Updates and More!

There's not a whole lot to update on you on, other than to say I am still not sleeping well, am running around like a chicken with my head cut off preparing for the T-word this Thursday (shhh, don't say it or I will break out in hives), and finishing the house.

We're basically unpacked, thanks to the help from my family, and I've basically gotten back into the swing of things, but time is still at a high premium.

I am not writing nearly as much as I want to, but I am glad I am doing NaNo all the same. I am making time and forcing myself to write words here and there, when normally I would say I didn't have enough time and move on to a chore.

The end result is I am not making as much progress as I would have wanted to before the month started (and I was still harboring delusions that I would have more time), but I am making progress. 

Progress counts. 

It's a good lesson that even when you're busy and life gets in the way, you can still make time for writing.

So how are you all doing? Have the holidays gotten you yet, or are you holed up indoors with a shotgun at the ready?

PS: I have no idea what I was thinking when I said "and More!" in the title. I have no "and More!". 

Except this picture:

Free Digital Pictures

PPS: And this Tumblr. It's hilarious.

Birth of a Novel: The Way Behind from Being Sick and Moving Edition

It's time to post about my writing progress! A day late! Did I mention I moved last week? Are you tired of hearing about that yet?

Progress: 0 words written

Okay, end of post.

....

Just kidding. Hahaha, aren't I funny? 

This last week has been super duper busy. I could go into the gory details, but essentially moving took a lot longer than I thought, and I am still unpacking vital rooms like the bathroom. Most of the other rooms are finished, or close enough, but between unpacking, feeling like death warmed over, and having an extremely needy baby who hasn't adjusted to his new house yet, I haven't gotten a single word written. 

I'd considered writing one word before I wrote this post, but that just felt more pathetic than no words, for some reason.

Instead of talking about my lack of progress, I am instead going to do the Next Big Thing bloghop. The lovely Rena tagged all of us in the Birth of a Novel blog chain.  So here it goes!
 

1. What is the working title of your book?

 

It was "When Zombies Attack" way back when I first had the idea, but it's currently "Zombie Road Trip". The title pretty much says it all. It's a road trip, and there's zombies. 

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

I honestly dreamed it. 

I had a dream that my friends and I were at Dragon*Con when zombies started to attack. We made witty banter while fighting our way through hordes of undead. Obviously the characters aren't fill ins for my friends and I, but the opening scenes are pretty much the same.

Of course, the dream didn't hand me much else. It took a long time, and a lot of false starts, to come up with a solid plot. That's the thing about book ideas that come to you via dreams. You still have to do a lot of leg work.
  

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Oh genre, you fickle mistress. I would say dark urban fantasy. I've struggled with genre because normally zombies land you straight into horror, but this book is not horror. However, it doesn't really resemble most of what is current in urban fantasy, but it's the closest thing.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Hmmm...for the main character Lilah I would say Anne Hathaway. She does plucky, slightly clumsy girl really well without making herself seem like a total idiot.

For the love interest Rowan, Sung Kang is a really good fit.

For the villain, Donald Trump. Yes. I said it. Bad hair piece and all. 

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

When a zombie outbreak starts chewing on the population, Lilah Reynolds travels to quirky road side attractions to set up anti-zombie ritual sites, but discovers along the way her best friend is in league with the evil necromancers. 

The sentence isn't polished yet, because it's changed since I've started writing, but that's the general idea. 

6. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

The first draft of the first incarnation only took about a month to write. I'd had the dream, and sat down to write out the first few scenes so I wouldn't forget it. 30,000 words later I realized I had a book on my hands. I plotted it out, and wrote the rest. 

 

It was terrible. I revised and started rewriting it about a year ago. That draft didn't work either. Early this year I started the current version of the book. I'm about halfway through the  "first" draft, and things are moving along nicely. Finally.

7. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I haven't read it yet, but I did notice that Nancy Holzner's Deadtown has zombies and undead creatures front and center. There's also a ton of zombies in other supernatural books, too many to list here. There's also a ton of general zombie apocalypse books.

 

The movie Zombieland is pretty close to describing the book's tone and feel, so we're going with that. 

8. Who or What inspired you to write this book?

My love for apocalypse novels coupled with my interest in all things geeky.

9. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Let's see...the characters travel to awesome places like World's Largest Ball of Twine, there's lots of references to geeky things like Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons, and last but not least, House Buffaloes are mentioned. A lot.

Birth of a Novel Returns!

Okay, so anyone who follows both Charity Bradford and I already know this, but we're bringing back Birth of a Novel. For those followers who aren't familiar with the bloghop, basically we write about writing a novel in November.

I almost didn't do it this year, because I am knee deep in a rewrite (no exaggeration--I am just past 50K in a book that will probably run me 100k). The official NaNo rules state you can't confirm your victory if you're working on a book already. Which honestly, is a little silly. I feel like you should still win if you write 50,000 new words, starting a novel or in the middle of the book not with standing. But I don't make the rules.

But, as my friend Liz pointed out, I can be a NaNo rebel, and I can still post about what it's like being in the middle of a rewrite.

AND then I was supposed to post about this on Thursday, but hey, guess what? We moved Thursday, and it took a lot longer than we thought it would. Basically, I've spent every day since unpacking and taking care of the baby (who is teething something fierce, by the way, and not sleeping through the night at all). 

So it's late, but better late than never, right?

Here's the post that Charity made up. I hope you'll join!

Charity and I are bringing back the Birth of a Novel Blog Chain! I'm so excited! We both felt that a little extra motivation might do all of us good during this busy holiday season. Some of you may be starting Nano today. Others of you might be in the middle of your WIP. Wait! What about those who are revising and editing? Everyone can play! It doesn't matter what stage you are in your writing journey, we want to know how you're doing and what we can do to help you keep moving forward.  Every Thursday post a progress report, then visit the other participants and encourage them to keep working toward their goals. Everyone is welcome to grab a button and join the blog chain by signing into the linky below. So for today, just share with us what your goals are. It can be your goal for the week, month, or rest of 2012.  

The Button <a href="http://s473.photobucket.com/albums/rr93/xsolstice1974x/?action=view¤t= largerbirthofanovel.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i473.photobucket.com/albums/rr93/xsolstice1974x/largerbirthofanovel.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>  

The Link List

The Kindness Project has a blog!

I've been really busy trying to get things in order for us to move. Especially now that we're moving in two weeks instead of four. But I wanted to let everyone know that the Kindness Project has it's very own blog now!

It's beautiful. Stop by if you're feeling down or just need some inspiration!

The Kindness Project

The Magic Wakes by Charity Bradford

Talia has a secret, one that will save her world and yet rip it apart. Only she can decide if the price is worth it.

Scientist Talia Zaryn has always had visions of an alien invasion and of her own death. She’s kept it a secret, hoping they are nothing more than childish nightmares. But when her face in the mirror matches that of her dreams, she fears the dreams are prophetic. Talia must prove that life exists beyond their planet, Sendek; perhaps then people will prepare to fight.

Talia's work at the Space Exploration Foundation leaves no time for personal relationships, but Major Landry Sutton isn’t looking for a friend. He is looking for a traitor. His ability to sense emotions convinces him Talia is that traitor until a touch sizzles between them. In an instant their minds are connected and they can communicate telepathically. Just as the two begin to trust each other, the invading force arrives.

Talia and Landry must uncover the secrets of Sendek’s past if they hope to defeat these terrifying creatures. And Talia is the key—if only she can learn to trust the magic coursing through her veins.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 

That is the blurb for my good friend Charity's book. Gripping, isn't it? And what a gorgeous cover!

I've been friends with Charity almost as long as I've been blogging. To say I am excited her book is finally being published (WiDo Publishing) is the understatement of the year, right up there with "Chocolate is okay."

You can get this book in your hot little hands on February 19th, 2013. Charity has a beautiful website here if you want to do some poking around. When the release date gets closer we'll have some fun giveaways, but in the mean time I wanted to put this book on your radar.

I'm off to continue to stare at that pretty cover and maybe get some work done. 

Flash Fiction: Doppelganger

This is for Chuck Wendig's Flash Fiction challenge, A Second Game of Aspects. 

In case you're curious, I rolled three ten sided dice (3d10 for those of you who speak RPG nerd) to generate my aspects randomly. The subgenre was Cyberpunk, the Setting was Inside a Massively-Multiplayer game, and the Element to Include was Cloning. 

Enjoy! 

"Doppelganger"

Is it murder or suicide to kill your doppelganger?

            I’m not normally the philosophical sort. I leave the heavy questions to the n00bs in Nixeroth tavern who gather to flame each other in between quests. But I’m in a mess for killing my doppelganger, so it’s worth consideration.

            “Do you understand?” The Night Elf chick asked me.

            I wanted to ask her if she wanted to cyber, but now wasn’t the time. She must be trying to make a name for herself, by volunteering to talk to me. I didn’t have to check her character stats to know her alignment was True Neutral. They like to fancy themselves arbitrators of justice. I called them fence-sitters.

            “What crime? My doppelganger is me, uploaded and imprinted into EverWorld of Dungeons. We’re the same person. I even chose to look the same in cyberspace as I do in the meatspace.” I flexed my muscles.

            “That’s not the point.” She frowned. Her face showed faint lines in between her eyebrows. It was amazing how far technology had come.

            “I’m the real victim here.” I looked down at my hands. Better play remorseful. “I watched myself die. I watched the light leave my own eyes. I didn’t sleep for a week.”

            Some of the lack of sleep was because my guild raided the Flame Dragon of Ooga’lith’s Lair for some epic loot, but still.

            “You still killed someone. Even if that person was yourself.”

            “So it’s suicide then. It was a cry for help. Someone should have saved me from myself.” I couldn’t help but grin at my own cleverness.

            The elf chick looked at me like she wanted to use her wand of Flame Strike to cow me into submission. “It can’t be suicide. You’re still here.”

I wondered if her meatspace counterpart was this hot. Probably not. Double D’s were pretty standard in EverWorld of Dungeons, along with super revealing armor. For women the more revealing the armor, the higher armor bonus you got. She must have a +30 to her armor class, at least.

She might not even be a she. It wouldn’t be the first time a guy went home with a Level 20 elf in a +25 flaming chainmail bikini only to find out her meatspace doppelganger was a dude. Some guy actually sued when he found out the she he cybered with was a he, but the courts threw it out. The laws haven’t quite caught up to the technology yet.

            “It’s not murder, either,” I said. “I’m not dead. Completely.”

            She sighed.

            I had her, and she knew it. It was illegal to kill someone in meatspace; it was illegal to True Death someone in cyberspace. But there weren’t any laws saying you couldn’t True Death your doppelganger in cyberspace, or kill your doppelganger in meatspace.

            “Do you know what this means?” The corners of her mouth turned down slightly. “If other people figure out how to you did it, they can True Death a doppelganger from the meatspace, or kill someone from cyberspace.”

           That really wasn’t my problem. “And? I doubt they’ll be able to kill other people. It’s doppelganger versus doppelganger that people need to be worried about.”

            I caught a look of fear before her face smoothed back into True Neutrality. I would have been scared myself. My meatspace doppelganger had been intimately connected to me. Before I offed him, we shared the same thoughts and feelings. I knew him like I knew myself--and I was an asshole.

            Maybe she had something to worry about too. Maybe the worse thing about her meatspace counterpart wasn’t that she was a he.  

It was just the two of us. People were still talking outside in the marketplace about bringing charges against me, but on who’s authority? The people in the meatspace? We’d already set precedent that meatspace laws could not be upheld in cyberspace; that would lead to chaos. And in EverWorld of Dungeons, there were no higher authorities. It was just player versus player in the purest sense.

She leaned in, her chair scratching against the wooden floor of the Harpy’s Nest tavern. I got a much better view of her cleavage. “How did you do it?”

I grinned. Ahhh, the real reason why she said she’d talk to me privately. True Neutral my dancing Dwarvish butt. “Why do you want to know?”

She looked over her shoulder, like someone I couldn’t see was watching her.

“Is your doppelganger logged in?”

“Not yet.”  She shivered. “I’ve started to move. Even when she’s not online.”

“Were you created at the start of the server?”

“Yes.”

My theory was right. A handful of us could move around without our doppelgangers signed on. We’d all been around since the start of the server. The amount of hours spent logged on had aggregated into something resembling a soul.

Some of them had already been True Deathed by their own doppelgangers. I know my doppelganger certainly freaked out when he realized I ran the Shards of Destiny quest without his clumsy fingers tying me down. He’d considered deleting me too, but I was in a top tier guild. I was too valuable to delete.

“I think she’s going to delete me.”

“Bummer.”

“Tell me how you did it. Tell me, and I’ll make sure you don’t get into trouble.”

I wasn’t going to be in trouble anyway. I guess I’m just a sucker for a damsel in distress. “A virus. In his headset. It went straight into his brain when he was imprinting his memories for the day.”

“That’s…brilliant.”

“I know.” I stretched. “Maybe we should go back to my place. I can show you the particulars.”

“Sure.”

I brought her back to my mansion to show her a thing or two about downloading.

I was free. No more cancer, no more dying, just me, in cyberspace.

Forever.

Scheduling Your Time--a Better Way of Living

I've never been very good at balancing the stuff I have to do in a reasonable fashion. 

My entire life, I've usually just gotten stuff done in a manic frenzy. House dirty? Spend the entire day cleaning. Behind on the word count? Spend the next day writing. Missing your friends? Spend an entire day out with them.

This sounds exhausting, and it can be, but once I get into the zone I want to keep going until it's done. I have a hard time just cleaning the kitchen and stopping there. Yet, afterward I'm tired, and I don't feel like cleaning for a few days until it piles up and I have to spend another day cleaning again. Ditto with exercise.

I was somewhat more disciplined with my writing. I write just about every day, because it's what I love to do. Some people like to watch TV, or play sports, or I dunno, race dolphins for fun. Writing was always the thing I did for fun. I take it seriously in the sense that I care about the quality of my words and I want to write the best book I can, but it's still fun to me.

Now that I am staying home with my son, free time has gotten weird. On one hand I am home with him, and therefore have all day to do something, in theory. But between feeding, clothing, and playing with the baby are these weird gaps of time that I've learned to use for chores and writing. 

I can't spend all day cleaning anymore, so chores must be broken down into smaller tasks. Now tasks are accomplished like I imagine a normal person does, a little bit at a time. My word count doesn't fluctuate between 2-8K anymore, but it's consistent. I can't clean several rooms in a day anymore, but I can consistently take care of each chore.

In order to keep track of not only the obvious stuff, but also long term projects I need to do, I made a list. But this isn't just a list of things to do. After reading this post on Fiction Notes, I decided to try out her method of using a low tech solution.

I got a legal pad out of my giant box of office supplies, and turned it sideways. I then divided it up into sections: Writing, House, Family/Friends, and Life. I wrote out every thing I needed or wanted to do in each area of my life.

Here, I am going to be really transparent and show you what exactly I have on my legal pad:

Writing:
Write 3 blog posts for the week
Write Flash Fiction
Write daily word count

House:
Meal plan--bento boxes 
Organize: Tupperware, linen closet, desk
Sweep and mop floors
Vacuum
Dishes
Cook dinner
Grocery shopping

Family/Friends:
Take baby to the doctor on Thursday
Crit POC
Visit In Laws
Read "The Thirteenth Tale" for book club

Life
Exercise 3x/week
Read for pleasure
Read non fiction

There's a lot of stuff I want to do, but never get done. I am really tired of feeling like I have all this stuff I want to do with my life, but I am always running behind. 

I want to blog more! I want to exercise more! I want to read more for pleasure, and more for learning! I want to get better at making bento boxes, so I am not in the kitchen for two hours every night when my husband works mornings, and eating cereal for dinner when my husband works nights!

In addition to making sure the daily tasks happen, I also have long term stuff. We're moving in a few months, and all of that stuff under "Organize" is tedious and time consuming, but it needs to be taken care of before we move out. Plus, if the stacks of Tupperware in the cabinet gets any worse, it's going to crush me the next time I open the door.

There's not really a big difference between columns on a legal pads and a big list of things to do, but it matters to me. For one, it's not all lumped together. For another, it's not in any order. I have my columns, and when one thing is finished, I scan the columns for what might come next.

I added a week schedule to this column idea by again, taking a piece of paper and turning it sideways. I then marked out Sunday through Saturday, each day with it's own column. I filled in stuff that had to get done on a particular day. I chose not to go the personal calender route because a) I've done that before and it's never worked, and b) with the columns I have more room. A daily calender gets big and bulky if there's writing room, or too small to be useful if there isn't.

I also added a loose order of importance so I know tasks that have to get done in a certain amount of time don't fall through the cracks. I got my highlighters out, because any time I can use office supplies is a happy time, and highlighted the stuff that was time sensitive in pink. So "baby's doctor appointment" was on Thursday's column, highlighted in pink. Daily stuff is yellow, but I don't normally bother to highlight it. Long term projects like cleaning out a closet are green.

Most of the Stuff to Do remains on it's own piece of paper, and I don't bother to transfer it to my weekly schedule. I did write my word count goals down each day, as well as put the "write blog posts for the week" in Sunday's column, but that's more about trying to figure out when the best time to do something would be, and less about a hard and fast schedule.

I know this sounds like madness, but so far it's working. I am not only scheduling time for the stuff that must get done, but stuff I want to do but haven't gotten around to yet. 

For certain areas (Writing being one of them) I plan to break it down even further. Instead of "daily word count" reminders, I plan to eventually get to the point where it reads "Write flash fiction story about time travel", "plot next three scenes on note cards", "write a blog post on scheduling your time". Being specific, especially with writing, has always helped me. 

I'm not saying I won't fall off the wagon and stop doing this a time or two, but I've been at it for about two weeks now, and this system seems to be flexible enough to allow me some wiggle room but keeps me on task. I finally feel like I am making progress, and not just treading water.

What do you think? How do you make sure to accomplish everything you need to do?