What I've been doing.

Hello, gentle reader. Haven't just been sitting on my hands since finishing the Calliope Project, have actually been a busy little bee. At least as busy as bees can be during a Pacific Northwest Autumn. Hopefully busier, I think they go inert in cold weather. This line of dialogue has wasted seconds of your life you can never get back.

Anyhoo, I've been taking part in the utterly psychotic yearly clown car pileup known as NaNoWriMo, The Counting of the Words thus far: 26980. Little bit ahead of where I need to be at this point. Used to be far ahead due to getting out 2k words, sometimes more a day, early on in this grand misadventure. Unfortunately Life forces you to do things other than bang away on a netbook in your pajamas, being interrupted frequently by a small cat who decides she's going to be your editor by way of plopping herself between you and said netbook, looking at what you've read intently, then pushing her ass in your face critically. She just did it again as I wrote this sentence.

So far, I guess it's going relatively okay. I've never done NaNoWriMo before and, thus far and not formed out of reget, it'll probably be the only time I do it. I really did this only as an exercise of my mercenary soul; Scrivener offering 50% off the program was enough to get me going. After I'm done with this novel, it'll probably be trunked until a time when I want to do something with it. I'm going back to working on Death Comes Ripping Dec. 1st. September and October were spent focusing on the more challenging prompts of the Calliope Project (Of which I still beam with pride over.), and NaNo has been taking up November. That's provided me with three months away from the WIP that I'll be able to get back to the second draft of with a fresh perspective. I also have to say that getting back into the habit of writing at least 1700 words a day on average is nice. Damn nice. It gives me a better idea of what I can do with Death Comes Ripping and in how much time. I'm thinking I can have it polished and looking pretty by 2012. Now that I've said it, I pretty much have to do it.

Seeing as all work and no play makes Jack die of hypothermia in the snow, I've been getting my reading on as well. Right now I'm reading this:

Southern Gods is a lovely first book from Jacobs combining Southern Blues with Lovecraftian Elder Gods. Yes, you should be reading this. It's like chocolate and peanut butter. Squamous, rugose, waiting-for-the-stars-to-become-right peanut butter. Almost finished with it. Expect a review.

Until next time, my sexy little lawn gnomes.