Dropping live New Year’s Eve

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Street Snacks, the fifth in the Liquid Diet Chronicles, is up for pre-order.

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Don’t leave your empties lying in the streets, guys, jeez…

Meg Turner had a quiet six months (after the end of the monster incursion). That was because her borders were closed, but her six months of peace were up when her borders came down. While, yes, bringing her borders down allowed for a lot of postponed good things, it also allowed for an ill-considered challenge for her territory and a couple of murderers to waltz across her borders.

Oh, and an abandoned fledgling that had awakened to the night, buried in a dumpster. One that the Justices would have seen culled with most of the fledglings in the Kansas City nest. Thank goodness she’d sent Radu to rescue the ones that could recover from being brought over by cannibalistic monsters, and nobody official had paid attention to how many they’d rescued.

Between hiding an extra fledgling from the new Justice, Richmond recovering from a nasty case of PTSD, a vampire hiding his feeding on the homeless as animal attacks, and another feeding on her young vampires, Meg has her hands full.

And she’d really like to close her borders again, to avoid having to deal with all of this nonsense, please and thank you.

Look what I just did!

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Sleigh Bells and Wedding Bells is the second (of three planned) in Building a Life, following Fixing Up Love.

Amaryllis and Chris have been in love since…forever. Even if Amaryllis didn’t realize it until Chris fell off a ladder. A year later, they’re working and planning toward a wedding. Eventually. When they get enough money built up, and can take the time to do it.

Unfortunately, Amaryllis forgot Thanksgiving. Her mother decided that since she forgot it, she could make it. And that would have been fine, if the turkey hadn’t suddenly been the worst thing ever.

Now, she’s got three weeks to plan her own wedding, and only four hundred dollars to pay for it. But she’ll manage. It’ll work.

It just has to.

Updates

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So, the kids are back to school, as of mid-August. I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of things. Had started the last chapter of Sleigh Bells and Wedding Bells…and had to switch projects because my mom’s birthday hit, and I couldn’t write Amaryllis’s mom right then. No, not writers’ block. Couldn’t see the screen through tears. So, yeah. I’m feeling some better, so that’ll be brought back up and finished off this week.

Of course, I’ve had complications arise. Namely, that the last chapter wasn’t. I’ve already added a few more, and more characters have butted in…but I should be able to finish the first draft today.

I’m nearly 2/3 of the way finished with Street Snacks (Liquid Diet 5). The complications in Meg’s life are unfolding, and she’s working on keeping all the balls she has to juggle up in the air…and working on handing off the ones she doesn’t have to handle herself. Or knows she can’t because she lacks the base knowledge. As soon as I’m done with Sleigh Bells, I’ll work on finishing Street Snacks. Should be a couple more weeks, assuming I can get the damn MP3 player to actually work. Stupid fucking thing keeps turning itself OFF while I’m LISTENING. And writing.

And of course, I’ve had yet another story jump into my head. I keep having to write little bits on it to get it to let me write other things. This one’s going to be…weird, even by my standards. One of the characters doesn’t even have a voice, yet, and won’t for a while. My son is intrigued by the concept. So is my other half. I don’t have a title for it, yet. But the fog around the plot is starting to clear.

Beyond these projects, I’ve got another Modern Gods book in the works. I wasn’t expecting one, but…there you go. I guess that one’s coming back to life. Slowly. And it’s not like there isn’t a lot that can still be written in that world. There are so many pantheons to play with, and so many stories. I’d forgotten, for a long time, how much fun mythology can be.

And with all of that, I’m still trying to get back into the swing of a solid routine, between writing, dealing with kid stuff, and housework. Seriously, all those idiots trying to push for AI to do writing? They’re looking in the wrong direction: give me an AI that can run my house and do the housework–the laundry, the dishes, the picking up and putting away, vacuuming, mopping…the stuff that drags. Not the cooking–that’s kind of fun, and definitely emotionally satisfying. Not the writing, either. Writing doesn’t drag. Writing is the fun part, even if I hate the editing (wouldn’t mind an AI that could edit…so long as we could get one that’s totally unbiased, doesn’t lean left or right, and doesn’t lean toward gray sludge, or romance-only).

I’ve got two and a half hours before I have to go get the kids from school. Therefore, it’s time to get back to making the words go.

(Later, after I get the kids home, I’ll need to mix up all purpose gluten free flour for bread, cake, and cookies, and make supper. And bread. And maybe cake. Because my sales keep improving, year by year–thank y’all for that–and I feel like celebrating.)

A peek into the life of the writer: tools

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I’ve been a writer since I could hold a pencil and form words. I’ve been a storyteller for longer than that.

I’ve been a published writer (independent) since 2012, when I put together a collection of short stories and a novella that I’d written in college. That’s thirteen years. Thirteen years I’ve been published, and probably six years longer that I’ve been doing this as a targeted fiction writer. I’ve played around with a lot of different tools, and finally hit on the best tools for me. It took a lot of trial and error, but things do shake out as you try them, and hang onto what works.

When I started doing this as more than “hm. I need to turn something in for creative writing,” I was still in college. I had a character march into my head and demand to be written. I used the second-hand desktop that an uncle gave me. It didn’t connect to the internet at all, but it ran a bootleg copy of Office 97 just fine. And that worked. I wrote three books and several short stories on that machine before it died. Then, my junior year, my future husband gave me an old laser printer. A brother. Ancient machine, but damn. I fell in love. I could print my work (one sided, but hey) for editing. And I could edit without anything smearing!

Fast forward to grad school. The college I attended for my BA degree had computer labs in every building; the ratio was 49 students per computer. The ratio that the grad school bragged about…wasn’t nearly so good. It was almost double the number of students per computer, and the computer labs were in the library or the computer sciences building, with a couple of six-computer labs scattered here and there, restricted to grad student use. I bought my first laptop to ensure I’d be able to get my work done (and a tiny, portable inkjet printer that was slow as shit to print, but saved my ass a couple times).

The other thing I discovered in grad school was that I love using fountain pens. Love the silly, finicky things. I can write with them longer without my hands and forearms cramping up. Started with a Sheaffer calligraphy pen with a .5 chisel nib in undergrad, then moved to a Parker Vector with a fine nib in grad school. Went through a cartridge a week, taking notes, but ended up taking more and better notes (and notes on stories and plots) because I could write longer at a given time.

I’ve stuck with a laptop, for the most part, since then. It’s a lot handier to have a laptop, and there’s no need to have a desktop as well. I mean, there may come a time when that changes, but it hasn’t come yet. Behind me, there’s a laser printer for drafts–and it prints double-sided. Yes, there’s also a color printer, but that’s as much for kids’ homework assignments as anything.

I stuck with Word for years. Even bought licenses a couple of times, when it didn’t come free as an employee of a university. But there’s a problem with that, now. I can’t outright buy Word, anymore–I mean, yes, it’s possible, but cost-prohibitive. By cost, I’d have to rent it. I have sincere distaste for that. I mean, it’s one thing when I had to replace a laptop every year or so, but the last one lasted me three years. This one is halfway through year two. I do not want to rent programs for a year at a time. And the office clones work, but not as well for publishing. They’re great for some things, but not for all. So I use LibreOffice Writer for some things, and Atticus for actual formatting and publishing (and some drafting).

Not all the drafting. Second, and then third. First drafts…as the kids have been in school, I’ve found myself doing more and more first draft work by hand, while I wait in the car for them to come out. It’s surprising how much you can get plotted out in ten or twenty minute segments. Yes, I use fountain pens for that. The pens I use, however, have evolved. I was using basic, pull-cap fountain pens, but the ink was horrifically limited in volume, and the pens I used…I couldn’t see my ink levels without disassembling the pens to look at the cartridge. I switched to piston-filled pens…and discovered that the enormous ink capacity came with a different issue: what to do with a cap that you can’t post without risking an ink geyser trying to get it back off.

The paper is also a consideration that most people wouldn’t think of. I mean, generally, people use ballpoint pens. Or rollerballs. Those come with a thicker, viscous type of ink, rather than the liquid inks that fountain pens use. Those write on pretty much any paper without issues. Fountain pens, and liquid ink…not so much.

I’ve tried a lot of different papers. Loose-leaf in three-ring binders (worst paper for fountain pens), Moleskin notebooks (also surprisingly bad paper for the cost), cheap journals (sometimes thicker paper is better, sometimes it’s just thicker). I’ve heard very good things about some European brands of paper and notebooks, but damn. Those are STUPIDLY expensive.

The best paper I’ve found for my purposes? Carrying in my purse and sitting and using while I’m waiting? Walmart’s Pen+Gear composition books and junior composition books. Their mini-comps are fine, too, but too small for much more than lists, notes, and reminders. Their legal pads are pretty good, too, but I’d need a protective cover for purse carry, and those are generally larger than I want to mess with. Their wire-bound notebooks are just as good, but snag.

So, the tools I carry now are capless fountain pens, with extra-fine nibs to extend the ink capacity as much as possible. Clicky pens. Two Pilot Vanishing Points (a blue one with purple ink, and a red one with burgundy), and two Jinhao 10 clones of the Pilots (with Noodler’s x-feather blue in the tan one, and x-feather black in the green one). No, the ink capacity isn’t wonderful, but I can generally tell when they’re starting to need refills by the behavior, and I don’t have to keep track of a loose cap. And if I carry four, I have the same general ink capacity as one piston fill, so I’ll generally have ink in one of them. And I carry at least two full-size composition books (one for novel projects, and the other for short stories), one junior (for if I need something less obtrusive to jot things down when I’m supposed to be doing something else), and a mini-calendar for keeping track of what’s going on in my writing/publishing schedule, and in the kids’ schedules.

The tools I use at home are a basic laptop1, the laser printer (and sometimes inkjet), LibreOffice Writer2, and Atticus. Oh, and my old piston-fill fountain pens, and the snap-cap Plasir pens. And whatever notebook/binder comes to hand.

(Yes, there is a composition book and a TWSBI Eco3 fountain pen on my nightstand. I do not control when/how the characters walk into my head and start talking.)

Preferences, and situations, change. And the tools change with them. It’s taken years of trial and error to optimize the tools for my daily needs. I think I’ve found a good setup for what I need, and for what I do…for now, at least. It may change again as the kids get their licenses and start driving. And working.

1A laptop really is the best option for me: there are days I can work at a desk, with a wireless usb keyboard in my lap…and days I can’t work at a desk (some of those I can’t even work in my recliner).

2OpenOffice is also an option, free, and easily available. I just prefer the user interface of LibreOffice. Your mileage may vary.

3TWSBI Eco fountain pens are awesome. They hold double the ink that the biggest cartridges do, and the barrels are clear, so you can always see how much you have. They can post without engaging the knob that moves the piston, so that makes them specifically good as nightstand pens. HOWEVER. They tend to vomit ink into the cap if they’re dropped, shaken, and generally banged around, which makes them bad as carry-in-your-purse pens. They’re probably fine for shirt pocket carry, but not for how I carry pens.

Reasons

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Yes, it’s been forever since I posted. I’m sorry. I have reasons, but they honestly feel like excuses. I know, I know: they feel like excuses because the black dog has been chewing on my ass for months. I’m trying to get/do better.

So. Last January. Published The Law of Magical Contagion.

The capper to Siobhan Miller’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day was a dog, tied to the stop sign. She hates dogs. She’s terrified of dogs, and that was a big dog. Looking sad and lonely, tied to a stop sign. That was not okay. She was the only one around, so she took him home. Only to find that he wasn’t a dog, but one of the Good People, under a curse. And there were more of them.

And they were all after her. And all she had was the dog (who wasn’t a dog) to help keep her from being taken away from all she’s ever known. Because that dog? He and his twin sister are family that she didn’t know she had, and their appearance has upended everything she’s ever known about herself. Including that she was human to begin with. She has a lot of questions.

Starting with curses, and how and why they sometimes spread.

In March, I put out a collection of short stories. Science fiction, this time. Title is Escape Velocity.

An optimistic collection of six stories revolving around leaving Earth, or living (and making a living) further out in the solar system.

Xanadu–Sometimes, making a profit just needs an outside perspective for why it hasn’t yet.
Turing’s Legacy–It takes love to make a person. And maybe an accident.
Theory in Practice–Psychological care may well be more important in a closed environment.
Reasonable Accommodations–Microgravity could be an answer to some disabilities.
You Can’t Go Home Again–The effects of long-term isolation on asteroid miners explored.
Everyday Miracles–What could push someone to emigrate to a new off-planet colony?

I got my brain hijacked by what I THOUGHT was a short story. It wasn’t. It turned into a full-blown novella-length coming-of-age story. Which normally, I can’t stand, and don’t write. I didn’t have a choice on this. It came out whether I wanted it to or not.

The final product was put up for sale in May: The Passing of the Age. It even spent a little bit of time on the Amazon best-seller’s list for its category.

Once, gods and Titans went to war because humanity existed and the Titans…didn’t like that. Will, the blacksmith’s apprentice, was born long after the war’s bitter, destructive, last gasp. It left the land scarred, leaving behind the Wastes, a massive pit in the landscape, dug by poisoned magic. The old world was lost in the ashes, and survivors were left with so little that any who didn’t pull their weight (or had something someone powerful wanted) were exiled to starve in the Wastes.

Just. Like. Will.

Cast out to the Wastes because his father remarried and his stepmother had wanted her children to inherit, he turned to his master, the smith. The smith, who had held Will back to keep using his labor for free, refused to go against the rest of the village, angry though he was to lose Will’s labor. In lieu of the honestly-earned status of journeyman that would have protected Will from exile, his master gave him a bag of grave goods: a hammer (but not a good one), tongs (that were rusting to pieces), and a file (more than half worn out). And two small coins to pay the ferryman when he reached the river dividing life from death.

Will entered the wastes with the clothes on his back, inadequate grave goods, and determination to live through it, in spite of his village. And a mission given him by the Land, and by the god of the wild places, to take the knife he made with his grave goods to the very center of the Wastes. There, he will find his destiny.

Then last month–July–I put out another type of story I don’t write. A romance. A ghost story romance. I was not planning to write it. It just came out.

That was Soul Inheritance. It ended up being a lot more fun than I thought, and…wholesome. Definitely a clean romance, and a lot more religiously inclined–openly so–than most everything else I write (even though it’s in the background of literally everything I write).

Fresh out of college, Evelyn Alexander’s first order of business was finding a place to live. One she could afford on her small inheritance before her job started. None of the local rental agencies had anything in her price range, but…she found a small Victorian house for sale, the only one mostly untouched in a decaying neighborhood of subdivided rental houses.

Complete with a ghost. A very attractive ghost. A very attractive ghost with a strong dislike of the idea of anyone changing his house. So, of course, she bought it. A cranky ghost for a roommate was still a better option than the tiny studio with criminal neighbors.

Between working to restore her new house, embezzlement at work and a murder next door, Evelyn has her hands full. As she works to get on her feet as a productive adult (and not fall in love with a ghost she can’t have), the problems start to snowball. And it’s only compounded by learning that her house has far more secrets than just a single, cranky (attractive) ghost…

I am still working on Liquid Diet 5. Current title for that one is Street Snacks. I’m about a third of the way done. I thought I had a good idea of the full plot, but it jinked a bit. Like my characters tend to do, I had a bunch insert themselves, and run away with the plot a little bit. I’m no longer sure where things will end up. Or how. I’m hoping to have that done and out by…October? Maybe? I know my daughter’s poking at me to hurry up and finish it. Kinda hard to do that, right now–the kids are under elbow, and…I can’t write like that. Thankfully, school starts next Wednesday. I should be able to write better after that.

The other issue is…well. Technology-related. Laptop is partitioned (which either is a recent development, or I didn’t know about), and the C drive is…stupid. It’s literally the smallest partition. And it decided that there was insufficient room to update about a month ago, and I had to delete EVERYTHING THAT WASN’T MS PROGRAMS off of it to have room for updates. Which included my music. And my music player can’t FIND the damn music I write by, now.

(I got an MP3 player. I’ll be putting the rest of my music on it soon, but right now, it contains just my writing music for the Liquid Diet Chronicles.)

Also planned for November is Sleigh Bells and Wedding Bells. It’s a follow up to last year’s romance, Fixing Up Love. I’ve got it 3/4 of the way written. It’ll be a novella, and I might–MIGHT–publish the two together in one volume in paperback. If there’s interest.

(I might do that anyway, for the sake of my daughter and her best friend, who both love romance, and are fourteen.)

I think that’s it for this year’s projects. I will say this: I can’t keep going at this pace. I’m going to have to slow down how many books I push myself to write and put out. I think maybe next year, I’ll aim at four, with one of them being a collection of short stories, one Liquid Diet book, a slot for a “hi, there, I’m ambushing you!” idea (there’s one or two that are nudging), and…a Modern Gods book. I have an idea for one that I’m working on getting written. I’ve got about four chapters done, with another two started. And I have a plot.

I am going to try to keep everyone up to date a bit better. And to do that, I’m going to add “update blog” to my to-do list. I’m aiming at monthly, for now. May go to weekly, once I get that habit built. Wish me luck on everything. I have the feeling I’m going to need it.

And it’s a new year!

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What’s going on:

I haven’t caught my breath, yet. The kids have gone back to school for the spring semester…sort of. Monday was an ice day–ice under snow on the parking lot made it really unsafe, so they canceled–and Friday was a snow day. Which…we had warning, so the school had the two of them bring home all of their books, and have an AMI* day instead of a snow day. And Wednesday, my son had a doctor’s appointment.

That means that I’ve had two days that I was able to settle down and write. Only two.

Hopefully, this week will be better. I don’t have anything that eats the kids’ school day, which is the only time I can really get work done, this week. Just an after-school dental appointment yesterday. Next week…the kids have a short (very short: MLK day on Monday is out entirely, and Friday’s a half day) week, and Other Half has a thing I need to help him with mid-week. I have no idea how productive I’ll be able to be next week…but I’m gonna try.

The Law of Magical Contagion went live, this morning, if you’re interested. It is, of course, KU, since that’s the only outlet I sell through, so you can borrow it and read it instead of buying (and if you like it, buy it later!).

Finished (or almost) but not:

I’ve got the revision nearly finished for Escape Velocity (planning on March). I’ll see if I have anybody willing/able to beta read it real fast, and get it out for pre-release ASAP. Hopefully, before the end of the month.

The current WIP is almost first-draft finished. I think I’ve got two chapters to go. The bastard fought me hard yesterday. I wrote around 3600 words, and deleted most of it, for a total of maybe 600 words kept. But I think I’m going in the right direction, and barrelling toward the end. I think that one will be Waking Mister Right or something. I’m not sure. Title is very much not set.

Works In Progress:

I have a log-jam of other projects. I’ve got a follow-up to Fixing Up Love about half finished (aiming for November), and I have a fifth in series for both Modern Gods and The Liquid Diet Chronicles bouncing around.

The first story/central idea for the Modern Gods book is set, and I’ve got two or three others up the spout. I’ll see how it all shakes out when I get finished with the two that are either almost finished or half-finished.

Meg’s pestering me, too. The beginning of the end of the Covid lockdowns–and hers–are going to be central to that one. Pre-election,** so really, the politics central to the book are vampire politics, not human. Like they have been all along: the last one was about how the lock-downs were affecting a race that not only doesn’t but cannot catch human illnesses. I mean, if there’s a blood supply shortage in hospitals, that’s absolutely going to hit the grocery delivery service. Hard. I’m not sure, yet, if it’s even still in business. It’s that nebulous. Unfortunately for Meg, she can only hold her borders inviolable until…well. Fall. October, at the latest.

Oh, there’s a long-ish short story set in the Liquid Diet world, from another character’s perspective, that I’ve got about half finished, too.

I think that’s pretty much it, for now. I’ll see what I’ve got to tell y’all next month




*AMI–Alternate Means of Instruction, aka, work at home and turn it in online.

**No fucking way am I touching the ’20 elections. You either were watching, or you weren’t.

A Corner of One’s Own

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Once again, I have a desk. It’s not an enormous desk. Which is, in all honesty, a good thing: I don’t have much space where I could put it. It’s in a corner of the library/living room, behind the high-backed loveseat.* It has a slanted shelf across under the desk, acting as both shelf and stability brace. It’s a good place for draft books, dictionaries, and a battered thesaurus that’s seen better days.**

The desk isn’t new. Like my stand mixer, I inherited it from my mother. It’s a solid wood piece, not pressboard, but she painted it because she couldn’t get the previous paint totally stripped off, and it stained the wood teal, and because she thought the grain of the wood “wasn’t pretty.” She wrought better than she knew, though; the paint is enamel, and the cats (hers and my sister’s) didn’t use it for a scratching post.

I have an office chair, too. Like the desk, it’s also not new; my other half bought it years ago, when he owned a small business in his hometown. Like, decades ago. This chair predates our marriage. But it’s in better shape than anything newer we have. It’s not adjustable in height, and is, quite frankly, tall enough that I can’t rest my feet on the floor if I wanted to do that (I don’t–I’ve got my feet propped up on the shelf under the desk). But it fits the desk’s height, and works well enough.

So, I have my office all set up, right?

Yeah…not yet. I still need organizers for the drawer, a decent pencil cup, organizers for files/notebooks on the desk, and I should find the prop/book holder for my draft books, for transcribing.

But I do have the major furniture pieces in place. And I can work at the desk, even without the little fiddly bits finished.

So. What am I working on?

Active writing projects

I’m working on a follow-up to Fixing Up Love. No, I hadn’t planned it, but there it is. I’ll probably put it up next fall, since it covers Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I’m also working on a sort of a ghost story/mystery/romance…thing. I haven’t really got a good title worked up for it yet, but it’s kind of fun. I know where that’s going, so I’m aiming at next summer.

Meg’s starting to pester me. Next up in the Liquid Diet Chronicles is going to be Pub Snacks (aiming at September), with a side-short-story in that world, from a third person POV of a new character.

Oddly enough, I think I’m starting to see the shape of another Modern Gods book. I’m not sure, yet, so we’ll have to see.

Finished projects

In January, The Law of Magical Contagion will go live on the fifteenth.

And in March, Escape Velocity will come out. (I’m working right now on an edit for that.)

Last but not least, I am going to be busy as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest for the rest of the month, and for the first week of next month. I’ll try to update on how the current active projects are going, but I won’t promise anything.

*Think a wingback chair, streteched out double its width, and you’ll have a general mental picture of the loveseat. So it actually works fairly well to separate my “office” from the rest of the room.

**The thesaurus is one I’ve had since slightly before college, when I found it on a free to a good home bookshelf in my home town.

Update on the State of the Writer.

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Yeah, not doing wonderfully. For the past several months, I’ve been having worsening hypothyroid symptoms. It’s been creeping up on me for like a year to be honest. I thought it was just depression, which would have been reasonable, given the past year, but then the physical symptoms started getting more and more obvious. So, I asked for a doctor’s appointment to discuss that, and another issue. And I’m back on natural thyroid, and had started feeling better. I’m less than a month in, and the clouds have lifted. My energy hasn’t come back, but I can think and plan again. And write. Back on the writing bandwagon. There’ll be news on that front later in the post.

Week before last, the kids’ school decided that since the soccer team made the Final Four playoffs, they were going to cancel the Thursday and Friday before Thanksgiving Break (decided this on TUESDAY, by the way). Grandma immediately kidnapped them (Pixie had piano lessons Wednesday night, and she just snitched them both, and took them home with her). Thursday, when they came home, Imp was sick. He was fine by Saturday, but he spent Friday pretty miserable.

Then Pixie caught it. And passed it to Andrew. Yes, half the family (including my mother-in-law) were sick over Thanksgiving.

Now I have it.

Right when I need to be starting with Christmas baking. (Bake a batch of cookies, freeze half or more, repeat. Oh, and bread. Lots of bread. And same: bake a loaf, freeze a loaf for when I feel too crappy to make bread, but I’m out.)

On the upside, I finally found a second bowl for my stand mixer, which I’d inherited from my mom. It’s a Sam’s Club-sold Kitchenaid…and it’s an odd size, which meant finding a bowl to fit was a lot more complicated than it could have been. But I found one, and it arrived (a week early) yesterday. Which means I can do more baking a lot faster, given that I can have one in the wash, and use the other. I may get a second beater paddle; I don’t need a second dough hook, considering that gluten free stuff does not form up into a dough ball. Ever.

So. On to writing. Since my last post, both Light Up the Night and Liquid Diet Chronicles: Meals on Wheels went live. I revised and published a short story in the Modern Gods universe: “Universal Donor.” (I think that one may have spawned an idea for book 5 in the universe…but I won’t know for sure until I actually start writing whether it’ll be a full book or just a short story.) I finished the surprise novel that started out a short story–initially titled Dogfather–and it’s up for pre-order as The Law of Magical Contagion. I have a collection of sci-fi shorts almost ready for beta readers titled Escape Velocity. I’m working on another novel (and having issues with the name), and got pounced on by a followup to Fixing Up Love…which I had never intended to do any more with. Sometimes, though, I don’t get a choice about that.

Also since my last post, I’ve acquired new writing software. Last April, my laptop failed. I ordered a new one, one which came with a copy of Office 365, which I could use for a year. Then I’d have to rent a copy of the software to use for another year. I deeply, deeply resent that: I do not want to rent software. I hate having to buy a new copy when I buy a new laptop; I will not rent software by the year when I have to replace it every three years. And LibreOffice or OpenOffice, while they work well enough, don’t play well with Amazon for publishing. So I purchased a software app that came highly recommended by another writer whose work I greatly enjoy: Sarah Hoyt.

I cannot speak highly enough of Atticus. First of all, it’s a one-time purchase. Yeah, it costs more than a year of Office, but again, it’s a one time purchase. Second, it beats Word, hands down, with formatting for both E-pub and Paper. Because with it, I managed something that I’d failed to do with Word: the hardcover of Certified Public Assassin will be out as of 12/10. Yeah, since it’s print on demand, it won’t be shipping in time for Christmas, but if you get an Amazon gift card for Christmas and want that one in print, it is available. Now. Finally.

(Atticus also works quite well for writing books, too. I’m using it for the sequel to Fixing Up Love, and for the other one I’m working on, which doesn’t have a firm title yet.)

Guys…please pray for me that I don’t lose another elderly relative this year. I have two aunts left and an uncle by marriage on my mom’s side…and an aunt and two uncles left on my dad’s. I don’t need to lose any more just yet. Or, if you don’t believe, or don’t pray, send good thoughts and cross your fingers.

Still Standing (not really)

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God, it’s been a rough year. Really, really rough.

January, my mom passed. That kicked my feet out from under me for a while.

Then Mother’s Day kicked them out from under me again. So did waking in a panic at the beginning of the month because I had no idea what to get her for her birthday, two weeks from that day.

Two days after Mom’s birthday, her youngest sister died.

One of Mom’s other two sisters had her cancer come back. Virulently. Complicated by cirrhosis.

The blows…just keep coming.

I’m trying to roll with them, but man, I’m feeling flattened. I will honestly admit that yes, it’s somewhat affecting my writing. Because I’m doing more reading, less writing, than I should be doing.

That said. Certified Public Assassin seems to be doing well. And I’ve got a novella coming up in September. It almost made novel length, but not quite. Light up the Night is currently available for pre-order:

Dane Crockford is tired. Tired of the green energy crapping out and leaving his wife Rose gasping for breath when their air conditioning dies, tired of trying to hide his use of his own solar panels from the nationalized electrical company, and tired of worrying about his daughter and son-in-law, trapped in an abusive indenture program to pay off their student loans. He’s not the only one, either. Everyone in his home town is in a similar situation, many of them with their children doing dangerous jobs without pay to offset crippling student debt. So when his grandson Toby accidentally discovers an energy generation method that isn’t wholly owned by the federal government, he jumps on the possibility of building something that works, in spite of and around the federal monopoly.

But what the monopoly doesn’t realize is that their grip on Dane, and on his home town, is far less secure than they think. When they disconnect his house from the power grid, they have nothing to hold over him, to force him to work for small rebates on his monthly bill. The utility has unleashed the power of a cranky old man with a rare skill, and they’ve got no idea that they’ve tossed the pebble that starts an avalanche.

It goes live September 18.

And Liquid Diet Chronicles 4: Meals On Wheels is in the hands of my beta readers.

I think that’s it for now; I’m bracing for what’s coming next, but fully expect to get knocked off my feet by life in general a few more times before the year’s over.



Checking in!

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So. As of now, I have one fewer short story than I thought. I pulled it up to play with while I was poking at Word 365, and…my 9.5K word short story turned into a 35K word first draft novel. Working title is Light Up The Night.

With that, I’ve written three full, first draft novels so far this year. And the year isn’t over yet. And I’m getting tackled by short stories, and other pieces that I’m not sure yet what they’re going to do.

The kids finished the school year as of the 22nd of last month, so I’ve got them underfoot (and elbow) until the middle of August (barring about ten days of fun off with Grandma). Not particularly conducive to first draft writing, but fine for editing/revising. And I’ll be doing plenty of that on the novels I’ve got first-draft finished. NO more short story editing. Not right now. I do not need another surprise novel jumping me. I’ve sort of had enough of those.

Today, I’ve got work other than writing to be doing: my beloved other half has an appointment for which he’s being drugged silly, and to which I need to take him. Nothing big, just some dental work.

Which means I’m going to need to ask the kids to pick up the slack on the housework, while I’m taking care of their dad. They’re capable of it, capable of far more than they really want to admit. And that’s okay–they’re teenagers.

Right now, CPA is up for preorder–I posted the first sample chapter last week. I’m working on revising Dogfather. Next on the list will be Meals on Wheels, then Light up the Night, along with whatever other short stores (or longer pieces) jump me in the meantime.

I’ll be posting another sample chapter sometime probably next week. Cheers!