the weekend, and a new book.

Yes!! I know what the next book is going to be about! (or rather who it's going to be about) And I love it! For discussions' sake, I shall call it Freddy.

Other things going on right now:

--still yucky icky cold. I can feel it descending into my chest, which sucks.
--have to attend a 2-hour groundbreaking ceremony in about 45 minutes for my agency's new building, which I have spent countless hours working on, since I'm on the lovely floor plan committee. Would be fine, if I didn't have a cold. {sigh}
--after ceremony, I get to attend lunch with a bunch of VIPs, including the governor.
--tomorrow is homecoming, so parade and football game (unless it snows, which it might!)
--Sunday I'm escorting Child to a birthday party

I'm rather tired just thinking about it, actually. Must think about coffee and new books instead.

(forgot again, added later) Whadjya eat? I found a cool pre-cooked carnitas pack. Heated that, served with tortillas, refried beans, fresh salsa, avocados and sour cream. YUM. And lots of leftovers.

Huh.

Yesterday was unexpected.

I got a call at 11 AM from Child's school that she threw up, and could I come and get her, please? I practically steamrolled over people racing across town, picturing my poor baby feverish, shivering, you know...ill.

Um, not really. Apparently she got sick for no reason (in the middle of circle time, eek) but was still perfectly fine. She wasn't exactly cheerful, but after we got home and watched a half hour of kid TV she was raring to play. She ate fine, had lots of energy, had no fever...parenting really is a mystery, I guess. As my boss said this morning, "sometimes kids just do that." {shrug}

I, on the other hand, have a nasty yucky head cold, and have already gone through half a box of Kleenex in spite of being dosed with daytime cold meds. Maybe it was good for me to stay home yesterday too. It got me out of a class. {g}

Whadjya eat? Sliced turkey with lingonberry sauce (YUM, better than cranberry), banana-nut muffins, fresh vegetables with ranch.

Ah-chooo

Revisions made to Jenna: check.
Jenna hook: check.
Jenna synopsis: check.

Whew. I still have a couple more teen readers out there, but otherwise I'm just about ready for Surrey.

Time to start on the next book, I think. {s}

I need to turn in my paper today, but it's mostly done. Yesterday I was all crazy productive and cranked a lot of stuff out. Then last night I came down with daughter's cold {sniff}, so am feeling anything but productive today. {SNEEZE}

Perhaps I will take it nice and easy today.

Ya know, I'm thinking this blog has become pretty boring lately. Sorry about that. Sometime soon maybe I'll get back to ranting and actual coherent discussion instead of just updates...

Whadjya eat? French toast, maple breakfast sausage, and peaches.

Yo ho ho

Another busy day! At work I'm putting the final touches on a publication to send it to the printer today. It was a rush-rush project, but we made it right on deadline, whew.

Once that's done, I can think about my paper that's due next week, and maybe do an outline. I also get to do a fun work project and go take pictures of some pretty minerals for our annual calendar.

And tonight I get a massage my hubby bought me (yay) and go out to dinner. And then tomorrow hubby and I are leaving Child with Grandma for an overnight, and going out of town to a comedy/theatre performance. I'm really looking forward to that!

Jenna update: 3/5 readers have given me full feedback, one partial feedback. I'm extremely stoked at the responses so far. AND I was very excited today that another beta-reader agreed to take a look, someone who's experienced epilepsy herself. I really wanted to have some feedback from that quarter before I pitch. Today at lunch: work on synopsis and hook.

my mind is on vacation at least

Hey, y'all!

Since Jenna's out to readers, I'm taking a little vacation (well, if you can call doing classwork and presentations and real work and going to a curriculum meeting at the preschool tonight a vacation...ya know. I was going to work on my synopsis today, but I went out to lunch instead. That's vacation.).

I also took time over the weekend to read Scott Westerfield's UGLIES, and I highly recommend it. It's a wee bit heavy on the message in a few places, but that's far overwhelmed by the strength of the story and the characters, and the originality of the concept. I'll be reading the sequels.

RE the Jenna-out-to-readers thing, I must admit that I've had a few twinges over the past couple of days just thinking how odd it is that my characters and world are now also living in the minds of other people. Five other people max, but it's a start, right? It's a strange thing. These characters--people--were created in my brain, and now I can have actual discussions with others about Jenna and Joe and Dr. Ramsay. WEIRD. Think how Vicki and karen and all the rest of you published folks must feel on a daily basis. :)

Whadjya eat? Yesterday: pita pizzas, with salad. Child gets to make her own, which is fun. Sunday I did a real-cooking thing and made Spicy Garlic Cashew Chicken, and again it rocked. If you like to cook at all, try that recipe.

YAY!

Revisions over, and it's off to my beta-readers. WHEW.

(I should say this round of revisions over, because I know there will be more after readers, but whatevah. Done for now.)

To celebrate, I bought myself this:


Yep, a foam gargoyle with LED light-up eyes.
Those of you who are reading Jenna now will soon understand. It did get rather a "what the hell" from my husband, but I explained that to me it's like a leap of faith in my book. I saw it, thought "that's a perfect promotional item for Jenna signings" and, after dithering a bit, bought it. I realize that as of this moment no one has even read the book but me, much less agents, editors, or readers, but I believe. Someday I will need this for a signing.

{beam}

A heroine

This week I've greatly lamented the loss of one of my favorite authors of all time, and one of my primary inspirations: Madeleine L'Engle. I've done it privately. But today I saw on Jennifer Jackson's blog this poem:

At Tara in this fateful hour,
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And the fire with all the strength it hath,
And the lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its starkness:
All these I place between myself and the powers of darkness!

I memorized this poem, when I was an early teen, and repeated it to myself whenever I had troubles. I read the book again as a young adult in college, and I renewed the memorization, checking myself every few days for a while to see if I had it still, because I wanted to keep it in my head. Because it, and those books, were so important to me. They still are. They always will be.

Not a rant

I could do a major rant today. I want to--it's boiling over in me, triggered by yet another snide comment from someone who loves to shoot others down out of pure jealousy.

But. September 11th does not seem like a suitable day to rant about piddly things. So I will focus on my work, and my book, instead, and put that energy to a more positive purpose.

Out.

Update (yes, I'm alive)

There. Plot revision done. I cut about 7500 words, and added about 5300 new ones back in. That's about 10-12% changeover, and hopefully all for the better. Yay!

Next up: language draft. I expect this one to be a lot easier for me than plot changes--it just will involve going through the whole thing (again) and polishing the language. Taking out repetition, changing up cliched or old phrases, making sure descriptions are clear and fit with the characters. This is the type of editing I usually do, so I'm more comfortable with it. Plot revisions are Not As Much Fun. I have 10 days to accomplish the language draft changes to make my goal of sending it to readers on September 20th. Then I plan to gnaw on my nails until I get comments. :)

We had an excellent weekend. First home football game of the season for the college we both work for, which is a big deal! Sadly we lost, but it was fun. Yesterday I alternated between playing Fish Day with Child (don't ask me, she announced that it was Fish Day and we were supposed to read fish books, play fish games, and dress up and act like fish...) and doing actual house and yard work.

Oh, I'm sorry. I should've given you a warning before I said something so shocking. :)

Anyway, I have to go to class in an hour and one of my authors just called, so must go work. Later!

Whadjya eat? Steak, scalloped potatoes, squash baked with butter and parmesan cheese. This week I've got to do something with the hundred or so apples we picked from our little tree...