2184 words on Grail since 7 am, and I'm calling it a good day's work. If I can keep up an average rate of at least six pages a day, I will be done by early January. Which gives me time to revise the horrid steaming mess that is The White City, and then, once truepenny wraps up her current extravaganza, get pushing on A Reckoning of Men in time to have it done for the summer deadline--which leaves me some time to write The Steles of the Sky.

Oh, yeah, and there's all that Shadow Unit due between now and then.

If I seem like I'm not around much on the internets or for social obligations, that would be why.

Grail is persisting in being sort of interesting to write. Today, it pitched a fit at me and drew a line in the sand structurally, telling me (in essence) that I can't make it skip ahead in the narrative to kill some time for sub-lightspeed-travel, thank you very much, and I can just suck it up and write that part of the book. Which part of the book doesn't currently seem to have much bearing on what I thought was the main plot arc, but I am pretty sure than when my right-brain plants its feet like this, it's usually on to something, and all the left-brain can do is go along with the program and quit whining about why?

So today was nine pages of backstory I hadn't been expecting to write. But it's wordcount, and go me.

I think I've sort of learned to go with the flow and stop trying to microsteer so much. Maybe I'm actually learning to write! Stranger things have happened.

Mean things: loneliness of command, nobody wants to believe that Tristen isn't a war criminal any more, Daddy issues, privation, Balkanization, civil war, religious baggage.

8206 / 100000 words. 8% done!

---

Oh, yeah, incidentally, I know elizabethbear.com and shadowunit.org are hosed. It seems to be an ISP problem. Hopefully it will be fixed before too long.

We’re down hard and have very sporadic access to email.  The tech is coming Thursday.  We apologize for the delay in responding to emails and comments.

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

As Tarri reminded me last night, this is actually something I’ve been comfortable with for a long time. We started dating back in 1997, and it was shortly after that, in one of those “what do you want to be when you grow up” college conversations that I laid that one on her. I mean, I’ve known since I was a kid that I didn’t want a suit-and-tie 9-to-5 for a career. Back when I was a kid, in my imagination that amounted to being a scientist or a park ranger or something. By the time I finished high school, I figured that meant writing.

That’s where the stay-at-home dad thing came in. In my innocence, I figured if I eschewed the questionable pleasures of soap operas and bon-bons, I could manage to squeeze in enough writing a day to make it an ideal situation. And I was very rah-rah for a stay-at-home parent. I had one, Tarri had one, and we turned out okay, yeah? I may even have gotten into an argument or two or twelve proposing it as some sort of social ideal.

That was until I had to take my kids out of daycare. Not because it’s tough taking care of them at home–that IS more challenging than I figured on when I was 20, but I looked after young Marines 24 hours a day at one point, how much harder can this be? The biggest difference may just be wiping butts. But no, what was hard, what was heart-breaking was taking them away from the friends they had made.

I think there are maybe one or two other stay-at-home parents on our street, but I don’t know them that well, and with the weather getting colder the opportunities for toddler meet-cute are rather small. Otherwise, other than the kids at daycare, they don’t have a lot of friends or chances for other-kidlet interaction. Now, next year Tony will be in kindergarten and I might be able to get Hannah into a local public preschool (though she’ll still only be 2 on Labor Day… but probably potty-trained), but in the meantime we’ve got a whole lot of not much.

So I find myself in the interesting position of hoping I can find a nice 9-to-5 so the kids can go back to daycare and hang out with their friends all day.

Mirrored from Bum Scoop.

I finished the sweater for Mom last night – yay! Now all I need to do is weave in ends, sew on buttons, take pictures, box it up, and get it in the mail to her.

Both the pattern (February Lady) and the yarn (Dream in Color Classy, in the Good Luck Jade colorway) were a pleasure to knit. The buttons were a bit of a saga, though. I went looking here first, and found some light wood buttons that were OK, but not exciting. They were also cheap, so I bought them and went looking on Etsy for something better. There I found a small collection of vintage buttons, some in leather and some wood toggles, so I bought those and decided I liked the toggles best. Then in the yarn store I visited in Penrith, one day when the races had been called off due to wind, I saw some that were gorgeous: they look like medium brown wood and have a swirly design etched in. So I will be using those, and will have a bunch of buttons left over for future projects. (I still need to make something using the dichroic glass ones I bought in Tempe, too.)

I find that sweaters are very definite about the buttons they want. Today I’m wearing this sweater, and I still love the handmade pewter buttons I bought for it (Etsy).

Now back to working on my Laeticia socks, or possibly a hat for Mom with the leftover yarn. The other thing I want to finish before the holidays is a hat for Ted with a Tvåändsstickning brim, attempting to re-engineer one we saw in Stockholm. But he’s got a trip in a couple of weeks – just a short one, but then it’s just a hat so I’ll try to finish that while he’s gone.

Mirrored from Dichroic Reflections.

Originally intended for RP, but I like indy_go's way of doing it just fine, so I ran with it.

( icon meme )

http://wordsmith.org/words/horse_latitudes.html

Either of the two belts around latitudes 30 to 35 degrees N or S, marked by high pressure, and light variable winds.

For all the congrats and good wishes. Been a lovely day. 

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The vid is going through technical quality control.  But it plays great on my PC. 

Once that is done,  I will send the header data to SBB.

Whew! 

Now it's Juni's Project. =)

If you believe this, spread it.

"Congress shall make no law that
 applies to any citizen of the United States that does not
 apply equally to all US Senators and Representatives,
 and Congress shall make no law that applies to any US
 Senator or Representative that does not apply equally to all
 citizens of the United States. All existing laws and
 regulations that do not meet these criteria shall be
 declared null and void!"

(via trollcatz)

Kirk Cameron, dismantled bit by smarmy bit.

Email from Anne regarding the revised version of MAGIC BLEEDS.  She loves it.

OH dear Gods in heaven.  Thank you, Universe, thank you noble ancestors, thank you mom, thank you luck of the Irish, thank you, thank you, thank you…

We don’t have to rewrite it again.

Oh my God.  It’s done.  It’s set.  Only copyedit left.

If I wasn’t drinking coffee, I’d be looking for some wine.

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there

Title: To The River
Author: schmevil
Summary: As far back as he could remember, Snape had always wanted to be one of them. (Goodfellas inflected AU)
Characters: Severus Snape
Word Count: 3216
Warning: Implied violence.


To The River

So, Hotch’s timeline contorts to incorporate whatever suits the plot, and Rossi’s backstory expands to cram in whatever’s thematically relevent to this weeks’ plot? Okay, so long as I know the rules…

I should say right now that I do not like having CM on at 9:30pm. I don’t mind the Monday night, that’s fine, but by that time of night my brain has started to shut down.

( Ramblings as usual below the cut... )

I so adore the October patch!  Blac with a dark mark! -sighs happily-

I posted a ton of fic in October.

		Special
	Special		Special
		Special
	May
	November		December
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			Special

2222 words on Grail today, finished chapter one and started chapter two, and in a minute here I have to eat something and then go swim and then go over to a friend's house and have tea and borrow the fax machine. The days are just packed, I tell you.

Last night, I got about 1600 words on Shadow Unit related material, which I logged for today because I had already posted.

Yep. I am mighty. I have no idea what's happening in this book, except people are sitting around eating and worrying about each other, but I have faith, It'll all come right in the end.

Mean things today: kids grow up, and Tristen never gets to be anybody's daddy for long.

Also, giant freshwater space salmon.

6022 / 100000 words. 6% done!

So I saw two movies yesterday.

( The Men Who Stare at Goats )

I think I might be the very last person on the planet to have seen Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. ( My thoughts on it, cut to spare you )

One of the earliest critiques I have gotten on OWW was from a published writer who said that my plot was good and my worldbuilding was good, but I had one giant issue that would prevent me from getting published unless I did something about it.

My characters were flat.

It was a fair criticism.  My characters were flat.  Even now the character work is probably my weakest point and I spend a lot of time on it.

Here is a bit of Cerise.  (I have looked at the counter some more.  Aaaa!)

( Read the rest of this entry » )

Mirrored from One Crazy Dame. Comment here or there