Wait!" the ninja cried. "At least let me leave first!"

From the smoke, a face emerged, cruel and cold and as tall as the ninja's entire body. "Why should I grant YOUR wish?" the djinn demanded. "You are not my master." The djinn's eyes narrowed. "In fact, my master will require servants for his palace. You will do nicely."

"But I am not a servant," the ninja protested. "I am a thief, a spy, and a sometime assassin!"

"Who am I to question my master's needs?" the djinn said. "My master commanded me to build him a palace, and to that end I have claimed this ballroom and everything in it, and that includes you."

"But why can you not simply create the palace from the ether?" the ninja asked.

The djinn snorted. "Have YOU ever created something from the ether? It's a LOT easier to just steal what's needed."

Well, that was something the ninja could understand, anyway. This Aladdin who commanded the djinn seemed to be someone the ninja could get along with, and to tell the truth, he was tired of running all over the world to steal boring antiquities. "Maybe I could help you with the rest of the palace," he admitted. "What else do we need to steal?"

"A hundred concubines."

The ninja smiled and stepped into the djinn's smoke, and together, they disappeared, along with the Titanic's beautiful ballroom.

End.

There Is Too Much; Let Me Sum Up.

Holidays ate my brain?

Nope. Nope. No good. No excuses. I was just now looking at my posting numbers for the last few years (you know, the ones you can clearly see in the Archives sidebar) and trying to figure out just what, exactly, happened to cut my number of posts to a TENTH of what it was five years ago.

And the answer is, well, quite a lot of things, really. I had a second kid, and that ate up a lot of energy. Then I became published, and about a year later, started proofing and editing, and those ate up a lot of energy (and also siphoned off about a post a week to the writing blog). I started working part-time, technically, and it was very weird, how much that one extra day off every two weeks rattled my schedule. And then my marriage fell apart, and I couldn't talk about that for a while, but I couldn't really think about anything else, and so I was all but silenced. And then once the fallout from that settled...

Well, the habit of writing regularly had kind of fallen apart. I'd gotten used to making short observations on Twitter rather than long reports here. And then I moved to Facebook, and found that I really liked the fact that any given short observation could turn into an actual conversation. Blogging is great and all, but I don't get a lot of feedback.

I'm not ready to give up blogging entirely, but I don't know if I'm ready to jump back in with both feet, either.

But I might as well put up a general life update...

Did I mention that B and I broke up? Yeah, that happened back in August. (I remember because it actually happened on Penny's birthday.) It was entirely drama-free. We'd both pretty much simultaneously come to the conclusion that we'd been each others' rebound relationship, and that we'd done as much rebounding as we were ready for, and therefore the relationship had run its course. No biggie. We're still friends.

I haven't dated anyone else since, though. I got back on OKCupid for a while, got annoyed by how everyone I looked at seemed either shallow or pretentious, and decided that maybe I just wasn't in the right mindframe for dating. I feel a bit lonely from time to time (dammit but I'd wanted an actual date for Christmas Town this year!) but all in all, I'm surprisingly okay with it. At least emotionally.

The divorce is official now; it came through back in October, though my lawyer still has not sent me a hard copy of the court decree/order. I have a PDF scan of it, though.

The kids continue to surprise me with their awesomeness on a regular basis. I was expecting Christmas afternoon and evening to be full of whining -- you know, once the presents have been opened and they realize they're not getting anything else for the rest of the day? But they actually settled down to playing with their new things, and they were great for the whole day after Christmas, as well, which I found really shocking.

Penny got her hair cut to just above shoulder-length recently. It looks fabulous on her, and is much easier to keep neat. I wish she'd agreed to do it years ago.

Alex managed to stay up all the way to midnight on New Year's Eve, for the first time this year. (He was out cold by 12:05, though.)

The house... I'm very pleased with the house right now, actually, as long as I don't allow myself to look at the mess in playroom and kids' rooms. I expect to need a new water heater by the end of this year, though. (My dad told me, when I got my Christmas check from him and Mom, that he'd considered writing "Happy Water Heater" on the bottom of it instead of "Merry Christmas". I laughed, mostly because there's no way my Christmas check will cover a new water heater... Especially if you consider that they have a lifespan of approximately 15 years, which means the new one is going to endure both kids' teenage years, and is therefore going to have to be pretty bronky.)

I've seen quite a few movies lately, at least for me -- Thor 2, the second Hobbit movie, Frozen, the second Hunger Games movie... Wow, there's a lot of second movies in there, aren't there?

The editing gig is going pretty well; the writing thing... has stalled nearly as badly as this blog. Though I had a long novella/short novel come out in November have a story in an anthology that's coming out this spring or summer, and I'm trying to get on the ball about writing some more, even if it's just a tiny tiny bit each week. It all adds up, right?

In the meantime, I'll be a guest at MarsCon again this year, with a truly insane (for me) schedule. (And keeping in mind that I'll probably be spending a good chunk of the days shepherding one child or the other around, too.)

And I think that just about sums up my life at the moment.

Checking In

So, life. Life continues apace.

The kids continue much as reported in the previous update. Penny's birthday is two weeks from today and she's been doing a countdown for over a week. I don't have any really big exciting presents for her, so I hope she's not too disappointed. Both of them have been taking advantage of summer to stay up late -- I don't make Alex go to bed until after 8:30, and Penny's been staying up until 10. I expect there to be much wailing and gnashing of teeth when I make them dial it back for school, even if it's only going to be by half an hour.

Most of my energy has been going to the house lately, quite honestly. The front porch has been repaired, and the fix on the dining room floor was supposed to start today, so I scrambled to get the painting done over the weekend... and two hours after we finished, my contractor emailed to tell me another job had been postponed due to weather and so he wouldn't be able to start my floor until next week. The forecast for this week is fairly reasonable, though, so hopefully that won't push out too much further.

I'm pretty happy with my paint, though! John and Sam came over to help me, for which I am eternally grateful. (It was supposed to be John and Dad, but earlier in the week Dad was helping John repair a broken gutter and his cheap-ass ladder crumpled under him and he fell. He got away with only a broken finger, but it sounded pretty harrowing -- Dad's brains got scrambled enough by the fall that he still doesn't remember anything between standing on the ladder and being in the emergency room a couple of hours later.) Anyway, here's some crappy cell phone pictures of the new paint:

Just those two walls are blue in the dining room; everything else is creamy white, about half a shade lighter than what was in there before. And a lot of the blue will be covered up when I can put the hutch back in the room and hang my pictures back up, so it won't look quite so overwhelming then. I'm VERY pleased with the yellow accent wall in the kitchen, though. I've got a picture to hang on it that's going to make it just sing.

I'm pondering alternate placement of my furniture and other less-intense home improvement projects (e.g., new fixtures, wall stickers) for when this is all done.

It's been just over a year since Matt moved out, so I called my lawyer last week and he's prepping the documents so we can get the ball rolling on the divorce. Not much to say there, really; it feels like a non-event, a bureaucratic ribbon on a package already purchased.

I'm editing a lot and writing a little; check the sidebar for my latest story release. Human Aspect is a little more wide-audience than most of my other stuff, being a coming-of-age fantasy story. And KT/Lynn and I are buffing up the shorts we've been writing all year so we can get them assembled into a collection and submit it. I'm really excited about that one -- it's all over the map, and was oodles of fun to do.

And I'm still crocheting, though I haven't accomplished much in the last month, partly because I've lost time to rearranging stuff and furniture to clear the dining room and kitchen for the repair/renovation, and partly because my initial idea for Yog-Sothoth turned out to be way harder to do than I anticipated, so I had to scrap it and start over:

And that's about it at the moment. I keep telling myself that I should go back to writing here every day, just so I don't lose track of the minutiae, the passing thoughts and the anecdotes. But it may be a while before I feel settled enough to make myself get back into that habit.

EDIT (March 2020): Seven years later, I am STILL getting fairly frequent requests for the patterns for these guys. So I've uploaded my patterns to Google Docs (the Cthulhu pattern was something I found online and since seems to have been taken down, alas) and you can get it RIGHT HERE.

New Year's Resolutions

Here's a funny little take-away I got from, of all places, my day job: You shouldn't have too many serious goals at one time. Our annual performance review process allows for up to – but not exceeding – five major goals for each year, and my last several supervisors (I get a new one each year, thanks to the Major Corporate Machine's constant reorganizing) have stressed that you really should try to have no more than three.

So I've spent the last few weeks thinking about my New Year's resolutions, and pondering what are the priorities I have in my life right now, and what are the few things that I really care about changing. What are the things that I'm willing to put some energy into improving? At the moment, my priority list looks like this:

Effort #1: Stop watching so much freaking TV. I've lost whole days to the tube, lately. I'm trying to get caught up on a bunch of shows, and they're great and fun, but in the meantime, I'm not doing anything productive. This, by the way, also includes watching DVDs and shows on YouTube. Basically, any time spent passively watching a screen. It does not, however, include watching movies with friends or on a date, because those are social activities.

Effort #2: Be more productive. There are a gajillion projects I want or need to do. Writing and editing. Promotion of my writing, which is a whole job unto itself. I have an embarrasingly high stack of books I've been meaning to read. Scrapbooking, a little, at least to finish out the year in which I last left off. Re-organize and redecorate the house (or at least parts of it). Some of these are open-ended tasks, some of them are huge, and some just require me to get off my ass and do them.

Effort #3: Be more social. This falls into three sub-categories:
Effort #3a: Family: I'd like to spend more time with my brother and sister-in-law, who are actually fantastic people and who only live half an hour away, which makes it completely stupid that I only see them a few times a year. I'd also like to make a point of talking to my parents (who likewise live only half an hour away) at least once a week.
Effort #3b: Friends: I'd like to spend more time with various friends. It's come to my attention lately that, due to my proper Southern upbringing, I am intensely uncomfortable with inviting myself along on events or over to friends' houses, while the truth is that most of my friends are not only open but enthusiastic about this sort of thing.
Effort #3c: Dating: I've been separated for the best part of half a year now, and I think I'm ready to look around out there again. It's been entirely too long since I've dated, so it's hard to make resolutions about this, but I want to remember not to simply settle, and not to neglect my friends in the event that someone wonderful does come along.

Effort #4: Be a better parent. I waste far too much of my time with my kids. Penny was unequivocally enthusiastic about the time I had lunch with her at school; I'd like to do that more often. I'd also like to get them excited about things and do things with them that get us all out of the house once in a while.

Note #1: I'm okay with having four goals instead of just three, because accomplishing the less-TV goal will actually make it easier to work on the others: by watching less TV, I will have more time to spend on the projects and people on which my other three goals are focused.

Note #2: I feel like working on my weight should be somewhere on that list – exercising more and/or eating better – it falls pretty low on my list of priorities. It shouldn't, but it just does. It's not like I'm going to completely forget about my health or anything, but I'm going to give myself permission not to stress over it this year. Maybe, as I get wrapped up in projects and people and spend more time doing things instead of staring at a screen and chewing my cud, some health improvement will happen organically. And if not, then that's okay, too, and I can worry about diet and exercise again next year, when all this stuff has gotten wrapped into my personal patterns and habits.

It's a lot of stuff to wrap my head around, and it's all but impossible to make rules covering everything here and expect to actually follow them all. I've been turning the whole mess around in my head for a while, as I said, and here's the ideas I've come up with to (hopefully) make it work, along with their explanations and notes:

The List: Because my schedules and deadlines are so ephemeral, there's no way to just assign myself a day-by-day task list. So each day, I will evaluate my situation, and assign myself a reasonable productivity list. That list will include not only big project stuff (e.g., edit 2 stories, spend 2 hours writing, scrapbook 2 months' worth of pictures, etc.) but also the little, routine stuff (e.g., take out the trash, write a blog entry, make lunches, etc.) that has to fit into my schedule. The list will take into account whether I happen to have the kids that day, planned activities, and my general well-being. (As I write this, for example, I've got a sinus infection or a cold or something similar, and so I give myself permission to be a little slack on the productivity front – not to skip it entirely, because I'm not that sick, but to choose tasks that suit my current mental and physical state. I can do some editing right now, for example, but I feel way too mentally blah to want to do anything creative, like writing.) They may include large tasks (e.g., clean out and re-organize the pantry) or small ones (e.g., make an appointment with the eye doctor). There will be no time limit, either minimum or maximum. The goal here is a list of things that I can look at an think, “Yes, that seems like a day that was not wasted.”

TV: Until the day's productivity goals are done, I get no more than 1 hour of TV. (Yes, I'm letting myself have some TV before I do my work. I sometimes want to watch YouTube videos in the morning while the kids are eating breakfast, or unwind with a show while I have dinner by myself.) Once the day's goals are all met, I can watch all the TV I want. (Nyah.)

Parenting: One day in the next week, one of my goals will be to make up a schedule for things to do with the kids. That schedule will include: 1 day each month that I will have lunch with each kid (2 lunches/month, not including summer break), and 1 day each month that we will do an out-of-house activity, along with a list of activity options. Once that schedule is made up, I'll load those dates and activities into my calendars so that I remember to do them. That's not saying I won't need to change some of them, but it takes less inertia to move a date than to create it.

Social Stuff: This one is trickier, because it necessarily involves other people. And unlike my children, I don't have significant control over my friends' and families' schedules. I do want to take at least two solo long-weekend type vacations this year, at least one of which will be to an author's convention (GayRomLit or somesuch, depending on how the schedules fall out) where I can meet some of the Torquere staff in person; the other will either be to visit a friend or see a new place; I'm not sure yet. I want to make a date with KT and Kevin to come down to their house every so often (once a month? Every six weeks? Eight?) during the week, on a night I'm child-free, just to hang out. And ditto for hanging out with Jenn and Brian. And my friends who live in town, too, but those are easier to arrange and don't so much need to be scheduled to remind me to do it. But I need to remind myself that it's okay to say, “Hey, what's going on; can I come over and hang out?” and that if the answer is that they're too busy, it doesn't mean I'm being rude and needy; it means THEY'RE TOO BUSY, and I should try again another time.

So there are my New Year's resolutions. I don't know if I'll stick to it. Sometimes, YouTube is just too compelling, sometimes I go through mental downs where I don't want to be social, and sometimes, my kids are infuriating and don't deserve to be taken out anywhere. Such is life.

But here's the thing about a resolution. It's not an unbreakable vow. It's resolve. You plunge into the fight and sometimes you take a hit, but resolve is squaring your shoulders and going right back in. If these annual goals and targets were easy, they wouldn't be so significant.

I grew up in a house surrounded by art inspired by Don Quixote and Man of La Mancha, after all. It would be a little crazy if I didn't want to reach for unreachable stars once in a while.

Best. Birthday Present. EVER.

Sometime last week, Penny asked what I wanted for my birthday, and I told her, "You know what I'd love? If you wrote a story for me, because you have such a great imagination."

I fully expected her to start writing, then forget about it and just make me a card instead. That would've been fine, really.

(And let me interject here that Alex wrote me a card. It says "I LOVE YOU MOM. TO MOM FROM ALEX" It's worth noting that a) he did not ask for ANY HELP in writing this; b) he spelled everything correctly; and c) he wrote all the letters and words in correct left-to-right, top-to-bottom order (which has been a challenge for him up to now). So that's a 100% awesome birthday card to receive from a not-yet-5-year-old.)

But Penny really did write me a story. And she made it into a little book, with pictures, and she decorated the front and back with lines that are obviously intended to make it look like it's a leather-bound book.

Real hand-drawn leatherette look!

And the story itself is beyond awesome, on many levels, for many reasons. So because I'm so ridiculously proud, I'm going to share it with you. With annotations.

Once there was a princess as beutiful as a rose and as fierce as a lion.(*) She was to be a queen. But she wanted to be a worrier(**). The king and queen kept telling her to act like a princess not a warrior. She kept sneaking out at night to practice to be a warrior. She was a complete warrior by 1202 June.(***) She was to get married in three days! What should she do!!

I know she said. I'll sneak out and "kill" my future "husband".(****) Her warrior friends took her with them on thier next adventure! They told her that they would have to take her to some friendly lion to answer a question. She loved the idia of geting to see some real live lions so she speed up to a run. She was so exited that she was there it twenty seconds.

She fell into a hole and spraned her ankle. She had hard time walking her companions helped her. Over a couple of nights they camped! In a couple days they reached the secret door that heled the riddle. It said fion - f + L and at the end s equals what? They said Lions and they could enter.(*****) They asked the question and then left.

A cheetah was waiting by the door. They could tell by the black tear marks near the eyes.(******) It purred at them to get on. So they did. It started to walk. Next it walked fast. Then it joged. Finally it ran so quick all they could hear were the leaves. They got back to the castle. She knew what awaited her.

She went inside and there wasn't what she expected. There was no prince no ring no suitors. She saw that the king and queen awaited her insted. The people gatherd in rows. She steped up to the queen and king. They awarded her to be the most brave, skilled, clever, and smartes princess there ever was. She got two swords a pet dragon and she was allowed to be a warrior.(*******)

* - Best opening line EVER. But I may be biased.
** - I've left in all her spelling and grammar mistakes, with this one exception: she spelled "warrior" as "worrier" all the way throughout, and while I knew what she meant, I've fixed it for you for the rest of this transcription, to avoid it being too distracting.
*** - I love this precision.
**** - No, I don't know what's with the quotes. Or the violence.
***** - Penny wrote a similar "clue" in the card she made me as to what my present was.
****** - This is a fact about cheetahs she read somewhere. But it's a real thing. Google "cheetah tear marks" if you don't believe me.
******* - Yeah, that's right. My girl wrote a story about a warrior princess that didn't marry a prince at the end, but instead got a pet dragon. (I admit to being a little relieved that she forgot to actually "kill" the future "husband", though.)

I can't even tell you how proud I am that my girl wrote me this story, or how pleased to have such a fantastic birthday gift.

I should also note that as soon as we got home, she started making a storybook for Alex. That one is about a puppy who is being teased by some other dogs and learns how to handle the bullies.

That's my girl.

Don't Judge Me

Here's the deal: work is insane. My documentation specialist is having some personal issues that have severely limited her ability to, well, work, and so I've been doing all the documentation for the last couple of weeks, on top of my own usual work. Plus there's a proposal going on, and while I'm not directly sucked in, I'm still getting a lot of documentation-style requests, getting tables prettied up and spreadsheet formulas double-checked and stuff like that. Eventually I'll have to do a scrub on the finished product, too.

It's been a busy week or so at home, too -- we had a Hallowe'en party on the 27th, and then there was Hallowe'en itself last week, and then I had a Girls' Night party this past weekend, all of which required some level of preparation and shopping and cleaning and such. To go with that, there's all the usual life stuff going on -- school conferences and taking the cat to the vet and paying bills and "No, you're not wearing that to school, now march right back upstairs and change," and snuggling on the couch and reading with the kids and making birthday plans for this weekend. Penny wistfully told me that, since Matt and I had separated, she never gets to spend time alone with me any more, which is a fair complaint, so I'm taking off work tomorrow (when she's out of school anyway) and spending it with her.

And my second job -- the writing/editing gig -- has really taken off and exploded lately. I don't know if I'd mentioned it on this blog yet, but I'm being promoted to editor of the entire short story line for Torquere. It'll be official in January, but I'm starting to get pulled in now, learning the ropes by way of assisting the current shorts editor, helping to vet submissions, hashing out the 2013 themes and calls, etc. On top of that, I'm still proofreading, still editing for JMS Books, still the editor for an anthology that's due out right after the holidays. And still, when I can squeeze it in, writing. (I woke up early Saturday with a story idea and wrote almost 1000 words before I even got out of bed. Thank goodness I keep the iPad on my bedside table.)

I come into work in the morning, and there's always something that needs to be done immediately, if not sooner. And when I get home in the evening, it's usually the same. So when I do get an evening or a day off, I tend to spend it like I spent yesterday -- loafing on the couch watching a really unhealthy amount of television. For the record of shame: two episodes of the BBC's Sherlock (DVD/BluRays of which would not be an unwelcome birthday present, by the way), three episodes of Doctor Who (2nd new season), and... I lost count, but at least six episodes of How I Met Your Mother (because they're like popcorn or candy and everyone, everyone, everyone on that show is gorgeous and lickable, even the wacky sidekicks). But, you know, I also did the grocery shopping and several loads of laundry and made an amazing pot roast for dinner, so I wasn't utterly sloth-like. And I watched about a dozen episodes of SciShow, too, so I didn't entirely let my brain melt.

So now I'm off to work like crazy (I had three tasks waiting in my inbox when I logged in on top of the usual Monday stuff, and I took off this twenty minutes to let you all know why I haven't written in the last week -- don't you feel special?) and hopefully after this week, things will settle down a bit and I'll be able to get back on the blog.

Holy Crap

Has it really been over a week since I last posted here?

Bad blogger! Bad, bad, bad!

So, um, short summary of the last ten days, then...

Let's see, that weekend, I went to Busch Gardens with the kids to see Howl-o-scream and celebrate Jess' birthday; that was mostly pretty fun, though by the time we wrapped up, I was really wishing I'd brought a sweatshirt along.

Then last week, I got to celebrate another book release -- Seductress: Erotic Tales of Immortal Desire, which contains my short story "Succubus, Inc." (Also available in print!)

I had a very busy weekend -- on Friday, Elizabeth came over and we had pizza and watched the first couple episodes of the new Doctor Who. Yes, I've finally taken that plunge. I'm not hooked enough (yet?) to watch an entire season's worth of episodes in a sitting or anything, but it's definitely on my list of things to do when I have a quiet evening.

Saturday, I drove up to Jenn and Brian's for the afternoon and evening. They showed me the first episode of Sherlock (apparently my theme for the weekend was BBC shows) and I returned the favor by introducing Jenn to Vlogbrothers and Crash Course and all other things Nerdfighter. (And yes, I quite liked Sherlock, too, and I will be getting caught up on it ASAP.)

And then I was up early Sunday morning to meet Vicki in Colonial Williamsburg to take some photos of her for her burgeoning photography business. I have to say, I was quite pleased with how some of them turned out. (In exchange, she's going to do my family Christmas portraits for me so I don't have to do a lot of running back and forth with the timer on the camera.)

And then yesterday, I had the best writing/editing day EVAR. (Seriously. I'm going to be a guest at a con!)

In the meantime, I'm planning a small, all-ages Hallowe'en party for this Saturday, and an equally small, but adult-ladies-only Pure Romance party for next Saturday. (Interested? Drop me a line!) I'm going to a painting-and-social thing tomorrow night (yay, Groupon). I'm working on editing an anthology that will be coming out in January, and doing some other editing work as well, and I'm trying to squeeze in some time for actual writing from time to time, too.

Mentally/emotionally, I've been doing okay. There are ups and downs, but lately there are more ups. It helps that I've been doing and planning fun things with people I enjoy, and finding constructive ways to occupy myself when I'm alone. (Yes, like watching Crash Course videos. It is not possible to be depressed when there are cute, smart, funny guys teach me about science and history!)

So that pretty well catches us up, I think. Sorry to have flaked out on you all -- I promise to try to do better!

Good, but OW.

What a weekend! I'm still sore.

Friday night, I went out with my friends Elizabeth and Vicki and some of their other friends to PBR, a cowboy themed bar/club down in Hampton. That turned out to be lots of fun; I haven't gone dancing in way too long. I could've done without all the line dancing (I'm so uncoordinated I can't even do the Electric Slide) but I shrugged and stood on the sidelines (or in our roped-off VIP/party area!) and danced the way I wanted to.

Watching the bullriders was even more fun, though. WHEW. If the waitresses in hot pants and chaps were there for the guys to look at, then the two guys operating the mechanical bull ring were definitely there to appeal to the ladies present. (I'm not ashamed to admit that I was shipping them, a bit, in my head.) I posted one of several videos I took with my iPhone to YouTube on Saturday morning; if you missed me Twittering about it, it's here. (I think I've embedded it below, but as YouTube is blocked at the Day Job, I can't test it to be sure. If it doesn't work, leave a comment and I'll try to fix it when I get home.)

Saturday, once I'd woken up and taken a hot shower to loosen muscles that had forgotten they existed, I went out to run a couple of errands, including a stop at Bed Bath & Beyond to find some curtains for the living room windows. It was a little frustrating -- I'm not too keen on the current color selections (god, I thought we'd left avocado and orange in the seventies!) and I'm not a fan of curtains that look like hanging rugs, and since I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do with that room, decor-wise, I wanted something that would fit a wide variety of styles... and everything I liked turned out to be unlined (for a west-facing window, I really need lined curtains), or only in stock in the wrong length.

Finally, I found something and got a rod to match, and took them home, and after lunch I gathered my tools and started to put the rod up. That ran into a series of errors (including apparently trying to drill through nails or a metal plate, the size drill bit suggested by the instructions being too small for the wall anchor but too big for a naked screw, and my failing to take the hanger length into account when measuring where to put the brackets) so that project took me a solid two and a half hours to complete. And by the time I was done, I'd stepped onto and off of the kitchen chair I was using so much that I spent Sunday barely able to walk. Going up and down stairs was so unbearable that by mid-afternoon, I started scooting up and down on my butt, relying mostly on my (non-existent) arm muscles to do the work. (Today, after another hot shower and some extensive stretching, it's down to merely "very sore".)

But I got the curtains up and the broken blinds down and took all the brackets for the blinds out of the wall, and they look good, and now I can see out again! Hooray! Now I just need to go buy some spackle to take care of all the holes in the wall from the blinds brackets and my curtain-rod goofs. (Next project: curtains for Penny's room so she can get dressed without the boy across the street watching. Luckily, there are curtain rod brackets already in that room, left over from when it was our guest room, so I won't have to install those -- just buy the curtains and a new rod of the correct diameter.)

I spent most of Sunday loafing around, nursing my aching leg (just the one; apparently if I'm not paying attention, I always step up with my right leg first). I did run a couple of errands, and then ducked into Pier 1 to wait out a rain shower. Man, that would be a dangerous store for me if 1) the combination of scents going on in there doesn't immediately bring on a blinding headache, and 2) their prices weren't so ludicrous. I did buy a pair of martini glasses on clearance, though, that I walked past three times trying not to buy, but they were too gorgeously tacky to resist. (I don't even drink martinis, but especially with those colors and designs, they'd make fantastic margarita glasses.)

Sunday night, I gave some thought to an idle half-plot I'd considered for an upcoming Torquere anthology and decided I'd see if I could get some of it out before the deadline hits. I'd tried writing it a couple of months ago, but it got bogged down in its own details, so I backed up and started over... and wow. I blew out nearly 900 words in less than an hour and a half, and then I took a break to watch Leverage, and then I took my iPad upstairs to bed with me and wrote another 400 words before I finally decided I needed to turn out the light and get some sleep at midnight. God, that felt great. I haven't really written anything of substance (barring a couple of exercises for my therapist) since June.

Hope I can keep it up... When I hit Torquere's site to double-check the due date, I noticed that the minimum word limit is 5000 words, not the 3000 I'd originally assumed. Which means I need to write almost 1000 words a night for the rest of this week so I can turn this in by Saturday. Talk about shaving it close!

Talky

Because she loves me, KT posted this on my Facebook wall last night:

Of course, by the time I saw it, I was already into this week's episode of Leverage and chatting with her, so I didn't actually do any writing. But it's an awesome picture anyway. And true. I should be writing.

I should also be editing, as I have a novel on my plate that I need to get back to its author before I go on vacation in -- erp! -- one week.

Unfortunately, what I should be doing at work today is approximately a metric assload of paperwork. Hm, maybe instead of trying to make it palatable with music, I'll put a movie on the iPad (one I know well enough to listen to instead of watch) and see how that works. And maybe I can break the paperwork into subtasks, and alternate with the editing a bit.

Anything to get (and keep) myself motivated.

***

Happy joy joy moment of the day: Alex got up a bit before six and went to the bathroom. (I knew it was Alex and not Penny because Alex neither closes the bathroom door nor flushes without a reminder.) And then he went back to his room.

Ten minutes later, when my alarm went off for the second time, he came into my room, as usual, and climbed up on the bed.

"Hey, buddy," I said. "How're you doing this morning?"

"Good."

"Yeah? You sleep good?"

"Yeah."

"How's your pullup this morning?"

"It still has a picture."

Dude. That's three mornings of the past four that he's gone through the night with a dry pullup! The first two were at Matt's apartment, and while I'd celebrated, I'd kind of wondered if it was because he wasn't sleeping as deeply there (unfamiliar room and bed, you know how it is) so I wasn't really expecting it to come back to the house with him.

But whatever the reason, it seems he's starting to move into nighttime control, finally!

(And further reason for celebration, as a friend pointed out to me -- it means that he's not excessively traumatized by Matt and I splitting up. Kids who are traumatized tend to lose potty training, not gain it. So we can feel good that all the effort we're putting into the kids is paying off.)

Unmasked and Charmed

Trying to get/stay back in the blog posting saddle. So to speak. But I don't have to struggle for a topic today, because I have a couple of things to talk about!

First (because it's the quickest): I had a new release yesterday! My story "What You Are" was included in Torquere Press' Masks Off!, an anthology about masquerades and shapeshifters. (...Look, I don't come up with the combinations, I just write the stories.) I haven't finished reading it yet, but besides me, it's got some of my very favorite TQ authors, so I expect them to be lots of fun. And isn't that cover gorgeous?

My writing blog post about it has a blurb, and I put up an excerpt yesterday on Torquere's livejournal social community.

In addition to being my first real anthology inclusion, this will also be my first print publication! At least, it will be when the print book goes up for sale, which is typically a week or so after the e-book release, thanks to various complications with printing through Amazon, which is what Torquere uses for print books. But at some point in the next few weeks (I think), I should be holding this gorgeous book in my hot little hands! I can't wait! (Yes, you can expect pictures. I have no shame.)

***

And now, having taken off my Author hat, it's time to put on the Mom one!

Penny filled up a chore chart a couple of days ago, which means she's earned a reward. In the past, that's meant that I take her to our local Yankee Candle store, where they have not one, but two toy stores for her to waffle over a choice for a half-hour or so and finally settle on something.

Yesterday, she said, "...could we go to Charming Charlie instead?"

So there's one for the memory book: age at which jewelry first wins out over stuffed animals -- about two weeks shy of 9.

For those who might be curious, she picked out a sparkly tiara and a set of three red and gold rings that are about four sizes too big for her. She insisted on wearing the tiara and two of the rings to daycare/camp today; I warned her that if they were lost or damaged, I was not going to buy her new ones. We'll see how that goes.

(But I bought her a Charming Charlie gift card for her birthday like a month ago, so don't worry. She'll get to go back -- and with more than the measly $20 limit I put on her chore chart rewards.)

While she was waffling over her selections, I took Alex next door into JoAnn fabrics so I could price foam -- a friend had mentioned that they would cut foam to fit my couch cushion covers, thus enabling me to restore my crappy couch without having to buy a new one.

Extra firm and thick foam is expensive, though, so it's probably going to run me somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 to do that. Don't get me wrong; it's better than buying a whole new sofa (at least, better than a good new sofa), but not as much of a savings as I was hoping for. In any case, it'll have to wait a bit, as it's a higher price than I was hoping and a lower priority than some of the other things I want to do.

On the way home, I mentioned to Alex that when he turns five, he will also be getting a chore chart. He was, to say the least, not happy with this revelation. Not even when Penny tried to cajole him with the notion of stickers and reward toys. Oh, well; he doesn't get a choice. Everyone gets chores to do.

I also broached with Penny the idea of curtains, since it's looking like it'll be prohibitively expensive to fix her blinds. I braced for whining as I explained, but the instant the word "curtains" left my lips, I heard what can only be described as a gasp of delight from the back seat. So apparently Penny's on board with the idea of curtains. (She may be somewhat disappointed when I take her to pick them out, though, as I'm going to insist on heavy white-backed thermal curtains to help keep heat out -- her room is the hottest in the house. Though I'm open to the idea of a double-layer curtain so she can pick something pretty.)

But I'm doing the living room curtains first, as it's driving me crazy not to be able to see out. And even that's going to have to wait a bit, because the mortgage is due first.

Grey

Been sick the last few days. Nothing serious, just a sort of annoying and persistent cold that left me unable to breathe properly and with a mild but constant headache. Your standard spring cold/sinus infection.

I worked from home and didn't engage my brain unless I had to and generally just sort of... existed.

And then Spring Drama happened.

I'd been getting used to drama-free springs, but it's back.

I'm not sure if I'm actually calm and accepting or if I'm just a little numb while it worms its way inward.

Yeah, I'm being vague. Sorry about that. I want to talk about it some, but while it touches me, it's not about me, so I can't. If you don't already know... probably best not to ask. Yes, I'm okay. At least for now. If I get to a point where I'm not okay, you'll probably hear about it.

Anyway. Drama, and me trying to decide if my relative lack of reaction is a good sign or a bad one. I stayed up late last night, drinking and talking things over with one of the other affected parties (who is, for the record, very much not numb or calm or remotely accepting; thus the drinking). So I'm slightly hungover and very tired today, which is probably making the confusion and vagueness even worse than it needs to be.


So I'm kind of not looking forward to this weekend so much. And any lingering desire that I had to stick to any sort of diet may be a bit run off the rails.

...But part of me is wondering if I can get a story out of it.

Geekery and Sundry

Hey, gang! Late post today, I know. That's because I've been lining up posts for my guest day over at the Torquere Press blog. There's going to be talk about our dream jobs and pictures of hot guys and excerpts from my latest release, so if that kind of thing floats your boat, then paddle on over there to check it out!

Otherwise... Not much to talk about. I'm working from home today, and again tomorrow. It's looking like a busy weekend, but hopefully a fun one.

The new season of Game of Thrones has launched, so I'm looking forward to that. You know, when it comes out on DVD next year. I'm sure I would never watch illegally-acquired videos that aren't available for legal download outside of an HBO subscription(*).

Also, I'm in love with the new Geek and Sundry channel on You Tube, and I don't even watch a lot of videos, so you know if I'm making time for this, it's awesome. Wil Wheaton's Tabletop feature makes me want 1) to play more board games with my friends, and 2) to buy one of those awesome gaming tables.

* By which I mean, I would totally watch illegally-acquired GoT episodes. How effing stupid is HBO, anyway? If they offered the eps for sale individually on iTunes or their website or whatever, I would buy them. I would even wait a week or two for their subscribers to get that first-run benefit. But I'm not waiting a whole effing year for the DVD to come out to watch this season.

Five Things Make A Post

1. I'm about 4/5 of the way through the speed-edit I've been trying to push through this week, which means I'm pretty much right on schedule. Go, me!

2. I'm only about 1/5 of the way through the enormous stack of paperwork on my desk at the Day Job, though, which has me a bit behind schedule there. Boo.

3. Assumption of Desire was on an Amazon Top 100 list again this morning! This time, I got a screen capture before it fell off again. (I put the picture up on my Facebook author page.)

4. Alex came in and snuggled with us this morning when my alarm went off, which he hasn't done for a while. Even though he was squirmy and talky and refused to let me go back to sleep for another five minutes, I was glad for it. I've been thinking too much lately about how, entirely too soon, my boy will decide it's undignified to cuddle with his mom.

5. Got all our paperwork appropriately signed and notarized and such for Diabetes Camp at the end of April, and it should be going out with today's mail. So we're all set for that. I need to remember to go on the calendar at work as taking the next day off, because I'm not going to be getting a lot of sleep that weekend. And to
buy a sleeping bag, because struggling with sheets last year was stupidly frustrating.

Numbers Games

It is, of course, inevitable that when I've released a new story, I haunt certain sites, looking for signs that it's been well-received. I create a couple of Google Alerts, and poke slightly obsessively at Goodreads and some of the more popular ebook sites.

Someone who reads quickly had a great review for my new story posted on All Romance Ebooks before lunch. Three people had put it on their "to-read" list on Goodreads by the end of the day (and it's up to 6, now). It was evening before Amazon had it listed, but when I checked this morning, it was actually in the top 100 listing for one category of books! (Granted, it was a pretty small category. Gay > Literature > Fiction > Romance, or something along those lines. And I'd fallen back off the top 100 before I got to work.) Barnes and Noble is listing my other two books currently in print (which surprised me; I didn't realize Torquere was selling to them now) but Assumption isn't listed yet.

It's probably a good thing that I can only access actual sales numbers when I get my quarterly royalties check, or I'd be checking it all the time instead of just occasionally.

Anyway, a brief plea: Ranked and rated and reviewed books sell better than unrated ones, so if you've read my story and liked it at all, please log into Amazon or Goodreads or wherever and give it some stars (be honest; don't rank it high just because you know me) and even dash out a short review, if you're so inclined.

And consider that a plea for whatever it is that you're reading. Your authors worked hard to put that book into your hands (or your reader, whatever). It only takes a minute to let them know how you liked it.

New Release!

My new story was released this morning! Assumption of Desire is only $2.99 direct from the publisher, and I'll post Amazon and other e-book distributor links as soon as I have them. Check out that awesome cover! And here's the blurb:

When Craig walks into the Cerulean Sphere looking for a one-night stand to enliven his business travel, he is definitely NOT looking for Jesse, a flaming twink sporting a pink feathered boa. But Craig finds himself surprised by the charmer, and is forced to reevaluate his initial impression of the young man, and to reconsider his prejudices. But when they meet again by surprise several years later, Craig puts his foot in it again, and Jesse won't hear a word of his apology. Will Craig be able to break through Jesse's hurt and finally say what he really means?

And as if that wasn't enough, I'm included in this week's specials from Torquere! Of One Mind and Safe Harbor are both on sale for 20% off, so if you've been waiting to try them out, now's your chance!

This "publication release" thing never gets old. I still want to squee with delight every time I see something I made out there, with my name on it.

(CrA)^z

I'm currently editing three projects for Torquere: two novels and a novelette. One of the novels isn't due out until June and is already in the proofreader's hands and is therefore well underway. The novelette has had its first round of edits and is back in the author's hands. The other novel just hit me over the weekend... and thanks to a communications backfire, its schedule is extra-tight, so I have, essentially, one week to finish my first round of edits.

I also just got sent another novel to proofread (that's easier than editing, but still pretty time-consuming) that's on another tight-ish deadline; I've got about two weeks to get that one done.

My latest release, "Assumption of Desire", will be coming out from Torquere tomorrow. Obviously, that's complete now, but I've got some online publicity/marketing gigs to line up and execute, because that's part of my obligation as the author. (Speaking of which, if you're interested in winning a copy of the story, today is your last day to enter the contest!)

April's calendar is already nearly filled to the brim: Spring Break (including an Art Day for Penny and a day at Busch Gardens for everyone), Easter, a D&D game, Matt's and my anniversary, a kids' birthday party, two doctor's appointments, and a weekend at Diabetes Camp. And at some point after the show finishes I need to drive down to Hampton to pick up the art I bought. Plus several adult friends having birthdays. And KT and Kevin may be moving somewhere in there.

The Day Job's insanity includes a stack of paperwork that's currently twice as tall as the inbox, and an electronic "stack" nearly twice as tall as that, plus several new responsibilities that I need to remember to fold into my routines.

Plus all the usual stuff like making meals and taking the kids to school and trying to keep the house from completely falling into a slimepit. And occasionally trying to get to the gym.

Things are crazy, and are going to stay crazy for the next month, is what I'm saying.CRAY-ZEE.

On the plus side, I'm really going to appreciate the assorted vacations that are lining up for late summer and early fall.

A Real Character

If I hadn't mentioned it previously, Matt has started up a 4th Edition AD&D game. He's GMing, and we're playing with Braz and Adin and my friends Jenn and Brian, who are apparently desperate enough to game that they're willing to drive all the way down from the far side of Richmond for it.

I was a little dubious about the system, but we're all new to it except Matt, so we're all dragging through the unfamiliar rules together. So far, my impression is that there's a lot to keep track of and it's oodles less realistic than the 2nd Ed I'm used to, but it's so much more well-balanced.

Anyway, we're playing in Forgotten Realms, which is where the Meadehall was set, so on a wild hair, I sort of... well... Shall we say my character has some very interesting family, back home? And then, of course, I had to write a back story for her. Because that's what I do, you know. (I swear, I should post an advertisement offering to write character stories on commission...)

But Matt really liked the story I wrote, so I thought -- hey, a lot of my readers are old Meadehallers, and this isn't really a story that belongs over on my writing site (no romance here), so I'm going to share the story with you! Here's her character description:

At first glance, Zoyanne seems quite normal. She's tall -- about 5'10" -- and thin, but not excessively so. Her skin is pale and creamy, her hair a rich auburn, her eyes an unsettling stormcloud grey. Her clothes are well-made but undecorated and utilitarian, linen and wool and leather. There is a dagger in her belt, but its immaculate sheen suggests it sees little use. The staff is more worn, but is likewise unremarkable. She speaks Common with a Cormyrian accent and is a surprisingly earnest and capable drinker: she admits to a taste for Sembian brandy, Moonshaen whiskey, and Dwarven ale, but is happy to drink whatever the house has on tap -- anything except meade.

She carries several books in her pack, each lovingly wrapped in oilskin and studded with bits of foolscap to mark significant passages. Her fingers are often inkstained, and she often spends her evenings in reading and study. Sometimes, instead, she writes letters. Some of those are bound for her hometown of Marsember, to assure anxious friends and family of her continued well-being. Others have more mysterious destinations in store, being addressed to locations all over the world, each more exotic than the last: Candletown, Kara Tur, Maztica.

Inside her tunic, wrapped in paper and felt and oilcloth, Zoyanne carries four locks of hair, each tied with a bit of colored string: several long strands of snow white; a short, curled lock of chestnut brown; a thin braid of mixed black and copper; and most curiously, a finger-length lock that must have undergone some strange mishap to turn it that shade of grass-green. She does not particularly try to keep these secret, but she doesn't go out of her way to show them off or speak of them. In fact, though she talks readily enough, she rarely actually says anything.

And here's the story:

"Mother?" The girl's voice rings out in the still silence of the hall, but the woman does not turn from the window, does not even move to indicate she has heard.

The woman's waist-length braid is as white as driven snow, her thin shoulders bowed with age and long years of being hunched over her books and experiments. Her hands are still as they rest on the windowsill, her eyes seeing something that cannot be there.

"Mother!" The girl stamps a foot, impatient with her mother's daydreaming.

Finally, the woman turns, and the grey eyes, so like the girl's, focus once more. "What is it?"

The girl holds out a book, accusation in her every movement. "What is this?"

The woman takes the book, affecting not to notice the girl's anger, and flips through a few pages. "It looks like one of your father's old journals." Involuntarily, her eyes seek the window again.

"It says." The girl pauses to take a deeper breath. "It says he was in Seng Wa, in Kara Tur, during the White Lotus slave rebellion."

"Ah." The woman knows, now, what the girl has come to say. To ask. "Yes. He was." She looks down at the journal so that she will not have to look at her daughter's face.

"That was in the spring. And I was born that winter."

"So you were."

"He's not my father." The girl's voice breaks.

"He loves you, very much."

"He's not my father!" the girl yells, angry that her mother has not denied the charge, explained away the inconsistency with some tweak of fate. She eyes her mother's midriff -- too thin, as it always has been -- with suspicion. "Are you even my mother? Or am I some foundling that you took in because you--"

"Stop." The woman holds up a hand to underscore the command, and her eyes flash. "I know you're upset, but there's no need to descend into melodrama. Of course I'm your mother."

"But not Father," sulks the girl.

"No," the woman sighs. "No, he didn't come home that time until you were nearly crawling."

"And he left here at least a year before I was born," prompts the girl.

The woman nods, watching her daughter from the corner of her eyes. She is coiled, ready to contain an explosion.

"Gods." The girl eyes the journal still in the woman's hand, as if wondering whether it might hold the answers she seeks. "Does he know?"

"He can do math as well as you. Maybe even better."

The girl rolls her eyes. "I mean, does he know who my real father is?"

"No."

"Do you even know?" She means it to be impertinent and hurtful, a lashing punishment for her mother's having kept this secret from her. She is startled to see the look of resignation that comes over her mother's face, and then horrified. "You don't know!" She backs away.

Angry now, the woman gestures, and the door slams shut of its own accord, blocking the girl's retreat. "If you will ask the questions," she says, folding her arms across her thin chest, "you will hear the answers. Sit down."

An hour later, the door opens and the girl emerges. Her eyes are red, but no longer weeping. "I'll leave in the morning," she says.

"So soon?"

"Why wait?"

The woman gestures helplessly toward the window. "Your father--"

"May be home tonight, or next month, or a year from now," the girl interrupts. Or never, she might have said, but didn't, and in that omission, her mother knows that she is forgiven. The girl's eyes linger on the window, but then her shoulders square and her mouth sets mulishly. It is in this mood, her mother reflects, that she looks most like her father.

Whatever her parentage, the girl came by her wanderlust honestly. The mother was younger than this when she embarked on her own adventure. Can she really blame her daughter for wanting the same? Especially now? She sighs and bows her head in assent. "If you need anything," she begins, but the girl is already gone.

The woman returns to the window and her vigil, but she is unsettled now, memories stirred that she had thought long since faded into dust. It is a long time since she was even a footnote amongst the machinations of the gods, but that dubious honor has crossed her threshold once more. She had not much enjoyed the implacable hand of Fate when it rested on her own shoulder, and she had hoped to spare her daughter from its weight; but it seems that is not to be the case. After a time, she leaves the window in search of her cloak, and for the first time in months, company.

What do you think? I quite like the way it turned out. There was some further information that I gave just to Matt, as the GM, but I don't think you have to know it to get the story. Heck, I don't think you really need to know the 'Hall character here to get the story, though that does rather enhance its meaning.

News and Such?

What's with the exhaustion lately, dammit? I went to bed at 9:30 Tuesday night, and at 10:30 last night, and I still feel like I want to crawl back under the covers for a half-day or so.

On the other hand, I feel like I've been weirdly busy. Aside from work stuff, I've gone through edits on a story that's coming out at the end of this month (squee! that never gets old!) and gently poked two editors for news on other stories. (I know that's a no-no, but it's been over 3 months since I heard from either of them. I thought a gentle request for information was not entirely out of line.) I've edited a short novel (a really good one, too, which is always awesome!) and written a couple of scenes in a couple of my own projects.

I've made plans for lunch tomorrow, and talked to Penny about attending a gallery show and contest that my brother is in this weekend. (We've agreed she'll bring a book to read, in case she gets bored before it's over.)

I've drunk surprisingly little coffee, and chewed a slightly ridiculous amount of gum. (Soon, I will be out of gum, and then it will be time to kick ass, I suppose.) I've made mini-pizzas and sausage chowder and baked chicken.

The frog and dragon game obsessions continue, slightly abated but by no means extinguished.

Tonight will be TV night -- we need to watch Castle from Monday and Big Bang Theory as well.

And that's... about it, I guess.

I'm leaning strongly toward taking tomorrow off, so I'll see y'all on Monday! Have a great weekend!

Krunk

Yesterday was the kind of day where I spent a lot of time scrambling to catch up with others' poor time management (or downright lack of consideration). I don't want to detail every instance, but it's not my favorite way to work. (On the other hand, I did compose several haiku for ThinkGeek's ongoing contest during my lunch break. I just have to decide which one I like best before I send it in.)

And then I lost a chip out of my favorite ring, and thanks to stacked meetings for both Matt and I, had to scramble to get dinner. Thank goodness for Matt, who cheerfully and uncomplainingly unloaded and re-loaded the dishwasher while I made lunches.

Still, I was so exhausted by the time the kids were in bed that I thought briefly about just sticking a fork in the day and going to bed early. (No, early. Like 8:45.)

But I'd skipped writing on Sunday, too, so I made a cup of coffee and told myself that I didn't have to write a lot, I just had to push forward until I'd finished the coffee. Just enough, I promised myself, to have a snippet for the writing blog. The story was 80% done, and I knew I didn't have the energy to write a sex scene, but I thought I could push it to right at the beginning of the sex scene, and then I could polish that off later.

An hour and a half later, I'd only written 500 words, but the more I looked at them, the more I thought that this story might not end with a sex scene anyway. It would, in fact, have been counterproductive. Which means, I think, that I might be done with the draft. So I'm going to let it rest for a day or two and then go back and re-write about two thirds of it (no, really, it's kind of rough and needs a lot of polish) and then it might be worth throwing over a wall.

So it wasn't the best-ever day, but it could definitely have been worse. (Which puts me in mind of Neil Gaiman's words of wisdom about writing:

When writing a novel that's pretty much entirely what life turns into: "House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day." "Got call this morning to say I'd got Nobel Prize for literature. Wrote less than 300 words (285) probably unusable, so lousy day."

Yes. That's it, exactly.