12.13.13

Friday the 13th, always a good day. 1600 net, and I realized that in the revising of these first 25 chapters, I've added five already. Which made me feel better because the numbers in the Binder haven't changed, and it seems to be getting longer and longer.... I do love Nicholas Drummond, he's just such a stud. Always has an answer, always knows the best thing to do. Oh, to have that level of confidence. He's fun to write, even when he's at a disadvantage.

Had a marketing call on WHEN SHADOWS FALL this afternoon, there's lots of good stuff ahead. This is Sam Owens #3, my very first hardcover, and I'm telling you, you're in for a ride. Sam was always a favorite for me in the Taylor books, and she's really come into her own in this new book. You'll be happy to see her sassiness reasserting itself. I was happy to see her reasserting herself. We can only grieve for so long before the need to get on with life interrupts us, you know? 

I should have the final cover next week (my name is going to be in FOIL, people!)  and I need to start sharing the link to the book and working on the pre-orders. This is the only part of writing I don't enjoy - blatant self-promotion. I don't know of any author who does, really. But it is a necessary evil, and so: 

PLEASE PRE-ORDER WHEN SHADOWS FALL NOW!

(THE KITTEHS NEEDS FOOD)

Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Books-a-Million / iBooks / Kobo / Walmart / Target

IndieBound / East Side Story / Mysteries and More / Parnassus  / Reading Rock

There. Shouted from the mountaintops. This is clearly just a sampling of places you can buy SHADOWS - it would mean the world to me if you would march into your favorite independent bookstore and ask them to order it - at least three copies - one for you, one for a friend and one for the store. If every one of you who read this blog do this, and tell a friend about the book and ask them to pre-order it, all sorts of Christmas magic will rain down upon you. In the form of more words. From me. Isn't that a bargain???

Working weekend ahead -- time to make a Manhattan, have a slice of pizza and call it a night.

Sweet dreams!

12.12.13

2131 excellent words today, most of which was written with a kitten stretched around my neck (Jordan), and another on my legs (Jameson), her small paws thrust under the bottom of my laptop, like there's a campfire in there, and she's out in the woods, chilled. Oddly enough, as I began to type this, up they both popped and took their positions, apparently summoned by my merely thinking of them. It strikes me that these positions, while fun and adorable now, might become rather difficult to manage as they get older. But for now, it's comforting to have a small beast who inexplicably smells like popcorn strung about my throat, and anther who works as a blanket across my knees. 

I'm still moving things around in the first section of the book, but I'm through Chapter 18 now, so there's been a lot of progress this week. I knew this was a week-long job, and it appears I was right on target. Hopefully i'll be done and on to the new stuff by Monday. And of course a neat idea presented itself today, so something I was going to delete stayed, and became a whole different scene. Love it when that happens.

My first drafts are always rough, lacking details unless I get carried away with a description, so I've taken the opportunity to flesh things out a bit too, which will help with the editing process down the road.

Must get a handle on Christmas - a bit more shopping to do, all the out of town stuff to be sent, the cards -- oh, the cards. Every year I swear I'm going to have some pre-printed, with a fun, happy picture and Love, JT and Randy printed on them, and every year, I end up doing my cards by hand. I guess I feel there's something nice about seeing actual handwriting, since we so rarely do anymore. 

And there's this whole other elephant in the room - WHEN SHADOWS FALL, which comes out in just over 8 weeks - on top of the deadline I'm under, and... yeah. Think I'll just go back to celebrating a 2K day and, you know, KITTENS!

Sweet dreams! 

12.11.13

Over the weekend, we watched a special on Bloomberg about Jeff Bezos and Amazon. It was fascinating, and I had an interesting takeaway that relates rather directly to my current worldview. 

I'm a numbers girl. I track my daily word counts, (1460 today, by the way) set monthly and yearly goals. At the end of each year, I do a performance review on myself -- looking at the year in review, the year to come, and do some goal setting. I set a rather audacious goal of 300,000 fiction words this year, and I might just make it. 

Three years go, on my 2010 annual review, I put together a five year plan. I've hit every goal on that list, save one, which is underway and will be remedied in the new year.  

That's pretty heady stuff, right? Hitting goals, hitting marks. There's only one problem. Once you hit a goal, there's always another. And another. Gotta do better. Gotta sell stronger. Gotta get higher on the list. Gotta, gotta, gotta.

I've been putting quite a bit of pressure on myself lately - looking at the numbers, drilling down into the nitty gritty of my psyche, really pushing myself harder and harder. And for what? I hit all the goals. And I'm not sure I know what my new ones are yet. So instead of figuring them out, I've been micromanaging EVERYTHING, holding on so tightly I'm surprised some things haven't cracked.

Which brings me back to Bezos. They were interviewing one of Amazon's first 5 employees, the guy who was hired to write book reviews in the very beginning. He was, of course, a major stockholder. And Amazon's stock had a pretty phenomenal run before the collapse of 2008, when it went down to $5 a share. (It closed today down $5, as a matter of fact. To $382)

But when the stock was hovering at the $5 mark, and everyone had lost their shorts, Bezos shook his head and said, (and I paraphrase here)

Don't worry about it. Don't look at the stock price. Worry about what we're doing and where we're headed. Focus on doing the job well. The rest will take care of itself.

I made Randy play that back, because it really struck a chord. 

It's not that I'm worrying about my stock price. But I am worrying about sales. Every author on the planet worries about sales. And now that we have so many places to see our sales figures, or at least extrapolate how well we're doing (hello, irony, AKA Amazon rankings) it's hard to avoid. I mean, our sales determine how we live our lives. Sales feed the cats, the kids, and the monthly nut. They are hard as hell NOT to look at. 

Randy said something very interesting then. "You have to manage to the goal, not the number."

Hear the ringing bells? 

I am a storyteller. It's what I do. It's my job, yes, but it's also my passion, a fifth limb, a true extension of my entire being. Whether the sales are there or no, I'm going to continue being a storyteller. And I'm going to try managing to my goal, instead of to my numbers. I'll continue daily word counts, of course, but I'm going to step back a bit on worrying the business end of things. I have a great team in place, a great book coming out February 25 -- I think it's great, I hope you do too -- and another one due right around that time.  As soon as I finish this one, I'm on to Sam #4. All I really have control over is my product. And that's where I should be focusing my energy. Right?

Macro, not micro. Which is going to make this year's annual review and goal setting very interesting.

Sweet dreams!

12.10.13

It has been quite a day. An ice/snow storm to start things off, which was beautiful, but shot my morning plan to hell, because Randy was home, and it wasn't exactly fair to ask him to tiptoe around and not watch the local news reports on the weather to see when he could venture downtown because I had a PLAN. Which meant I ended up online until he left, but he scooted at 9 or so, and I got down to work at 9:15.

1250 net before lunch. This is a good thing. Dani Shapiro wrote an essay called Gravy, in which she talks about Donald Hall's memoir LIFE'S WORK. He discusses his perfect day, which sums up to he gets up really early and does his work. By 10 a.m., he's finished the creative stuff, and the rest of the day is gravy.

This is my PLAN. Morning writing, no matter what, so I am guaranteed decent word counts. And on days like today, where the disruptions are massive - ice storm, afternoon haircut, wallowing about Christmas - this habit served me well.

Now look away, this next bit is rather personal. 

I bought a Christmas tree this evening. I wasn't going to this year - what with the kittens, and the travel plans, it seemed silly to decorate the house for two weeks. And when you don't put up a tree, there's no reason to do much else. But CC's house was awe inspiringly decorated, like an incredible fancy Christmas shop, and a friend asked how I was handling the kittens with my tree, and I told her I'd forgone the tree, and she mentioned her three kids and why that wasn't an option.

It burned. It did. We don't have kids, but not through any choice of our own. Child-oriented holidays are... difficult. Happily, I get to go to my parents and BE the child, which helps, but it's still hard sometimes. We do all sorts of things to alleviate this externally, with charities and such, but internally, well, I've become a bit apathetic toward Christmas. And Halloween. 

Which is rather stupid, because I adore both holidays. 

Christmas is also difficult because I'm on deadline, every year, without fail, so I don't have the month to dedicate to getting in the spirit of things. It's the 10th now, and I have most of my shopping done, but that's it. No cards written, no carols sung. CBS aired Rudolph the night before Thanksgiving, so I have to stream it. I did buy a wad of chocolate chips and white chocolate chips and candy canes for peppermint bark, and hung my favorite wreath, the felt leaves with the mommy and daddy cardinal, above the fireplace, where it nestles into the tibetan prayer bells I put up for Christmas two years ago and never took down.  

And now I have a tree.

I want to thank my anonymous friend here for her comment this morning. I was shaken, all day, recognizing I was using the kittens as an excuse, a whopping, nasty big excuse, and that the real reason I didn't want to put up a tree is my own apathy, my own demon I need to wrestle with. And the only way to wrestle demons is to face them head on.

Thank you, darling husband, for jumping headlong into the Christmas tree lot on a moment's notice tonight, and helping me pick out a lovely little spruce that looks so pretty in the bookcase corner, Buddha sitting beside him. 

And fuck you, holiday apathy. I am done with you.

Now, where are those lights?

Sweet dreams!

12.9.13

Net 1K today, and now I've got 8 chapters revised out of the 25 I needed to fix. Had a horrible time getting started this morning -- up too late last night, I suspect, so tonight I'll be crashing early. And I had such grand plans for the day, too. 

Net, you notice, which means I had to delete some stuff. I do so despise deleting, but sometimes, you have to, especially when it benefits the story. The story is King, Queen and Executioner in my life, and what I took out today certainly gave what I was trying to do have greater impact. I tucked it away, I will be able to use part of it later.

And of course, as I type this, it hits me exactly where I can use those words, and so I jumped over to the manuscript and put them back in. They'll need to be edited, but -- hurrah! Word count is doubled for the day!

Had the awful pleasure of needing to buy a new chair for my office - my lovely chair has bit the ghost, all the lumbar support is gone. I decided to get myself a good chair. A really good chair. I don't write at a desk, I much prefer my laptop in my lap and my legs up -- it puts the least pressure on my back. I've been looking around half-heartedly, knowing exactly which brand I should go with, hoping something else will capture my fancy. I nearly bought one out in Cali that CC and I found, but talked myself out of it -- the fabric was twill, and the kittens would like that a little too much. Leather is much less likely to impel scratching.

So to the Ekornes store I went. I found the perfect chair, one that's long enough in the seat to accommodate my legs, both straight and folded under me, and tall enough in the back to support my head, and worked out a decent deal, and it should arrive for the new year. I very nearly purchased the purple floor model, but I didn't get a price break on it, so went ahead with the black. I love purple, I do, but I can only imagine ten years down the road, deciding I hate purple and loathing the poor beast.

So in the meantime, Randy will have to put up with me parked in his chair. Sorry, darling!

Have so many things to talk about, will have to save them for later in the week. So I leave you, for now, with ...

Sweet dreams!