First Day of School

Today is the first day of school at the Sanderson Home School.  It's the first day of the last year, as a matter of fact.  In honor of this momentous occasion, I woke up feeling like something the cat dragged out from under a bus. 

The jury's still out whether this was caused by nerves over the prospect of my daughter starting her senior year or by that truly awesome but incredibly greasy fried chicken I had last night.  (Seriously the best tasting chicken I've had in as long as I can remember, but since I changed my diet, greasy and I don't get along.  I never should've eaten the skin.) 

Anyway, this semester's schedule looks something like this:

Algebra II
Work
Work
Lunch
StudyHall
Algebra II
Intro to Management
English
Economics

Yep, Daughter wants to keep her internship going through the school year.  As long as her grades stay up and she's getting her assignments in on time, I'm cool with it.

And yes, you do see two sections of Algebra in there.  Due to an error on the part of the teacher (namely me), last year's math was Business Math and I found out over the summer that doesn't actually count as a math with most colleges anymore.  Go figger.  So, we're cramming two years worth of math into one year.  Algebra II this semester, Trig next semester.  Yay.   (It's broken into two sections because Daughter just can't see herself surviving a two-hour block of math straight through.  I don't have the heart to remind her some college courses are two-hour blocks.)

One more year.  A good friend of mine asked me what I was going to do next year - after Daughter's off to school.  My answer: Write more.  We'll see how that goes.  ;o)

This Just In

Last week I won a before-it-hits-the-shelves copy of The Hawk by Monica McCarty.  I just finished it and I had to stop here to let you all know...

IT TOTALLY ROCKS

Erik MacSorley is officially my new favorite Hot Highlander.  And Ellie de Burgh is the perfect heroine. 

If you read historicals, or even if you don't, go out and pick up a copy.  NOW.  Trust me on this one.  I've never been a huge fan of historical romance in general, but every once in a while a writer comes along that makes me change my tune.  Monica McCarty is just such a writer.  That and she's a helluva a good person, too.  (I know because I stalk her blog: Romancing the Highlander.)

Okay, now that the gushing is over, let me just add that I didn't love this book because I got it for free.  I'm not reviewing it because I have any hopes of getting more swag in the future.  (Although, I would love it, I'm probably going to bow out of the next contest to give another fan a chance.)  As always, my gushing reviews are because I love what I just read.  And if I didn't love it enough to get this excited, you probably wouldn't hear from me about the book at all*.

Now, what are you waiting for?  Go buy the... Oh yeah, it doesn't officially come out until 8/31/10**.  You know what that means?  Get thee to a bookstore on Tuesday.

*I don't review everything I love either.  Just the ones I get all sparked up about.


** Yes, that was a neener neener boo boo comment.  I can't help it.  This is the first time I ever read a book before it officially hit bookstores.

Cats and Edits and Explicit Lyrics

It's Sunday and Kira cat woke me up at quarter to five wanting to be fed.  Then I went outside for a cigarette and some java whereupon Max also wanted to be fed.  I love my cats, but on mornings like this, I'm sorry I ever taught my cats to meow when they're hungry.  (Okay, so maybe all cats do that, but I used to encourage it.  This morning, I'm kicking myself for that.)

On the bright side - if it can be called that - I can get right back into my re-font edits.  I got five chapters done yesterday.  Since it takes about an hour a chapter, I think that's an honest day's work.  (Maybe that means Kira's got my writerly interests at heart...  Yah, right.)

And the whole time I was editing I listened to my Pandora cranking out stuff like this...

Playing in my head: Standing in the Shower... Thinking by Jane's Addiction (Warning: Explicit lyrics - well, actually not as explicit as I've always thought...  who knew they were saying 'piping hot'?)

Forging Ahead

I'll be forging ahead with my writing this weekend. Here's hoping all that heat and pressure sparks something great. ;o)

Weekly Update - Fish Hooked

This has been an interesting week - in the same way having a fish hook in your hand is interesting, I guess.  At first, you don't really feel anything, but you're standing there with a piece of metal sticking out of you.  "My, isn't that interesting," you think right before you realize someone is going to have to pull that thing out.  This is the point at which nothing hurts really bad, but you're dreading the pain you know is right around the corner. 

Last week Wednesday, I finished DLN (whose real name is Djinnocide, btw - snazzy title, eh?) and I spent the time between then and this most recent Wednesday trying to decide what I was going to do next.  I read a few books, watched a lot of TV and twisted in the wind.  I figured I could go back to revising the other book that's been on my sidebar for months - RTL.  But I was just meh about tackling that one again.  So, I dinked around with a couple other things to no avail.

And I started thinking about Bloodflow (or Nanotechnology in another incarnation).  Great premise, and pretty damn good writing, but the plot's all over the damn place.  I did some editing there, and I still love the piece, but I've played with this so many times it took a day to realize I was editing on an old draft, and now I'm not sure which direction I like better.  :shrug:

Enter the suggestions I talked about on Wednesday.  Okay, sounds like a plan.  I've got to print out Bloodflow.  I get it.  Okay.  Yeah.  Umm, that's a daunting task if there ever was one.  The damn thing's like a big jigsaw puzzle.  What I need to do is take the pieces and reassemble them into a cohesive whole.  And this is like a 5000 piece sucker.

So, while I'm standing here staring at that painful problem, I decided to take another suggestion from the same post.  I turned DLN on its ear by changing the whole thing to another font.  I think the one I settled on was something called Utlaat or some such silliness.  The specifics don't matter, just the results.  Sure enough, I changed the font and...  I frickin hated what I wrote.  Talk about taking gaffs and making them GLARING ERRORS.  Holy shit.

I closed the manuscript and went off to some fluffy place in my head where everything is rainbows and bunnies.

Last night, I took another look at the DLN fish hook and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought.  Sure, I had some HUGE info dumps in chapter two.  And some of the wording is lame.  All that can be fixed.  All I need to do is stop looking at the hook and just pull.

If you close your eyes, you hardly feel the barb. 

Playing in my head: Sugar, We're Going Down by Fall Out Boy

You're Finished. Now What?

Okay, so you've finished your novel.  Now what do you do?  Well, a guest post by Kater Cheek over at Ask Daphne (KT Literary Agency's blog) has some really great suggestions on what happens after you get to THE END.  Considering that the post is mostly about editing, and that's what my brain's been focused on for the past few months, I thought the whole thing was particularly educational.

For instance, one suggestion I thought was pretty awesome was the idea that you change your whole manuscript's font.  She suggests Comic Sans, but any different font would work.  The idea is that it jerks your brain out of its groove and forces you to see the words you wrote in a different light.  Hey, any trick that helps find errors is okay in my book.  In fact, I'm going to try this on my next go-round with DLN.

Additionally, she suggests something I already do - PRINT IT OUT.  The only problem being that the process can get expensive - especially if you're printing after every draft.  Still, sometimes you have to spend money to get it right.  Having said that, I'm probably going to take Bloodflow and print the damn thing out so I can see where I went wrong.  I've been working on this manuscript off and on since May of 2008, and I really like the writing, but the plot has flaws.  Maybe this time around I can fix them.

She also gives some hints on synopses - which I'll be doing for DLN shortly - and query letters.  All in all a pretty informative post.

Your turn:  Do you have any suggestions / tips / tricks to help with editing, synopses or query letters?

Playing in my Head: Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol

Playing in my Head

For fun I'm going to try a new daily addition to the blog called "Playing in my Head".  I usually wake up with some song or other pumping through my brain, so I thought I'd share.

Today's would look something like this...

Playing in my Head: "Let Me Go" by 3 Doors Down.

It's not always a 'song' per se (for instance a couple days ago, I woke up with the old Coke commercial in my head), but posting the music in my head seems like a fun thing to do.  I'll try to put a link to some kind of video of the song or if not, the lyrics, along with a link to the band's website.

So, what's playing in your head today?