Release Day!

Well, folks, it's Tuesday, which means...  Release Day!  And this week I actually know a couple people who are celebrating releases.

J.B. Lynn's second book Further Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman hits the shelves (or rather, ereaders) today.

Take three wacky aunts,
two talking animals,
one nervous bride,
and an upcoming hit,
and you've got the follow-up
to JB Lynn's wickedly funny
Confessions of a Slightly Neurotic Hitwoman
Knocking off a drug kingpin was the last thing on Maggie Lee's to-do list, but when a tragic accident leaves her beloved niece orphaned and in the hospital, Maggie will go to desperate lengths to land the money needed for her care.
But the drug kingpin is the least of her worries. Maggie's aunts are driving her crazy, her best friend's turned into a bridezilla…and a knock on the head has given Maggie Dr. Dolittle abilities—she can talk to animals. Unfortunately, they talk back.
It's just another day in the life of this neurotic hitwoman…

Here's a guest blog she did for Barnes & Noble today.

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And Silver James' fourth book in her self-published Moonstruck series Wolf Moon.

Sean Donaldson, former combat medic and demolition expert, answers an SOS from an old Army buddy and rides smack dab into the middle of a conspiracy. Murder and kidnapping are just the tip of the iceberg. Going undercover with a biker gang seems the quickest solution but Sean’s best intentions are complicated by Annie Simmons and her son, Cody.

Annie is a waitress at the Half Dollar Bar and Grill just scraping by to provide a better life for her son. She doesn’t want a man in her life, especially a scary dude like “Boomer,” the big biker who steals a part of her heart. What she doesn’t know about the lies he’s told can hurt her…and put Cody in danger.

Secrets, lies, and betrayals are more personal under the full moon but when a Wolf fights for his heart, he’ll risk his life to make sure the family he loves survives.

Warning: When it’s the month of the Wolf Moon, anybody who gets between a moonstruck Wolf and his mate deserves what they get. Blood, sex, and four-letter words dead ahead.

Here's the whole series at Goodreads (minus Wolf Moon, but not for long).

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Those are the biggies on my list for today.  Any releases you want to talk about?

Disclaimer:  I consider both of these authors my friends, but I got no freebies for posting this.  (Although, ladies, free chocolate would not be refused.  :wink:)

Done and Done

Well, that didn't at all go like I planned.  You see, when I first heard about the Harper Voyager unagented submission window (See Oh Holy Crap from 9/15), I was all like "Hey, I can finish this and then tweak that and maybe, if there's time, I can polish that, too." 

Yeah.  Talk about pipe dreams.

I got one thing done.  Well, lots of things for one submission.  In the past month, I have...

- Finished inputting the last third of a total rewrite.
- Done a line by line deep edit of the entire 124K word behemoth, chopping out 16K words.
- Written a 1500 character synopsis.
- Polished the blurb part of a query letter.
- Re-read through the entire 108K words for typos.
- Fixed all 10+ pages of handwritten notes on said found typos
- Fixed two plot holes I missed before.
- Wrote the rest of the query with personalization for the contest.
- Submitted the synopsis, the query, the first 1000 words, and various other stuff via web form along with the entirety of the manuscript (attached in .doc form because they don't do .docx)

Everything but the first two items on that list, I've done in the last few days.  Proving, of course, that I can in fact do this deadline stuff when I have to.  And I did it with about 8 hours to spare.  AND I took care of a stray kitty-baby, plus tackled a clogged shower drain.


My house is a pigsty.  We did Dairy Queen for lunch and dinner today - and lunch on Friday.  Yesterday, I think my family foraged around the kitchen.  I don't remember.  I don't remember much of the past week.  I don't remember hardly any of the weekend.  Michigan won, but I didn't get to watch the game (due to said shower drain).  I watched the MSU game while I edited on the couch.

But I'm done.  I did it.  For a while there, I wasn't sure I could do it.  (I mean after the initial over-confidence went fizzle.) 

And I'm done.  Like a Thanksgiving turkey dinner, done.  Baked, basted, stuffed, and by the end of the day, down to the carcass.

Needless to say, I will not be participating in NaNoWriMo.  (Maybe NaNoEdMo, but that's something to think about on Halloween.)

This week, I will be cleaning my house before my family stages a revolt and the cats go on strike.  Do not expect anything writerly of me this week.  (Well, unless one of my queries comes back looking for a partial or a full, then I'll work.)

What did you do this weekend?  How does the coming week look for you?

We Interrupt This...

We interrupt this regularly scheduled morning to bring you...

WRITER FREAKING OUT!

I'm never going to get this done in time.  There are too many little mistakes scattered throughout the damn thing to fix by tonight.  I'm tired.  My eyes are killing me.  I've been staring at all this for so long that words no longer make sense.  Carry is a word and it's spelled right, right???  I need more coffee.  I need another cigarette.  I need a Valium - which is saying something because I'm allergic to Valium, but hey, maybe a few hallucinations are just what the doctor ordered...  VODKA!  'cept I don't drink anymore.  And who the hell can edit while they're drinking??  I need all my faculties... but I don't have all my faculties anymore.  I'm losing my mind.  This will never ever ever be finished.  It's going to kill me.  Or I'm going to kill it.  Either way something is going to die by Monday morning...

AARRGGHH!!

Thank you.  I just needed to freak out a little.  You may now resume your regularly scheduled morning.  And I'll go back to editing. 

PS.  The above was brought to you by the letters Y and O, and the number 0.  It is no way intended to be serious, but was merely a way to get all that out of my head so I could work - and is a better way to do it than standing on my front lawn screaming (which would wake everyone and have men in uniforms arriving to cart me away).

Peace out.  ;o)

So much for getting anything done today

I posted a lot of this little drama to Facebook, so if you've already seen it there, forgive me.

Last night, a tiny calico kitten decided we were the bestest humans ever and she definitely wanted to be our friends forever.  Umm, yeah.  Sorry puny-mew person, but I can't have any more cats.  And I went to bed feeling like the worst person ever, where I had nightmares about finding her little broken body in the road this morning.

She made it through the night - probably because she hung out in Max's winter residence.  First thing, she announced her presence and her need for foods.  So, I pointed out the food I'd just put out for the strays.  Needless to say, she dove right in.  Okay, so I fed her.  And took responsibility for this itty bitty feline.  Which meant getting the cat carrier so she'd be safe and warm, opening a can of Fancy Feast (the kibbles took the edge off, but didn't do the trick, because she inhaled the wet food), and starting the round of calls to find her a home.

I called my vet and left a message.  After which, the kid tells me she's pretty sure she heard from someone that the Doc was on vacation.  Great.  When I took the Kid to work, I stopped by his office just to make sure, and his truck wasn't there.  Plus, all his lights were off in the office.  Crap.

So we went back home.  I made a few more calls.  According to the chick at the police department, they 'don't do cats' and never have.  When I told that was funny because I've had them pick up cats before, she passed me off to an officer, who said they don't officially pick up cats, but they have people they can call.  He said he makes some calls and get back to me.

I made a few more calls and then got the idea to talk to the gals at my local grocery store.  No luck there.  Went to the dollar store.  No luck there.  Stopped by the old folks village because I know the manager, and she knows everyone.  She said to talk to the gals in the ceramics class.  They didn't want any kittens, but one of them thought it might belong to her son.  She called.  No luck there.

Meanwhile, I bought kitten chow.  I also made an impromptu litter box and found an old pillow for her to sleep on inside the carrier.  Hurray, she's litter trained.  Loved the kitten chow.  And promptly fell asleep half on the pillow and half inside her food bowl.

The officer calls back.  His contacts only want adult cats who they can use in their barns.  He'll try a couple other places and call back.

My neighbor might know someone... she hasn't called back yet.

Finally, the phone rings.  It's the vet!!  Who promptly jerks my chain for ever thinking he'd get time for a vacation, especially when he has large potentially pregnant animals he needs to check every day.  Derp.  He tells me bring the kitten in.

I'd say long story short, but short went out the window several paragraphs ago.  Kitten - who I refuse to name because I CAN'T KEEP HER... but she's kind of Gingersnap in my head now - has an upper respiratory infection, ear mites and probably worms.  She needs antibiotics and drops in her ears daily. (She already got dewormed.)  I do not have time.  Aside from the fact that I can't have any more cats in the house, she's contagious and my other can't expose Kira and Max to a URI.  So, she's now staying at the lovely Shangri-La Suite at the veterinary clinic, where she will get excellent medical care from trained professionals and all the Fancy Feast she can eat.

I've already had one person offer to help financially, but I can afford this.  I'm taking it out of my book budget - and with my overflowing TBR pile, it's not really a hardship.  If you're interested in helping, though, please take $60 and get a cat at your local shelter neutered, so there are less unwanted kittens in the world.  Or help someone who can't afford meds for their own cat.  Lord knows, someone owned this very well socialized bundle before she got here.

And now, I have to find her a home.  So if you know anyone in the northeast Colorado area who wants a kitten, here she is:

They can have her for free if they promise to love her and care for her like she was their own kid.  Contact me via email for more information.  If I don't get any takers by next week, I'll drive her to the nearest Humane Society location.  She'll find a home fast - as cute and friendly as she is.

And if her 'actual' owners show up, they owe me for the meds, the kitten chow, the Purell I had to use to keep from infecting my cats, and the vet boarding bill.  I have loads of kindness for lost kittens.  I don't have an ounce for people who can't bother to get medical attention for the fur-people who depend on them.

Just ask the dipshits who tried to claim Max last year.  "Sorry, chickies, but I paid a shitload of money to fix his broken jaw--you know, the break you laughed about when I asked what happened?  You don't deserve him.  He's mine now." 

And Gingersnap is mine until I find her a forever home.

Flippin' Subjects

I have a confession to make.  When I'm reading, I have a tendency to flip past certain subjects when they crop up in whatever book I'm reading.  I know the writer worked hard on that stuff - trust me, I know - but some subject matter just isn't my bag.

For instance, there's this SF writer I just lurve.  Great science, gripping action, believable aliens, a little romance... It's just that sometimes this particular writer gets a little more indepth on the romance scenes than I enjoy.  They get, to borrow a word from Mom, raunchy.  I get to those and flipflipflip - while scanning to make sure I'm not flipping past anything crucial to the storyline, of course.

And then this author (sorry to be picking on them because I really do love their stuff) put out a novella in the same world, and it was not only raunchy, but it hit on another of my flippin' subjects - BDSM.  Pain and sex together squeeb me right out.  I don't care if other people read it.  It's just not for me.  So I flip past it.

I also flip through wordy descriptive pages.  Ever read James Fenimore Cooper?  Love the man and his work, and he does write beautiful description, but after the first few pages, I think I've got an idea of what the MC is seeing.  It's a forest, right?  With a lake?  Tada!


Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with flipping past certain subjects.  Everyone has their own tastes.  I'm sure I've written scenes that will squeeb people the hell out.  My friend and beta reader had a real problem with one of the scenes in Djinnocide, for example.  And my daughter found a scene in Blink that made her uncomfortable.  That's okay.  Flip past it.  (Well, unless I think you're reading for content and clarity as a beta reader, then try to forge ahead - or at least let me know you didn't read those places so I know they're not critiqued.)

Now, seeing as we all have bits we're not necessarily comfortable reading, I'm betting I'm not the only flipper-paster.  What I'm wondering right now is whether I'm the only person who not only flips past, but also avoids writing those subjects that squeeb her out.

As such, there's very little chance you're going to pick up one of my books and read a graphic sex scene.  Also, I will never have people hurting each other and getting off from it.  And yeah, my books are a little shorter on description than they should be.  (I'm working on that last one.)

So, is there any subject you're not keen on reading?  What squeebs you out?

(And before any trolls crawl out of the woodwork, I'm in no way saying the subjects that I flip past shouldn't be written.  I'm never going to tell you what should or shouldn't be allowed in a book.  And other authors shouldn't take it personally.  This is a subjective business, people.  It's all about taste.)


*I just made squeeb up this morning, but I'm keeping it.  It kinda means that uncomfortable feeling - a combination of grossed out and creeped out and nauseous with a twist of ewewewewew and a smattering of the willies.  For example, certain scenes I've heard about from 50 Shades of Gray totally squeeb me out.  (I guess there's a scene with a feminine hygiene product?  :shudder:)

First Snow of 2012

Yessireebob, it's snowing on the eastern plains of Colorado.  Happy beginning of October.

And this is what it looks like here this morning...

Hope you're all warm and safe and happy wherever you are.  Personally, I'm staying home.  Coffee's on, the furnace is working, and I've got editing to do.  ;o)

Time for a Quickie

Update that is.  Not the other kind.

If you've been following along on FB or Twitter, you might already know some of this, and for that, I apologize, but in the interest of keeping everybody abreast of my most interesting and exciting life, here goes...

I finished the rewrite of Djinnocide.  It topped the scales at 124K - which means I have about 20 or so K to slice and dice out of it.

In the course of chopping, I was slapped upside the head by Insight (that big bully) and ending up changing a crucial plot point, which means I have to change all subsequent references to said plot point.  Some scenes are complying easily.  Others are being turds.  The worst of the lot so far growled at me Sunday, sunk it's hobnailed feet into the mud and refused to be changed.

It kicked my ass all day Sunday.  Sunday night, I kicked it back.

Right now, I'm on pg 93 and at around 119K words.  Since the Harper Voyager window opened yesterday, the countdown clock is ticking.  I have less than 2 weeks to finish chopping, do some polishing, check for typos, and submit.  I have committed myself to doing this.

In other news, I've unintentionally suspended querying.  I'm just too busy.  Once I get past this submission window, I'll start it back up again.  And no, I don't have any news on that front.  Wish I did, but them's the breaks.

On the real life front, I've been dealing with some personal stuff interfering with my writing stuff.  Nothing major and nothing horrible - just distracting.  Everything should be mostly cleared up now, though, so the only thing stopping me from working is me.

Okay, so that wasn't as quickie as I thought it would be.  What's up in your worlds these days?