Category: This & That

Swamped

The problem with going away for two weeks is all the work you need to catch up on when you return. I know, poor me.

I’m swamped. Too swamped to even post photos of my adventures in Mexico. Maybe next week.

This week I’m continuing promo for the audio book release of HEAD OVER HEELS. Deets will be posted Wednesday. So make sure to drop by. In the meantime, beginning today, indie author Edie Ramer is hosting a week-long blog party to celebrate her latest release, DRAGON BLUES. Every day she’ll feature five authors on her blog. And each of those authors is providing a give-away.

Meanwhile, this weekend I received the audio proofs for BORROWING ALEX. I’m still super busy catching up on intensive edits for Penny that I’m beginning to realize are more like revisions than edits. Well, they’re edits, but they’re super edits. They’re sedits. Each and every sentence is getting a work-out.

I need to finish Penny’s edits within the first couple of weeks of March at the latest, or a fire-breathing dragon will roast my neck. Don’t ask me how I know this. Let’s just say I’ve been warned. So the BORROWING ALEX proofing will have to become my evening and next-weekend work.

How’s your February panning out?

Bye-Bye, Baby, Bye-Bye

Youngest flew back to university on Saturday. When we picked him up at the airport for the holidays, Eldest was holding up a welcome home sign featuring this photo:

We had a most excellent Christmas, but I miss my baby!

(Nice tummy).

Happy 2011!

Allie attacked a stuffed Santa today while I was taking down the Christmas tree. I have no idea why.

Year End Shredding Madness

I’m devoting this week to filing/shredding/organization of writing/household and business files. My filing cabinets are bursting, and I don’t have room for more. We have a huge crawl space that needs a total clean-out. I know there are boxes of files hidden deep within that I could shred if I could find them. Including boxes of every draft I’ve ever written of HEAD OVER HEELS and BORROWING ALEX. At one time, it felt essential to keep them. Now, not so much. Do I really want my children or my children’s children going through all those old contest entries and critique comments someday? The rejection letters and letters announcing contest wins and sales, I’ll keep. But everything else is slowly and methodically getting shredded.

My old M.O. was to keep all documentation associated with a manuscript until I sold it. That’s still my basic M.O., but I’ve encountered a manu or two that are exceptions to this rule. I’ve revised the manuscripts in question way beyond their original versions, and I don’t see the point in keeping all that paper around.

WHERE SHE BELONGS, as I’ve said before, is a book of my heart. It was actually the third novel I wrote, and I put it away for years and years and years, then took it out and reworked it. I have a ton (nearly literally) of paperwork to prove it. Shredding most of this paperwork is like a celebration—because the book will finally see the light of day next year. That’s a wonderful feeling.

I hope to share that feeling two or three more times in 2011. I have a manuscript on submission, one in editing mode (for Penny), another queued for revisions, and one short (for Penny) also on submission. I devoted most of 2010 to one particular manuscript (well, and to WHERE SHE BELONGS, when I learned an editor was interested). I plan to devote 2011 to working on and submitting at least 3 manuscripts. So she says bravely. I haven’t yet written up my 2011 goals list, but unless editor or agent interest comes in on the manuscript currently on submission and my plans change because of that, 2011 promises to be a year of completing and submitting several projects that, for some reason or another, have “rested” on the backburner. Now it’s their turns.

How’s your end-of-year winding up?

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Categorized as This & That

Happy Holidays!

If you celebrate Christmas (as I do), Merry Christmas Eve! May you have a wonderful Tomorrow.

I’m a bit upset, because I wanted to post my Christmas poem, Except the Cat, that I wrote last year for the now-defunct group blog, Nobody Writes It Better (2007 Golden Heart finalists). Except the Cat is a take-off of The Night Before Christmas, and I really enjoyed writing it last year. You’ll have to take my word for it that it was remarkably clever and witty and would have topped off your Christmas to a tee! Because I can’t find a copy anywhere. Which means I must have written the entire poem within the old group blog’s WordPress dashboard.

I find that hard to believe, but I have scanned my paper files and my cyber files. No Except the Cat! I even checked out my Facebook Notes, because this blog used to export to my Notes. But last Christmas Eve’s post featured a LINK to the group blog and the poem, not the poem itself.

This is what happened… I was heavily involved in the old group blog, and it was a labor of love but it took up a lot of time. I assigned myself Christmas Eve so other group blog members wouldn’t have to fret about posting. And then I wrote the remarkably clever Christmas cat poem that would have topped off your holidays to a tee! But a day or two after Christmas Eve, the old group blog was hit with one of those Internet bugs that infects computers who dare to even visit a website. My old computer was affected, and the hard drive died as a result. So I never got around to visiting the site and printing out the poem. You’d think I would have printed out the poem the day I wrote it, or on December 24, 2009 as I answered comments. But I didn’t. And now I am remarkably pissed at myself in a way that does not top off my Christmas to a tee!

This is my long way of saying if, for some odd reason, you printed off Except the Cat, please email me a copy. Because of course I could never duplicate my brilliance. That just doesn’t happen.

Have a wonderful Christmas Day, a fun Boxing Day if you’re Canadian, and enjoy yourself on New Year’s Eve!

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Updated Links

I’ve updated my blogroll, as several URLs linked to broken addresses (like if the title of a blog changed, which happened with Leah Hultenschmidt’s blog and the Red Sage Authors blog) and still other links I realized I never visit anymore, for whatever reason. I didn’t check EVERY link. Just the ones most likely to have changed. Well, I checked about 80% of them. So if you notice a broken link, give me a shout.

Oh, and if your blog is listed under Fav Author Blogs but your site isn’t listed under Writer Buddies, that’s not because I don’t consider you a writer buddy. It’s because I’m listing you in either one place or the other. If you hate that I’ve listed your site and would rather I list your blog, let me know. And vice versa.

“Writer Buddies” is titled “Writer” instead of “Author Buddies” because my blogroll is alphabetical and if I titled that section Author Buddies, it would appear before Cindy’s Books. Which is wrong on so many levels I can’t name! So don’t get offended that I consider you a Writer instead of an Author (once you’re published, technically you’re an author, I guess). It’s purely a result of the limitations of my blogroll.

I’d like to make other changes to the blog, but between Christmas preparations, being sick for 3 weeks (2010 has been quite the year for me getting bugs, but I have better things in mind for 2011—get it, “better”?), and editing a manuscript for Penny between all the other goings-on, I just haven’t had the time. You’re lucky you’re getting an updated blogroll. You’re welcome.

P.S. I’ve also added a “Blog Legend,” which explains the nicknames used on this blog. Because of the alphabetical limitations of my blogroll links (which starts at the Newsletter Sign-Up and ends with Writer Buddies), the Blog Legend is way down the sidebar instead of being up where you can see it. I’ve noticed that WordPress now has a Custom Menus thingie. When I rework other elements of my blog, I’ll see if I can un-alphabeticalize the sidebar using a custom menu. Then I could move things around as much as I’d like (I believe that’s the idea anyway).

I know, technically “Newsletter sign-up” comes AFTER Cindy’s Books, but the Newsletter sign-up box is embedded in the sidebar in such a way that it can only go at the top or the bottom. And I have to edit the sidebar to change it to a script within a text box that I could move around. Which I plan to do. Someday. Ahem. It’s the fault of all those nasty books begging me to write them! It’s their fault, I tell you!