In which the day-star rises, and sets again

For many, many years, I have been a Nighttime Writer, starting around 5 or 6-ish in the evening and continuing on to 10 or 11-ish, whereupon I would call it a night and go to bed.  This was more than in-part made necessary because for many, many years, I had a day-job to fill my morning and afternoon hours.  I never had any problem writing at night, though, and assumed that my natural writing niche was in the evening hours.

When I left what I fervently hope proves to be my last day-job, I continued to believe myself  a Nighttime Writer  And I continued to schedule Things That Were Not Writing in the morning, to “get them out of the way.”  The only problem was that, by the time evening rolled around and I had taken care of all the Not Writing Things, my brain was tired.  Which meant that (1) it took longer for me to write my Daily Words and, (2) I was getting seriously short on sleep, which meant that I was even tireder by the time the hour to write came ’round.  I broached the idea of just flipping House Time completely around — y’know, sleep in the daytime, work in the nighttime — but Steve nixed that.

So, I tried to mix it up.

First, I tried just moving the Writing Hour up into mid-afternoon, but!  Midafternoon has always been and continues to be the Best Time Ever to Take a Nap.  I have no brain at 3 pm; I will never have a brain at 3 pm.  At 5, I’m back in the game and good until 2 am, but for the love of ghu, don’t ask me to anything  between 3 and 5.

So, clearly, that little bit of time travel wasn’t going to work.  The next logical thing to do was to move the Writing Hour to Hard Morning, right after breakfast; while I’m still drinking my third cup of coffee.

That was logical, sure, but I resisted it, because, if there was one thing I did know about my so-called process was that I was Just Not a Morning Writer.  Hell, I’m not even a Morning Person.  I have seen the sun rise, many times, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it rise because I was getting out of bed.

This morning, I decided that it had to be tried.  So!  I turned off Facebook and Twitter before I went to bed last night, so I couldn’t log in this morning, just to “see what’s going on” and get mired down for a hour.  And after breakfast, I came back to my office, read the comics, and opened up a file to start to write.

I wrote for 90 minutes — this is a revival of an Old Thing I Used To Do:  Set a timer for 90 minutes.  For those 90 minutes, I do nothing — nothing — but write.  If I stall out on a description or something, I do not open up a game of Solitaire “to help me think,” I stare at the screen until the words break out on my forehead in drops of blood, whereupon I transcribe them onto the page and continue.  When the bell goes off, I have 30 minutes to do whatever I want to do, then it’s back to the 90-minute run.

Anyway, this morning, I did one 90-minute run, for a total of 1,251 words.  After lunch, before 3:00, I did a second 90-minute run, for a total of 1,004 words.  Two thousand, two hundred and fifty-five words is, by my lights, at least, a reasonable writing day.  Even more reasonable because I didn’t feel like every word was being pried out of my brain by a tweezer-wielding chimpanzee.

So, I’m encouraged, and very much less reluctant to pitch in again tomorrow morning.

. . .all of which is, of course, fascinating stuff, but it’s what I’ve got today.

Except vacuuming.  Now that the day’s work is out of the way, I have chores to do.

 

Friday, Saturday and beyond!

Christie Meierz has a Guest Post at SFSignal, in which she talks about some of the women who live in the Liaden Universe® and what makes a woman strong.  Here’s your link.

Yesterday, I took myself out of the house, to work at the Winslow Public Library — chance of scene, and all like that, plus I assumed that it would be quieter than the house was scheduled to be on the day.

Well. . .it was a change of scene, but. . .libraries aren’t quiet anymore.

The first surprise was that the tables had been rearranged since the last time I’d been in, and my favorite table, in No Woman’s Land between the Storytime Bleachers and the Adult Fiction Section, had been replaced by a checkers table.  It was a nice height, and sturdy, and more or less big enough for my needs, but I didn’t feel I should set up camp there, in case someone wanted to play checkers.

So, I moved back into the room (the Winslow Library is located in what used to be a rollerskating rink, so it’s one Really Big Room) , where there were two tables, deep in the bowels of non-fiction.  One table was occupied by a man who was quietly reading a book.  Good enough.  I claimed the second, unpacked, and commenced in to work.

. . .only to find that the man who had been quietly reading had been awaiting the return of his son, who was doing research for a report, and who, I suppose, had reading comprehension issues, because the man said, “Ready?” and started to read the book aloud to the boy.  Every so often, he would stop, and the boy would say back what he had understood.

I quietly packed up and moved to the map table near the computers, which is where I stayed throughout the next three-0dd hours.  I could still hear the man reading to his son, but it wasn’t so loud that I couldn’t ignore it.

Scarcely had I vacated the table when a high school aged girl came in with a woman.  They sat down at the table, and began grammar and punctuation drills.  Which they did for three hours.  I’m a writer, and I can’t maintain an enthusiasm for punctuation for three straight hours, but these ladies were hardcore.

Meanwhile, the father and son moved over to the computers, and the boy logged into. . .something.  His dad had to prompt him a couple times, but on the whole he needed much less help with the computer than he had with his research reading.

The boy had barely gotten logged in when an older man and a younger couple came in, took over the table he and his dad had been using and commenced in to having a seminar about. . .something.  Which they labored over for more than two hours.

Who knew the library was such a crossroads of commerce?

After I was done my own work, I wandered across the river, and had a late lunch at Holy Cannoli.  If you’re ever in the neighborhood, the lemon-chicken soup is to die for.

I finished up a couple errands, and made my way back home, to find that we’re under a Winter Storm Watch from this evening into Sunday.  Depending on who you believe, we’re looking at snow accumulations of 3-5 or 4-8 inches.  There’s also an outlying model which predicts it will rain, to which I can only say, “avert.”

While I was at the library, I picked up a bookmark advertising the Langlais Art Trail.  This is a project to mapping the location of all of the (odd, humorous, and, in many cases, Quite Large) pieces of art that Bernard Langlais gave to the State of Maine across the course of his career.  The most famous of these is, of course, the Skowhegan Indian.  The Colby College Art Museum also has a nice collection of his smaller works.

For more information about Bernard Langlais, his work, and the art trail, go here.

Now, having brought y’all up to date on the doings of the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory, finished my coffee, and brushed three cats, I’m going to turn off the internet and go to work.

Everybody have a good weekend!

On writermind and what comes next

So, in reference to the latest PSA, someone asked this, seemingly simple, question:

Uh, you DO have one more “Theo book” coming along some day, don’t you?

The answer to this question is. . . not simpleNot only is it not simple, I’m not certain I can adequately explain what we’re attempting with this sequence of five books, of which Dragon in Exile is the first.  Possibly, I could explain it. . .less disjointedly. . .to another writer (who isn’t Steve), but readers and writers are separated by the fundamentals that bring us together:  writers write; readers read.

So, I’m going to try to explain what we’re doing; apologies in advance if it makes no sense as you read it here.  We trust that the execution will be more illuminating.

. . .

Steve and I are now embarked on the writing of, as stated above, a sequence of five novels.  These five novels, in their entirety, are the. . .sequel, if you will, to I Dare and to Dragon Ship, in particular.  Discerning readers will have noticed that there are many people in play, and many. . .unsettled situations left at the end of those two novels.  You will also notice that there are several. . .Big Problems still on the board to be solved.

Solving those Big Problems is going to take the combined talents of All of Those Characters.  (Even Rys, who, when “his” book was pitched, was never intended to survive his redemption.) Theo, for instance, can’t solve All the Problems by herself.  Theo doesn’t even know what All the Problems are.

(We, ourselves, don’t see Theo and her adventures as being a spin off books.  In our view, Theo is very much entangled in the troubles that were introduced in Agent of Change, and which have only gotten more tangled since.)

The only way that we can proceed, being the writers that we are, is to continue as we began, and braid the character and story arcs until we reach the Thrilling Conclusion.

What this means is that it’s extremely doubtful that we will be writing a one character/one problem novel within the Five Book Dash.  The reason we pitched five intertwined novels is that we knew we couldn’t reasonably cope with all the necessary characters and arcs in one novel, and to write another Theo novel at this point in the Universe. . .would be cheating.

So, we’ve broken the characters and the problems out into sets, all aimed at the Thrilling Conclusion.  Some characters will move through several novels.  Some will vanish on a mission, and not be seen. . .for a while.  This will probably produce some very odd books and some folks will grow impatient with us for writing endless stories where “nothing happens”.  (Just got our first reader review of Dragon. . . in which the novel is described as being an unending series of lunches, tea breaks, and dinners in the snowy summer of Surebleak.)  We expect to see some readers lose patience.  We hope that most of you will stick with us.  We really think that we can pull this off, and that ultimate arrival will be worth the journey.

. . .that’s all I’ve got.

And now I need to go to work.

 

The state of the Rolanni

The second round of antibiotics will be done on Sunday, whereupon I will be cured.

So, I decree, and so shall it be.

(Betting pool is now open:  Am I the Empress of the Universe, or am I not?)

Things — THINGS — that had been let to slide are slowly getting caught up.  For instance, while we were ill, any-and-everything that wasn’t A-List (by which I mean — business, bill paying, cat caring), and wasn’t clearly Z-List (adverts from the Dish Network, solicitations for new credit cards, life insurance pitches, &c) got set aside in a pile — PILE.  The PILE had reached rather alarming proportions by the time either one of us was feeling well enough to cope, and the first idea was — let’s just swoop all of that stuff right into the trash.

Well, on the day that plan occurred, there wasn’t enough energy between us to implement it, which was probably a good thing.  The second plan — which we are calling Plan B — is to go through a few things every day and so winnow the PILE down responsibly, in case there should actually be something that was, oh B, or even C-List and needed personal attention.

So, that’s what we’ve been doing there.

We’ve also been slowly catching up on non-A-List housekeeping, and laundry and whatnot.  Today, I vacuumed the house, chopped up onions for freezing, finished up the laundry, did the dishes (note to self: teach Boopsie the Wise to do dishes).

Also, over the last week or so, I’ve been communing with Alliance of Equals, and all the leftover notes from the previous book, handling things, reading (but not editing), and just slowly sinking back into the story and the characters, after our long separation.

I’m feeling confident that I am now well enough, and well enough in tune with the story, to start adding new material without breaking anything.  There are, thank ghod, nice, clear hooks set in — In that regard, at least, this is no Dragon in Exile.

And, yes, I am still bitter that we had to ask for an extension on this one.  It had all been going together so nicely. . .

Well.

Tomorrow morning, I have a dentist appointment, and some errands to run.  Tomorrow evening, I intend to open a new file in Alliance, and get writing.

Also, sometime soon, but probably not until after the antibiotics are finished, and I’ve given the cough time to come back, if it’s gonna — I need to find a new gym, and also a group, or a book club, or a volunteer gig (though not, I think, at the hospital) to add into the schedule.

And that?  Is all I’ve got.

How’s the new year treating you guys?

The elf knight sits on yonder hill, and blows his horn both loud and shrill

It snowed this morning; now, it’s spitting ice pellets.  In view of the weather, I declined to go into town, hoping for better tomorrow.

For fun, I called the oil company to find out why we’d run out of oil.  I also solicited promises that this would never happen again, promises the young lady at the Office adroitly failed to give while being oh-so-helpful.  One result of her helpfulness and my continuing failure to understand how this unhappy circumstance could have come about, is that we will host yet! another! tech! tomorrow.  He will check the lines and the intake, the tank, and the furnace itself, to be sure that we don’t have a slow leak somewhere, and to patch it if we do.

So, that.

I again called the Maine State Archivist, who was not in, though this time, I got to leave a message with a live person, rather than voice mail.  I received a promise that the Archivist would return my call this afternoon, but I have Doubts that this will actually happen.  Perhaps he’ll prove me wrong.

I also called the guy who gave us a quote on putting a rooflet over the outside front stairs, and then disappeared off the face of the earth, to find out if he actually intended to do the work, and when.  That call went to voice-mail, which I supposed I could’ve predicted.

In between phone calls, and before we had finished off the coffee in the pot, a UPS truck pulled into the driveway, and the driver gave into Steve’s hands two boxes of post cards — one for Trade Secrets and one for Carousel Seas — which we will be taking with us to PhilCon.  Many thanks to Laura at Baen, for putting this together for us.

The mail brought the yearly aggravation of Form 8802, wherein we pay the government a fee to certify that  that we are, indeed, US citizens, and therefore do not have to pay taxes on monies we earn overseas.  So, yanno, yay.

I should probably finish off my phone calling extravaganza with a call to the ACA, to see if I can get a supervisor, or somebody who has once in their life at least looked over the edge of the box, but I fear the force is not sufficiently strong in me.

Alliance of Equals stands at just a smidge shy of 31,000 words.  I have about 7,700 words (roughly two chapters) left from the words excised from Dragon in Exile, and I believe they go Right About Here, which will put me, again, roughly, at just about 40,000 words.  Which will be a good place to leave it while we go down-coast to party.  When we come home from PhilCon, I’ll read those 40,000-ish words, and then move on with the next 60-90,000-ish all-new words.  This book is due on Madame the Editor’s desk in February.  No, I don’t know when it will be published, or when the eArc will be available, just to nip those both in the bud.

Several people have wanted to know how come Alliance is moving along “so quickly” while Dragon took so long to write.  There are two answers to that — three answers, if you count the age-old, and very true, “all books write different” — a simple answer and a complicated one.

The simple answer is:  Dragon is Exile took so long to write because I was trying writing two books at once.

The complicated answer also addresses the question raised by the simple answer (“But WHY were you trying to write two books at once?” so hang on to that one, ‘k?  Thx.)

The reason we were trying to write two books at once is:

1.  We pitched five books, and the first book in the pitch had to do with the Dutiful Passage

2.  One of the other books had to do with Surebleak

3.  The Surebleak book wanted to be written first, but I (mostly, it was I) resisted this, insisting that the first book had to be written first.

(A side issue which still influenced the writing — I was at the bottom of the Manic/Depressive Wheel.  Between us, I was in a hole under the wheel, which is just generally a very bad place to write from.  It’s especially a bad place to start writing from, because the beginning of the book is where you set up all the stuff that’s going to, yanno, happen in the story.  And the beginning of a series — or of a five-book dash — is where you set up the rest of the series.  That means it’s really preferable to have good access to your brain.  And the big thing that depression does, besides making you feel bad, is?  Right.  Depression makes you stupid.  So, that.)

4.  By the time I realized that I had to write the Surebleak book first, or kill both it and the Passage book through Auctorial Stupidity, and untangled the plots from each other, the Surebleak book no longer trusted me.

5.  That meant that I needed to coax it, and sweet-talk it, and Calmly Accept whatever bits and pieces it gave me.  Then, after I had all the bits and pieces I was apparently going to get, I had to figure out the order of the scenes, and write all the connective tissue. And! Since the book no longer trusted me, I had to trust it.  Which among other things meant accepting the existence of a character whose purpose in the story was only Revealed as we were going through the penultimate draft.

5a.  Steve could not take over and Just Write the Book because, (1) I was being an idiot, and (2) the entangled plots were a mess the like of which you rarely see.  I hardly knew how to untangle them, and it was my mess.

5b. Tangential Interesting Factoid:  At one point early in our career, we did manage to write A Whole Wrong Book.  The solution to that was easy — write the correct book.  In the five weeks, I think it was, to deadline.

6.  The good side of all this is that, when we came to address Book the Second, we had almost a quarter of a book already in the can.  Which is why Alliance seems to be moving along at such a spanking pace.

 

Today’s blog title comes to you, again, courtesy of Steeleye Span:  Lady Isobel and the Elf Knight

* * *

Progress on Alliance of Equals
30,874/100,000 OR 31% Complete

 “He’s a bit stiff in the honor, the third mate,” he murmured.

You can take all the tea in China; put it in a big brown bag for me

Today was a definite improvement over yesterday.

I have deleted GoogleTalk from my desktop, leaving Hangouts in sole possession of the field.  While I don’t necessarily think this is an improvement, at least I only get one message every time Steve sends a chat.

Also, when I went into town to gym this morning, I looked at my phone, and?

Chrome was installed, and it was working properly!

Fist pump!

I have not yet excised the non-updating, cephalopod version of Chrome on my desktop.  Perhaps I never shall. That’s probably safest.

In other news, I formatted our GOH speech, entered the changes we made last night during our first read-through, and did some writing.

I should probably do some more writing, but I’m beat.  Among the adventures of the day being an early — and noisy — visit from our lawn-guy, who took away the remains of the cedar tree, and sucked up all the leaves from the front lawn.  I believe I shall retire early to my couch and try again tomorrow.  This seems the course of reason, if not precisely valor.  Tomorrow’s work requires All New Words to be written, whereas today’s work was editing a chapter that had been excised from Dragon in Exile — just patting it into the shape of the new book, really.

And that?  Is all I got.

G’night.

Today’s blog post title brought to you by Mr. Van Morrison:  Tupelo Honey

* * *

Progress on Alliance of Equals
27,664/100,000 OR 27.66% COMPLETE

 “One naturally wishes one’s heir to accumulate accolades, but ‘least willing student in the history of the dance’ is not quite in the line of one’s fondest hopes.”

In which Monday happens on Tuesday

So, today kind of sucked, in the arena of tech.  The tech definitely won this round, but, if I’m not to be made looney by certain of the Unintended Consequences of today’s defeat, I’m going to have to go in again.

Possibly not until tomorrow.  Or the next day.

The thing seemed simple enough.  Google has been nagging me for months to stop using Google Talk, which I happen to like very much, and get with Hangouts.  I’d been resisting because Talk still worked and Steve and I use it to chat back and forth while we’re at work — him in his office, and me in mine.  Saves a lot of shouting back and forth, and doesn’t interrupt the flow of writing.

But!  We were wanting to practice our speech for PhilCon and Steve thought it would work out fine to do it via Hangouts video, so he asked me to install Hangouts.

Remember this:  The Goal was to install Hangouts.

Now, asyouknowbob, Hangouts is an add-on to Chrome.  Which I use as a backup browser, since I prefer Firefox for daily running around the net.

Well, it turns out that the Chrome on my machine was very old (33.0.Something), it would not accept the Hangouts add-on, and not only that, it wouldn’t update itself.  Also?  I couldn’t delete it from the control panel.  After much banging my head against the wall, which included removing Chrome from my tablet and my phone, in case there was a sync tether or something holding Chrome to the desktop, I just gave up and downloaded a new version of Chrome (version 38.Whatever) to the desktop, shoved 33.0.Something into a closet, and opened the new Chrome, which seems to work (knock wood) fine.  Then, I reinstalled Chrome on my tablet and phone.

Correction.

I reinstalled Chrome on my tablet.  The phone will accept the download and installation, but all Chrome does when invoked is send out little error messages — Unfortunately Chrome has stopped — every six seconds FOREVER, and is completely unusable.  So.  No Chrome on the phone.  Which is a shame, because I really did use it on the phone.

Oh, well.  I guess I’ll have to hope that Firefox for Android has its act together.

At least, I have Hangouts now, right?

Right.

Except that I can’t seem to uninstall Google Talk.  Which means that every time Steve sends me a chat message, I get TWO — one in Talk and one in Hangouts, a situation guaranteed to drive me ’round the twist in very short order.

So, I’ll have to go back in.  But, like I say, not today.

Today, in addition to Warring with Technology, I finished an essay, and finished up the last few hundred words on Chapter Seven.  In a moment, I’ll be leaving y’all to your own devices so I can do the dishes and then Steve and I will practice our speech the Old Fashioned Way.

I do hope that all of you have had a. . .less fraught Tuesday.

* * *

Progress on Alliance of Equals
23,458/100,000 OR 23.46% Complete

 “. . .and anyone who thinks that Master Trader yos’Galan will permit error or sloth from his heir, his apprentice, or anyone who is under his hand, must. . .must not know him very well!”

Sunday evening adverts, with commentary

1.  Have you ordered your signed and/or personalized copy of Carousel Seas from Uncle Hugo yet?  No?  Time’s running short.  No, I really mean that time’s running short, if you want your pre-ordered signed copy of Carousel Seas personalized.  That deadline is November 15, 2014 — which is next Saturday.  So you need to do this now.

Here’s how you can order.

1A.  Uncle Hugo will also be offering signed copies of Dragon in Exile.  More on that as we get closer to June.

2.  Steve Miller and Sharon Lee will be Principal Speakers at PhilCon, November 21 – 23. We will not only be giving a speech — which is a thing I do but rarely, so you know you want to hear this one — but we will — rather, our traveling companions will be hosting a Teddy Bear Tea* on Saturday, November 22 at 11 a.m.  Coffee, tea, cookies will be served, so bring your favorite stuffed animal to share an hour of refinement, relaxation and camaraderie.

3.  If you so desire, you may order a limited edition print of the cover of Dragon in Exile from the artist, David Mattingly, by writing to him at davidATdavidmattinglyDOTcom.  In case you missed it, here’s the front panel of the Dragon in Exile cover:

-- art by David Mattingly
— art by David Mattingly

* * *

As advertised elsewhere, Steve and I took each other to see Big Hero Six for our anniversary.  We both liked it a lot.  Steve is thinking he might like to see Interstellar; despite the presence of Michael Caine, I’m not so sure.   (“Look, professor!  A black hole!”  I mean — c’mon, guys.)  I definitely want to see Into the Woods, though.

. . .and I think that’s all the news that’s fit to print.

* * *

Progress on Alliance of Equals
23,048/100,000 OR 23% complete

 He flung a hand up and toward the screen, fingers sketching disdain.

This is the enemy that Korval cannot defeat.”

“Nor can we,” she observed, drily.

He sniffed.

“Nor have we.  Yet.”

Monday morning cat spam

So, we got about a foot of snow yesterday.  Wet, goopy snow that was not a pleasure to shovel off the deck and the stairs and the cars, but it got done, and now the sun is doing its bit by warming the snow enough that it’s dripping off of the branches and the roof.  So, yay, solar energy.

Steve took one of the cleaned-off cars and went off to his follow-up-from-surgery-doctor-appointment, and thence to the grocery store.  The mailman hasn’t been by yet, but I’m expecting that today is not a real treat for rural delivery, either.

I’ve started the laundry, and made phone calls to the people I called last week, who didn’t return my call.  Possibly, this week will be my lucky week.

And! Tomorrow is election day here in Maine.  I cannot begin to tell you how much I want this election to be over and done with.  So, everybody vote, right?  So we can put the election away knowing that we did our best, even if none of the candidates quite managed it.

This week also encloses the 34th anniversary of our actual, legal wedding.  We plan to celebrate a day late, and do maybe a dinner out, and view Hero Number 6.

The view from the bedroom window is eerie.  I can see right across the road, and the neighbor’s picket fence.  When I was out this morning, I checked on the downed cedar tree.  It broke off right ground level, and fell across a corner of the Cat Garden, nudging the stake bearing the cat weathervane out of its way, by a couple inches.

In celebration of It Having Snowed , the cats are doing. . .cat things.  Photographic evidence below:

Mozart waiting patiently for elevensies
Mozart waiting patiently for elevensies

 

Scrabble taking the opportunity of Steve's absence to season his chair.  Note cat whisker.
Scrabble taking the opportunity of Steve’s absence to season his chair. Note cat whisker.
Trooper doing his imitation of an unmade bed...in the unmade bed.
Trooper doing his imitation of an unmade bed…in the unmade bed.
Princess Jasmine Sprite waiting, patiently, for SOMEone to make the string work.
Princess Jasmine Sprite waiting, patiently, for SOMEone to make the string work.

* * *

Progress on Alliance of Equals
15,661 out of 100,000 OR 15.66% complete

“Val Con is yos’Phelium and a  scout.  He’s obliged to find the — former homeworld tiresome.”

Carousel Seas news and! the weather

So! Big News First!

Audible lets me know that Carousel Seas is in production.  This means that the audiobook will release simultaneously with the paper book on January 6, 2015.  And there was much rejoicing!

Steve and I took the morning off to wander over to the Chinah Dinah for breakfast and thence to Augusta for the Maine Crafts Guild Show at the Maine State Museum.  It was a nice show, if smallish, and included paper sculpture, jewelery, stone art, and Stephanie Crossman, who does 3-D art in net.  Check this out.  After the show, we began a tour of the Maine State Museum, which neither of us has visited for several years, but Steve’s back had been bugging him and it was not, sadly, getting better, so we cut the tour short and came home by way of the grocery store and Subway.  Happily, my new car has heated seats.

Home again, we dined on our Subway tuna sub, with a rare glass of lunchtime wine, and set about charging All! The! Things!  Because?

The Weatherbeans are saying this about the weather around the Confusion Factory:

Tonight 11/01 80%:  Rain with a chance of snow in the evening…then rain and snow likely after midnight. Snow accumulation up to 1 inch.
Sunday 11/02 80%: Snow likely. Snow may be heavy at times in the morning. Total snow accumulation of 4 to 8 inches possible.
May I just say, AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
Thank you.
The snow shovels have been taken out of summer storage, and stationed strategically.  I would like to say that I’m ready for this, but — I’m not.  My goal for this year is to keep both doors to the outside clear of snow — last year, circumstances forced me abandon the front door, and it’s never a good idea to only have one way out of. . .anywhere, really.
Those who read here often may recall that I had set myself to emptying out a file cabinet in the basement.  I am pleased to report that the file cabinet is now empty, though I have a box of personal correspondence which will have to be saved in some fashion, and a box of tearsheets, notes and photographs from my couple-year stint as one of the Town Line’s top reporters.  I have a call in to the Maine State Archive to see if there’s any interest; if not — out they go, because they’re certainly no use to me.
I also have a pile of professional correspondence, including a letter from our very first editor, explaining that our first three books simply didn’t sell, and giving her recommendations for improving ourselves as artists.  It’s. . .a treasure, and I’ve put it aside with the rest of the stuff I’ve been slowly gathering to archive somewhere else.
So, that.
In other news, yes, I’m writing — at the moment, we’re at about 14,000 solid words on the second book of the Five Book Dash, as I go through the pieces pulled form Dragon in Exile and rectify them, adding in other narrative lines as necessary.
And, now, I’d better check on the status of All! The! Things! and, yanno, get to work.
Hope you’re having a lovely weekend, wherever you are.