Category: Writing

Grand designs

#books, #design, #nerd, #publishing, Art, Crafting, Education, embroidery, Geek, Learning, Novel, SCA, Sci-fi, Sewing, Social Media, Writing

Yesterday I started working on some notes to get my “lesson plan” ready for my embroidery class. Yeah, yeah, I have almost three months in which to get it done–it was on my brain, so my brain went with it.

I figured out which stitches I’d try to teach, what subjects I want to cover, what supplies I’ll need, etc. I’ll bring as many examples of past embroidery projects that I’ve done as I can. And I might even download and print out some simple line drawings that either are period designs (or ones that look close enough for government work).

I didn’t get a chance to ask my future Laurel to look over what I have, but I haven’t fine-tuned it yet. I haven’t put the topics in a logical order or written up, well, any narrative to go with it. I haven’t made it all pretty and nice looking. Should I include WIP photos with the handouts I make, or should I just include photos of finished projects? I feel that the WIP photos would be more beneficial to beginner embroiderers, so I think that’s the way I’ll go. I should also probably embroider one or more of the tunics I have to have something to wear to the class to display seam treatments in action. Hmm…. It’s a thought, but I’m already bogged down with projects.

Writing on Book 2 is still stalled. So frustrating, but I just can’t get my head in the game with it. I need to ask my Creative Director for advice. The sad thing is, she’s given me advice already, but it’s just not clicking as to how to implement said advice. I get to a certain point in Chapter 18 and just freeze. It’s really grating on my nerves. I feel like I should be farther along on the revision process than I currently am.

That being said, it’s probably high time I did the daily Twitter writing hashtag events before it’s time to leave for work. Then, if there’s time, maybe I can work more on my “syllabus.”

After feast comes famine

#books, #design, #dystopian, #nerd, #publishing, Art, costuming, Crafting, embroidery, Exercise, Fitness, Geek, Health, Holiday, Home, Novel, SCA, Sci-fi, Sewing, Stress, Thanksgiving, Time, Weight loss, Work, Writing

I made it through Thanksgiving weekend, despite my stomach and esophagus rebelling against the copious amounts of food I had each day. Now I have to buckle down and get back to work on Escaping the Light, among other things. 

There’s still the original Super Sekret Projekt for embroidery that needs to be done, and the current projects I have lined up. There’s making gift bags for the Christmas holiday giving season. There’s embroidery that the Baroness of a nearby Barony asked me to do before Estrella War. There’s my husband’s Viking hood to finish. There’s two full Persian outfits to make before January. There’s a lot.

In addition to going back to my old writing and crafting habits, I have to create new eating and exercising habits. I’m tired of being fat. I’m tired of feeling sluggish and miserable. I’m going to go back to exercising with my friends, but I worry that I won’t be able to get back into the routine or keep up like I used to. They have never once made me feel bad about not being on their level physically, but my own tricksy mind has. I mean, I used to kind of be able to keep up. Now, on the rare occasions when I’ve gone back, I am far, far behind while they all have increased their stamina and endurance. It sucks.

Today I have my annual physical, too. So I have to tell the doc about the weight issues and other concerns I have…like the aforementioned reflux that has been eating away at my esophagus and is in no way healthy. It can be damn dangerous if I let it go, actually, so I need to make sure I get some kind of prescription for it. I can take OTC meds, but there might be something stronger or better for it that he can prescribe. Maybe.

The breakneck pace of constant SCA events and other running around has slowed some, but not much. I’ve got a dyeing class that I’m going to this weekend, a household meeting (we’re finally officially members of House Sable Millrind!), next weekend is Christmas shopping with household members, the weekend after is the work Christmas party, the week after that is pre-Christmas at the in-laws’ house, the week after is…something, I’m sure. Maybe that’s a weekend off–I don’t know anymore.

Amidst all of that I still have to find time to exercise, to practice rapier more, to write/revise…

…And to goddamn sit up straighter. Geez, I didn’t even have anything overly spicy or irritating for breakfast, but because I’ve been slouching I can feel the acid creeping up inside my chest. Yuck.

The good news is, the Christmas tree has been up for a few days now and no cat destruction has occurred. They’re mildly interested from time to time, but aside from sniffing it or maybe nibbling on the plastic branches, Rory and River really have been good with it. Mostly leaving it alone. Hopefully I won’t lose too many ornaments this year to feline antics.

I still have a couple of Doctor Who ornaments to put up, but they’re fragile and important to us because they were gifts, so I’m waiting until I’m 100% sure they’re at least relatively safe from the cats. 

I guess that’s about all for now. Life moves on. The wheels keep turning and all that. But I’ve got at least some semblance of a plan for keeping myself in better shape and for getting things done.

(Not so) lazy Saturday

#design, #nerd, costuming, Crafting, Food, Geek, Novel, Plus size, SCA, Sewing, Time, Writing

Busy busy day ahead of me today. I have to wash fabric for some Persian garb I’m going to be making, make mock-ups of the pattern out of other fabric, clean up the house for guests, have a ton of people over for a Saturday Thanksgiving, then, knowing me, I’ll crash early (as I am wont to do) and wake up tomorrow for more cleanup and then rapier melee stuff in Tucson.

I could’ve had the mock-up started, but I kinda keep falling back asleep. I wake up and another half an hour has passed. I’ve had my Adderal, I’ve had some coffee, but clearly not enough coffee. Need moar coffee.

Super Sekret Projekt #2 (technically #1 because I did it first) is done! Can’t post pictures because the recipient doesn’t have it yet, but I will once it’s gifted. Still haven’t received the silk for Super Sekret Projekt #1, so that one’s on the back burner until I get the fabric I’m going to be embroidering.

The Persian garb is for the Twelfth Night feast my husband is feastocratting for our Kingdom. It’s a Middle Eastern theme, so we’re making Middle Eastern garb to wear. I found some really cool black fabric with a neat gold-and-white pattern on it for my surcoat, but we haven’t found a good pattern for hubby’s coat yet. We were at a cringe-worthy price range as it was with these fabrics already, so we’ll have to get him a coat fabric later on. Here’s the fabrics I have for the pants, surcoat, and undershirt (pirihan, I think?):

Hubby found the grey-and-gold fabric, which is a similar pattern to some of the fabric we used for our Italian Ren for last year’s Yule feast. It’ll go nicely with the golden yellow linen for the pants and the black patterned fabric for the surcoat.

Book 2 is stalled–again. I just can’t figure out how to make the section I’m at more interesting and suspenseful. Grr.

I guess that’s about all. I really need to get off my lazy butt and get the fabric washed. Or the mock-up maths done. Yeah, the pattern we’re using requires math. It’s easy math, but I just cringe at seeing the equations like being back in school or something. Fucking homework, man. Just when I thought I was done with that crap.

Distractions

#books, #design, #dystopian, #nerd, Abnormal, Art, Crafting, embroidery, Friendship, Geek, Musings, Novel, Sci-fi, Sewing, Social Media, Thoughts, Time, Writing

Oh hey, look, I was writing a post.

I was also embroidering, revising, tweeting, Instagramming, showering, dressing, brushing my hair… but I started out writing a post.

I do that sometimes. I kinda squirrel. A lot. It’s not that I didn’t have some grand design for a great post. I just got distracted. Like, right now my cat’s snoring is distracting me a bit. It’s so damn adorable! The other cat just walked up to him to find out what was going on. Apparently she doesn’t understand snoring. Also apparently snoring = bath time. Those two are too stinking cute when they co-bathe. 

Where was I? Oh yeah, distractions.

I have so much going on lately that I can’t focus on anything. Everything’s a blur. I want to get so many things accomplished that I end up accomplishing nothing. It’s frustrating.

Maybe the upcoming four-and-a-half-day weekend will help me out. I can decompress and relax and pick what I want to focus on.

Co-bathing time is over. Now it’s wrestling time.

My main goal this weekend is to get my embroidery project done. That one has a timetable. Of sorts. Okay, I made up a deadline for it. Will it be awesome if I can deliver it on a certain person’s special day? Yeah, but it’ll still be awesome if I’m not done “in time.”

Once the embroidery is done, then it’s on to revisions and Christmas gift bags. We’re not going the whole nine yards this year–just maybe a yard and a half. Normally, we go full-out and blow a ton of cash getting a few dozen people gifts. This year, we’re going to be making some stuff to give out. Because mortgage. 

Rory won the wrestling match. Or River got bored. Or both.

I guess I’ll kill the remaining half hour until I leave for work with some more stitching.

Unless I see a squirrel……

What a difference a year makes

#books, #design, #dystopian, #publishing, Abnormal, book trailer, Celebrity, Convention, cover art, Fandom, Learning, Marketing, Musings, Novel, Promotion, Sci-fi, Social Media, Thoughts, Time, Writing

A lot can happen in a year. You can move, change jobs, cut your hair, gain weight, lose weight, start a new diet…

…You can sign with a publishing company…

That’s right: it’s been a year since I signed with RhetAskew Publishing! What a whirlwind of a year it’s been, too! Edits and revisions and frustration and a trailer and marketing and promotion and cover concepts and decisions and book launch and signings and Tucson Comic Con–whew! Now my second book is in the hands of the great people at RhetAskew, and I can’t wait for my next round of edits–and my next year of publishing.

The whole thing is still pretty surreal. I mean, I have a published book. In bookstores. Online. At a con. I have a sequel in the works. A series in the works.

I wonder what the next year will bring… The sequel, of course. More cons? Maybe, maybe not. Tucson Comic Con was close to being worth it, financially speaking, but not quite. I still have books in the back of my car that I need to sell. There’s a smaller local con in February that I need to talk to my husband about. It’s much cheaper than TCC, and it’s close to home, but I don’t know if the logistics would work out. 

There’s also the possibility of another TCC. I’ll get an offer of the same table rate as this year because I was already a vendor, but again, it’s a matter of logistics. I want to try to get into TusCon, which is a sci-fi-specific con, but I’m afraid to even check the prices on tables for that. It’s gotta be more expensive than TCC was. Still, it would be a good opportunity. Hmm…

I still gotta work. Still gotta do all the things. Laundry, grocery shopping, bills, etc. Life’s not going to become all sunshine and roses and unicorn farts just because I’m signed with a publisher. It would be nice if things worked that way, but nope. Not quite. Lol

RhetAskew has been great to me this past year. They give great advice, and they listen to their authors. I don’t really feel that I had to really sacrifice anything to get Abnormal published. The book is great. The cover’s great. RhetAskew really does whatever they can for the author. They even give marketing and promotional advice–something I would have been lost on before!

I suppose I should get back to Book 2 before I have to go to work. I’m a little bit stuck, but I’ve made progress in the last week or two. Not as much progress as I’d like to make, but progress is progress. Who knows? Maybe next year I can add “NYT bestseller” to my list of annual accomplishments…Lol

Write drunk, edit sober, revise… tipsy?

#books, #publishing, Celebrity, Language, Musings, Novel, Thoughts, Writing

Hemingway has some great quotes about writing. But revising is, in my experience, kinda somewhere between writing and editing. So how did Hemingway handle it? I’m not planning on getting drunk today, but it makes me think regardless.

Writing drunk I get. You’re less inhibited, and some of the best crazy ideas that you’d never put to words sober come out of hiding. It’s pretty fun, too. 😉 

Editing sober makes sense too. You want to catch as many errors as possible. Hard to do that when you misspell spoken words. Lol

Revising, though? It’s kind of a grey area. You’re taking out “errors” so to speak, because you’re cutting some stuff that doesn’t fit or doesn’t need to be there, but you’re also writing new stuff. When I’m revising, I often end up writing thousands of words’ worth of new material.

Like I said, I won’t be drinking today. So I won’t experiment with the sobriety level of revisions. But it makes me think. 

I don’t have any profound words on writing yet. Maybe some day I’ll be quoted like Hemingway. 

But will those words be taken from a serious interview, or will they be drunken ramblings overheard by a lucky individual?

Aftermath

#books, #dystopian, #nerd, #publishing, Abnormal, Celebrity, Convention, Fandom, Geek, Marketing, Novel, Promotion, Sci-fi, Social Media, Stress, Time, Work, Writing

Now that the con is over, I have to focus on Book 2 again. I did some figuring, and overall I made a few hundred bucks at the con selling books. Not quite enough to fully cover what I paid for the books, and definitely not enough to make up for the money I spent on the table reservation for the con itself, but enough that I’m quite happy with it.

Will I go next year? I’d like to. I’d like to go to TusCon, which is a sci-fi-centric con, and I might even like to do a small con at the local community college. That one would be cheaper than Tucson Comic Con was for a table, and I’d hit that sweet college student market. I know some college students, especially the kind who would attend the con, like to read. Voraciously. And a New Adult sci-fi/dystopian novel would hit the college market nicely, I think. We’ll see. I have to discuss with the hubby before I commit to anything on that end.

Phoenix Comicon–er, I mean Phoenix Fan Fusion–is probably not going to happen. Tucson Comic Con just wasn’t profitable enough, and PFF is more expensive and harder to get into. No, it’ll be a few years before I can get in there.

I started back on Book 2 revisions this morning, but it’s an early day at work today, so I didn’t get much done. A few lines, enough to move the story along a bit and get me some momentum for later on, but definitely will need to zero in on that here now.

I’m very excited for Book 2 now that more people are reading Abnormal. Maybe I’ll gain a new fanbase–I certainly had enough middle-aged and older men buying the book this past weekend. And at least one eighty-something grandma. I hope she doesn’t get a heart attack reading the racy bits…I kinda didn’t warn her about them. I mean, I didn’t even think about it until she was walking off with book in hand. Eh, I’m sure it’s nothing she hasn’t read before. I hope.

Speaking of new fanbase…I’ve really got to get back in the habit of reaching out to book bloggers and other influencers every day. I have been slacking on that as of late, and I can’t just leave it to the publisher; they’ve got a lot of new projects on their plate, so I need to pull my considerable weight and get more eyes on Abnormal. 

That will have to wait until at least tomorrow, though. Today I have to work. Silly day job, paying the bills and all that.

It’s the end of the Con as I know it

#books, #design, #dystopian, #nerd, #publishing, Abnormal, Celebrity, Convention, Crafting, Fandom, Geek, Learning, Marketing, Novel, Promotion, Sci-fi, Sewing, Stress, Time, Work, Writing

Well, the con is over. The end. Finit. And though I didn’t sell out of books, I did pretty well for a first-time con vending author. 

The bookmarks were a bust, but I sold 2/3 of the books I brought. Out of the thirty five I brought, there are twelve left. Not too shabby.

I learned some things. I learned that maybe I should have just gone with the book and not tried making an add-on item to sell. I learned how to talk to potential customers in an engaging manner. And I leaned that when a person says they’ll come back to your table…. they’re not coming back. Lol

Waiting on a friend to meet me and my husband for dinner before we head home. It was a fun weekend overall, but I miss my bed and my kitties. Rory and River will be glad to see us.

Will I do another con in the future? Maybe. If I take what I learned from this con, maybe I can rock the next one.

Maybe next year I can have both Abnormal and the sequel at the table. Sell two books at once.

Maybe.

Con Log: Day 2

#books, #design, #dystopian, #nerd, #publishing, Abnormal, Art, Celebrity, Convention, Crafting, Fandom, Geek, Learning, Marketing, Novel, Promotion, Sci-fi, Sewing, Social Media, Stress, Time, Work, Writing

So today went much better than yesterday. I sold nine books at the con, which I think is not too bad for an unknown author her first time vending.

Wore the top hat that’s on the book jacket, and people seemed to like it. I got more comfortable with my pitch to customers as the day went on, and I’m hoping tomorrow brings those wait-til-the-last-day-of-con-to-make-purchases shoppers. You know, the ones who asked if I would be there all weekend. The ones who said they’d come back. Those shoppers.

As before, I end the day exhausted, but in better spirits than yesterday. Tomorrow we’ll see how I end the con, and we’ll see what we can learn from how this one went.

Con Log: Day 1

#books, #design, #dystopian, #nerd, #publishing, Abnormal, Celebrity, Convention, Crafting, Fandom, Geek, Novel, Promotion, Sci-fi, Stress, Time, Writing

Well, the first day of the con (technically it was only 5 hours of active “selling” time, but still) is over, and I had a…well, I don’t know if it was mediocre or subpar or what, because it’s my first con as a vendor. I sold a few books, but I’m hoping tomorrow (Saturday) is a better day. I was told by some other vendors and some con staff that Saturdays are usually busier at this event.

Here’s a pic of my setup:

I might mess around with it a bit tomorrow and try to make it more appealing. I mean, it looks neat and all, but…I just feel there could be “more.”

If you were an attendee today and you picked up a flyer, Hi! Hope to see you back at the table tomorrow or Sunday (maybe to buy a book?…..) Forgot who I was? Here’s me earlier today:

It took me seven tries to get this to upload upright and stay put. I think that’s a sign it’s bedtime. Goodnight, all, and I hope to see you on the morrow!