Yikes

I've given myself the arbitrary deadline of finishing my book before World Fantasy Con. This means I have to write 50,000 words in the next two months. Not only do I have to write them, I have to edit them, which means I'll actually be rewriting about half of them, so ... 75,000 words in the next two months. Actually seeing the numbers is making me hyperventilate.

One word at a time, man, one word at a time.

Let's see. Let's round up to 80,000 words over the next 8 weeks... that's 10,000 words a week ... that's about 1,500 words a day ... that's about six pages a day. What the hell? I can totally do that.

Okay. Breathing normally now. I will have a finished manuscript by World Fantasy Convention.

I'm famous!

Check this out: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/commentary/0,6115,1301310_+311800960_0_,00.html
It's Dalton Ross's weekly article called "The Glutton." I read it religiously every week, and I email a response to him once a month or so. Check out the reader mail section. Weeeheee! Seeing my words in print never gets old.

new digs

As you guys can see, I've spruced the place up. New paint, a few new pieces of furniture, cleaned out the closets, that sort of thing. Let me know how ya'll like it. The new blogger programing allows for easy changes, so expect template changes at whim. This could be fun.

Still getting over my summer cold. Now it has progressed to a chunky cough. Yech. Worse, I gave Ken the cooties, so he's pretty miserable. He doesn't move more than five feet without his box of lotion-tissue, Cold-eeze drops, and Actifed pills. Poor guy. Hopefully he'll get over it soon. It's nearly fall and the weather will be too nice to be cooped up inside.

In honor of Bridget ...

You Belong in San Francisco

You crave an eclectic, urban environment. You're half California, half NYC.You're open minded, tolerant, and secretly think you're the best.People may dismiss you as a hippie, but you're also progressive, interesting, and rich!

Where Does Your Inner Californian belong?

back on the horse

I sent my "killer Survivor" story to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Might as well shoot for the top. The website says their turn-around time is eight weeks, so hopefully I'll hear something by Halloween.

I've been getting lots of writing done in spite of a cold I think I picked up in Indy. Stupid geek germs. I've also gotten lots of encouragement of friends and writer-type folks in the last few days. Thanks, guys. You don't know how much your kind words mean to me.

Busy weekend: dinner out with friends tonight, a going-away party of sorts for Bridget and Jimmy tomorrow afternoon, dinner with Ken's new boss tomorrow night, and brunch with friends on Sunday morning. The best part of all of this? I don't have to clean my house. Love that. I do, however, need to do some laundry today so we have clothes for all of our social functions.

Of all life's chores, I think I hate laundry the most. As bad as lugging carloads of clothes to the laundrymat sucked, there's something to be said for spending only two hours a week washing, drying, and folding. Sort of a "wham-bam-thank you ma'am" for clothes. If you add one washer and one dryer together and multiply by my tendancy for procrastination, you get a load of dirty laundry in the living room, a clean one in the dryer, and unfolded towels on the kitchen table. Grrrr. I feel my blood pressure rising already.

yeah, well, I suck.

Just received word that my "killer Survivor" story didn't make it into the anthology. The rejection letter was funny and clever, which didn't make me feel better, but I appreciated the sentiment. It said something along the lines of the story being good but didn't really fit in with the direction the anthology was taking. I suspect it was a form letter even though it had my name at the top. I'm licking my wounds tonight, then I'll hit ralan.com tomorrow. There's gotta be a sick mind out there that'll publish it.

On a brighter note, I wrote four pages on my book yesterday. If I can pull myself out of my funk, maybe I'll accomplish that much tonight.

bloggin' from Indy

I'm here at Gen Con Indy, and so far I'm having a great time. I attended writing seminars all day yesterday. The woman who edited the anthology I'm in was a panelist, and she called me out a few times, pointing out that I had gotten my first professional sale. She also mentioned she had read a book I had written and "there was something special there." That made me feel all warm and fuzzy. To make the day perfect, I played poker in the evening. I played really well, and got down to the last two tables. I won a free pass to play this evening, so it wasn't all for naught. This afternoon I'm attending a few more writing seminars, a few readings, and hopefully an improv-comedy act. Then I play poker at 9. Whew! It's a good thing I took Monday off, too; I'm going to need a vacation after my vacation.

Take that, flab!

So I did the mini-triathlon yesterday for the fourth year in a row. Keep in mind that I didn't train at all this year, not really. Normally, I'm biking, running, and swimming all summer long, and a few weeks before the tri and actually do the race a few times to practice the transisitons. Yeah, didn't do any of that this year. The first year I did it, my time was 1:05 something (that's one hour five minutes) and the next two years it was 1:02 something. This year, without training at all, it was ... 1:02 something. What the fuck? I totally walked half of the run, too. I definitely wasn't in as good of condition, but my time was better than the first year I did it! Aargh. The friend I did it with said, "Kinda makes you wish we'd trained, huh?" And the logical response is, "Yeah, if we'd trained I'd have totally done it in under an hour." But would I have? I don't know. This friend has talked me into doing a half-marathon next year. I'm thinking of revoking her friendship card.