A Twist of Things to Come

I'm giving you tomorrow's post tonight. I even did my writing for tomorrow tonight, so that if I end up out until the wee hours, I won't be obliged to attempt my daily 750 words when I get home. ;)

So, today for GC, I have written an article about TED Talks called, I'm in Love with TED. I really am in love with TED, and I shared a few of the TED Talks that have meant something to me. But there are so many more. I hope people take some time to explore the TED site, even though I had to use YouTube for most of the videos because the embed codes from the TED site didn't work with Joomla. (I think, if Joomla were a person, he would be in grave danger of a kick in his hypothetical 'nads.)

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In writing news, I've finished the next bit of HMOWK, but am once again in need of beta help. Let me know if you're willing to give it a look. This one's a bit racy.

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Now for the obligatory widgets. The words that will have to count for February 16th:


It was really coming tonight, and once again I managed to stop before I ran out of things to say, so starting it up again should be easier than otherwise.

That brings the overall total to:

Well, despite NaNo's tendency to chew people up and spit them out, it seems our Amalia The Savage is already finished! Wow, that woman is prolific! On GC, we're still sharing her Letters series, which is related to her NaNo novel and also to discussions of NaNo itself. Today's installment is Letters from the Kings, Another Not-Yet-Of Troy Story. I may speed up posting of this series - once a week may just not be enough!

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I mentioned yesterday some good things that are going on here for me, but that I've been battling the blues anyway. It's a strange disconnect from reality, because the reality is really good. The darling jedi_diplomat commented that the culture shock really starts to hit between three to six months in (and boy howdy, she should know!) and I think she's right. Things here are becoming familiar, and once-familiar things in Atlanta are becoming distant. I feel detached from my old life (not a bad thing, as it was comfortable enough to fall easily into stagnation) but not entirely connected to my new life, yet. I think some of that is bleeding over into my online presence, too, in the transition from lone fannish blogger to webmistress.

So, erm. Thanks for hanging in there with me. :) I'm going push my way through this phase, see, and whatever comes out will hopefully be better equipped to do what I gotta do than what went in.

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On the writing front, thanks to a bit of discussion with the lovely hominysnark, I'm on track with the rest of HMOWK, and pretty much back up to the point where I lost my data. If I manage to pull this off, the end is going to ROCK. If I don't, well, it'll still be good, and a fun ride.

I have finally come up with a title for my shapeshifter series, and titles for the one I'm working on as well as the one I have as a complete draft. The first one, I'm calling Form and Void, and the second, which many of you have read swaths of, will be Face of the Deep. I think. I've half a mind to go ahead and name the third one (for which I have only vaguest of outlines) Intelligent Design, though that may just be my snark trying to break through.

Yes, the bawdy song by Jonathan Coulton is stuck in my head, even though it is quite obviously not the first of May, and currently raining. Not that it matters. I have a feeling that moving to a densely populated means nookie al fresco will not play a prominent role in my future. Still, it's a darned catchy little song.

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I think the next chapter of HMOWK may be roughly completed, though I may decide to add a bit more. If I keep posting sections in the 20-25 pages range, it becomes much more likely that I'll hit 50 episodes, which I said wasn't likely to happen. Ah, well. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. (Poor Emerson, having his words poached to justify over-long porn. Naughty me.) Still, there is only one more obstacle for each plotline, so I know the end is nigh. 'Nigh' just might mean 100+ more pages, is all. *headdesk*

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Over at GC, Pearce's Geek Dance Party series continues with Girlfriends Aren't Like Pokemon - You Don't Gotta Catch 'Em All. I have to say I'm impressed with her cool, rational take on a very emotional subject. This series just keeps getting better.

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Writing and doing stuff for the website, I mean. Even with my computer desk adjusted properly and the fantastic Aeron chair a colleague of my Beloved's gave me, I still finish the day achy and beaten. If only I could get this stuff done while riding my bike, walking, swimming... something. I need to move. This is starting to get to me.

But, enough of my whining! Today, I am grateful for GeekaChicas because soloreader's article Inkheart:One for the Readers has inspired me to at least hit the video store. A fun adventure for the whole family, with the added bonus of a buff and shirtless Paul Bettany.

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I'm inches away from posting the next bit of HMOWK to the MA list, which is good. I'm also quite, quite close to the end, which is even better. I'd forgotten how much I love finishing things! The novel is coming along well, too, only I've written a bit at the pool (in notebooks because taking the laptop seemed a phenomenally bad idea), which means transcribing. I hate transcribing. The work is actually improved by it because I edit as I transcribe, but I still loathe it.

I promised the boys some time at the pool today, too, so I'd best get to work.

The time has just run by me today. Ziiiip! I made some progress on the website, a workable logo which I hope to run past your discerning eyes very soon, among other things. I'm just wiped. Exhausted. Not yet fully operational. But it will come.

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The next ep of HMOWK is up at the fic journal. I'd only had it written for three weeks. *sigh* It occurs to me that I am very close to the end of something I've been writing for years, and that is kind of exciting, to be so close to finishing something that has been around that long, even if it is a 1,000 page smut epic fanfic. I'm gonna need a new hobby. ;)

Speaking of stories that have been with me for years, hominysnark helped me decide on a decent starting point for the shape-shifter novel re-write. I think it will work well, once I've had a chance to sleep on it.

I'm not sure why everything has taken me so long to do for the past ten years, but I managed to complete several projects in the last couple of months, so maybe I'm beginning to buck the trend. In the last week before my brain tried to explode, I'd learned enough about Photoshop to make some graphics I was pretty pleased with, and worked through some exercises on Premiere Pro.

Even being ill I managed to get Big Boy to clean up his own room by making it clear what the acceptable parameters for "clean" were. Wee Boy still needs some training, but the skill is in progress.

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Tomorrow, I hope to post more about the website, and solicit suggestions and opinions. Right now I think I'll just relax for a while in the bosom of my family.

Since I finished the novel draft last night, I think I might let it sit a few days wile I polish of the next chunk of HMOWK. So this represents the last bit of the current episode, which is clocking in at 44 pages before editing. I'm hoping it will get smaller.

	929
44
lab.drwicked.com

Still sickly, but I'm sure it can't last much longer, right? *headdesk*

	956
40
lab.drwicked.com

The hubby is sick, sick today, so we didn't risk seeing the in-laws and I got to write a bunch. I'm nearly done with the shapeshifter thing, and HMOWK is coming along, too. I'm getting very close to some things I'm quite proud of, there.

But, there's this thing bouncing around in my head. It's been there since I was a teen, probably, in one form or another. A mystery sort of thing. I do love a good mystery. I can sit and untangle knots or do logic problems for hours, and that is why I like a good mystery, I think. Never expected to have an idea for one, even though I knew that these characters I've had in my head for years belonged in a mystery novel. I'm just sort of remembering being a middle-class kid in an upper-crust sort of university, and all the little abrasive edges of things that flew around socially. Throw in some sweet Sapphic longing and a dead soccer player, and frak me if I don't have a mystery novel boiling away in the hind brain.

Crap. It's like I'm playing Genre Bingo in here.

I want to get back to posting my word counts, for two reasons. First, it encourages me, and posting them here keeps me honest. Second, well, I think Dr. Wicked deserves the free advertising. ;) I've already made up my mind to donate a portion of my next sale to the site. *shrug* I was raised to be a tither, yanno. This one was for HMOWK:

	762
34
lab.drwicked.com

This one was for the Shape-shifter thing (almost done!):

	751
43
lab.drwicked.com

This one took a little longer because I had to use the 'pause' feature when Big Boy's teacher called to tell me how miserable he was, and could I pick him up and spare him the wait for the school bus? (Of course I did. Poor baby has homework on top of all the studying for two more finals tomorrow.) I would love to keep him home tomorrow.

Life takes precedence over art, naturally, but at least I got Mobius and Lethe a tad closer to their big finish. Just a tunnel collapse, some self-mutilation and the great escape to go!

No, not a bizarre sex joke. I mean, I know I sometimes make *nudge,nudge* jokes about which stud nugget I have locked up in my basement, but I don't have a basement. And really, a sex slave would just be another person I'd have to clean up after.

Perhaps I've said too much. ;)

Seriously, though. By "men in the basement" (or perhaps "persons in the basement") I mean my subconscious. They do the heavy lifting on stories when I'm not thinking about them. In fact, NOT thinking about a story obsessively is a necessary part of my process.

In both of the larger things I'm working on now, I had an issue. in one, it was about how to tell a particular part of the story without putting myself to sleep, much less any poor readers who might wander in by accident. In the other, I had the bones of the plot all mapped out, and thought I knew exactly what was going to happen, but for a few niggling details that wouldn't quite fall into place.

I banged my head against both of these situations, even wrote sections of both stories in a few different ways trying to connect the dots. Trying to force it.

Within a day or two of giving up in disgust, a few interesting things happened. First, I was pouring myself a glass of water. I do that several times a day, actually, so it's not a big deal, but I was thinking about the water, and the glass, and trying not to splash. From absolutely nowhere, I realized that I'd written a certain planet as a dwarf planet, kind of an overgrown asteroid, which meant that its gravity would be much less, solving an issue I had anticipated (and totally gotten stuck on) in the next bit. The basement folk had already laid out the solution in part I'd written earlier (and already published so, wow, it will *really* look like I knew what I was doing when it comes out) but the memo hadn't gotten all the way to my conscious mind.

The other thing was a face and a name that came to me just as I woke up day before yesterday. A germ of an idea that solves all my problems with the shape-shifter story, including titles for all three books in the series. Five FREAKING months I have agonized over it, after three months of trying a couple different re-writes, and Oh, a hundred thousand words circling the drain. The Basement Folk were just waiting on me to let go if it. Once I got it out of my worry machine long enough, the story elves polished it up and left it on my freaking pillow.

Oh, GOD, how I loves them!

After spending most of yesterday in bed moaning (not in a good way, you naughty, naughty people) and waking up today feeling horrible, I did the unthinkable.

That's right. I went to the doctor.

Turns out, I have a horrid sinus infection, of the pernicious bacterial variety. It's draining constantly, which is what is making me nauseated. The bacteria is also what is causing the inflammation of most of the inter-connected, slimier parts of my head, including the strange soreness in my mouth (like I'd drunk something too hot).

What made me finally break and go to the doc (besides the prospect of having to go to some urgent care heck-hole over the weekend), was that I began to think I was getting the first symptoms of a UTI. With my family history of kidney disease, I just can't take that sort of risk.

So now I have a nice, broad-spectrum antibiotic that will bring about microbial genocide over the next 15 days. "Fifteen days?" you may ask, in shock. That's what he said. Seems like a long time to be on antibiotics, but at least he didn't put me on the kind that makes you sunburn easily. I don't think I could deal with another bout of medication-induced vampirism.

At least the boys are better. Much better.

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In other news, illness has had me reading a lot lately, and I plan to write some tasty book reviews as soon as I am well. Also, I hope to finally send my last bit of HMOWK off for read-throughs by tomorrow. It's done, but there was one thing I wanted to fix before I sent it off and I have not been up to taking care of it this week, what with the almost constant dizziness and nausea and what have you.