Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Phew

Squeaked by, but Icarus Helix #6, "Frigid" is submitted for my January writing project!

Yaaaaaaaaaay!

I know "Frigid" has been a long time in coming, glad to finally finish it up and get it out there. A lot of people liked "Thief", and it has a lot of the same characters in it (Jayden, Mason, Dennis Harper). It adds more to the story, and reaaaaaaally makes you wonder about the "company" ;)

So, so far this year I'm 1 for 1 in the "publish 1 project a month" category of my writing goals! Yay! I am, however, quite behind in the word count... yikes...

Anyway, FRIGID! Check it out soon, please :)

Saturday, January 7, 2012

The Bedside Table

When I was a kid, I fell asleep on a dime. The instant the lights were out - so was I. As I got older, I slept less and less. It wasn't until I was in college and I forgot to sleep for three days (and started hallucinating) that I realized I might have become an insomniac somewhere along the way.

I don't suffer from rampant insomnia, just very, very minor. I have a friend who would stay up for a week or more at a time and then crash - and there was nothing he could do about it.

Stress obviously inflames my insomnia. But if I'm not quite tired when I lay down, I have the worst habit.

With my eyes closed, my body relaxed, waiting to drift into sleep under the warm covers, I start to create.

The perfect scene.

The perfect line.

The next bit of the story I'd been stalled on while sitting at my computer all day.

And who wants to get up then? When you're already snuggled into bed and waiting for sleep? And what are the chances you will exactly remember that phrase or scene or word, just as you had it, in the moments before slumber? I'll give you a hint. It starts with "Z" and ends with "ero". For me, anyway. I am most perfectly, unquestionably creative when the last thing I want to do is get up and write it down.

So on my bedside table, I left an empty notebook and a pen. And my booklight...

Just in case.

Last night Andy fell asleep within milliseconds of laying down. And SNORED (sorry, hon, but it's true!) I couldn't fall asleep. But what I could do, was imagine.

Imagine I did!

I couldn't take it anymore, I wasn't sleeping. But then it hit me - I was prepared. I snapped on my bedside light, opened up the notebook and exploded all my thoughts onto the paper, effectively writing the first chapter of a novel I've been hemming and hawing over for the past... three? years.

Turn your weaknesses into strengths, that's what I say :)

Monday, January 2, 2012

That New Year's Thing

Well, I had a blast for New Year's Eve! We had literally all of our family in the surrounding area crammed into our tiny house (including us - 10 people and a dog!) Everybody brought way more food than they should have, so it went over quite well :) We all played Wits and Wagers as well as Mad Gab, before watching the ball drop.

Being decidedly of German descent, we did our age old tradition of pork and sauerkraut for New Year's dinner. The more sauerkraut you can cram down your gullet, the more GOOD luck you will supposedly have for the coming new year. (They had to make up SOME good excuse to eat rotted cabbage!)

For the record, I ate more sauerkraut this year than any other year previously. Despite the tears in my eyes. (And that's after mom pre-rinsed it and added brown sugar to take the edge off... and after mushing it in with my stuffing and mashed potatoes...) That means lots of good luck for me!

I have some pretty lofty goals this year - goals that are concrete and will probably take me the entire year to complete. Here are some, in no particular order:

1. Pen 500,000 publishable words. (Including but not limited to 6 IH episodes, 3 novels, 3 short stories.) This should be achievable if I write 5days/week, 2k/day!

2. Lose at least 40lbs. (The holidays were not kind to me :P... or rather, I was too kind to myself...)

3. At least, triple the royalties earned last year. (Which is to say, I still won't be making mortgage payments or swimming in my own pool of gold coins like Konrath ;D)

4. Try to go through every box I have in the house, and really throw away/condense it down.

5. Publish at least 1 new piece per month. Period - no excuses! (Compendiums and omnibuses excluded!)

So, what do you think of my short list? :)