Realms of the Raven

Okay, I managed to get up the courage to enter a small contest being held by Angela Knight on her author loop. I doubt I will win any of the top three spots since I’m up against some very good published authors but it did get me to finish a scene I’d been thinking about and I did manage to get out the courage to send work to several of my Writing Goddesses.

We’ll see what happens. The deadline is 3/31 (note that I left it to the last second and almost let myself chicken out).

Thanks to Erin and Jaynie for a) encouraging me and b) smacking my cases of nerves when I need it!

Start = 238
Today = 233.5
ToGo = 71.5
Down From Last Week = 2.5

So right now RWH sits at 54% complete (based on my wag for length - wild ass guess for those who don’t know what a wag is).

I have 8 days before the end of the month, and at least one of those days I’ll be going to birthday dinner and another will be Morgan’s birthday.

In that length of time I would need to get 35000 words done, or about 3750 per day. Somehow I just don’t think that’s going to happen.

Oh well.

But I’m still plugging away at it.

The new job is definitely sucking brain cells. LOTS to do, a ton to learn - by the time I got home today all I could do was stare mindlessly at the TV for a while.

Well, two days later than I had hoped due to some events beyond my control and some rampant procrastination, I got to 50% complete on Raven’s White Hart!

Oh Goddess…. It’s hard for me to believe I got to the hump! Now over it and down the other side. Still a lot of story to tell, a lot of the good sex scenes….

But I had to brag that I got here at least… Most of you have read that the furthest I’ve ever gotten before was about 10% - this is 5 TIMES as far!

I’m so jazzed.

I’m still trying to finish by the end of March. I’m not sure I’ll make it but I want to try. We’ll have to see how well this meshes with my new day job too - I might be absolutely delusional!

Was up most of Saturday night so I totally spaced on weighing myself on Sunday when I got up. So I weighted myself today instead.

Start = 238
Today = 236
To Go = 73

Not coming off fast but it seems like the universe has been against me and taunts me for my lack of self control.

But at least it’s not going back ON

I think this has been driving me nuts enough that now I’m ready to just SEND a query to get the first one over with. I know two agents I’m really interested in working with. My genre and style fits well with other clients they have.

One of those agents only wants queries and information via paper and snail mail. And they aren’t accepting unplublished author queries until April. So I can’t actually send anything until the end of the month anyway.

The other agent takes email queries only. Response time is listed as two-three weeks. My guess is with the WIP at 50% complete, IF I hear from them to request a partial or full, it won’t be for a few weeks. The partial isn’t a big deal, I can crank that out. The full is SUPPOSED to be done by 3/31 in at least rough form.

So I’m thinking I’ll just send the danged query letter now and get back to work on the book. I drafted it up and sent it to my crit partner (hi Jaynie) to let her give me the suck/no suck judgement.

Argh - I think I spent the whole morning either trying to stay awake or second guessing myself….

Well, time for coffee and back to polishing the written parts of RWH so I can get back into it and back to writing. I want to get that sex scene finished.

So - eXtasy Book’s page has disappeared temporarily as they work through the woes caused by their non-paying book distributor EBook Ad. They are getting their replacement site up and should be back online shortly.

Their plan for a smooth transition became toast when their distributor decided to just delete their site during the 30 days notice they gave to cease their business agreement.

But Morgan Hawke (personal idol) says it better than I do. Of course she often does. So please check out her blog to get a whole timeline of what has gone on.

Got home from our friends’ house last night but just didn’t seem able to focus. So I’m still at 47% and editing now. I can sort of do that in chunks when M isn’t pestering me. I’ll have to try to write more later tonight after M goes to bed since C will be out this evening and tomorrow afternoon/evening as well.

Sometimes I’m far too distractable.

I am hoping to get to 50% tomorrow night before bed. I might be a bit hindered by the fact we have dinner at a friend’s house so most of the evening will be without writing time. But oh well.

I really do want to finish by 3/31 so I can meet my goal.

I did discover that reading the story out loud made certain issues stand out to me. I was reading some chapters to C this evening and found that out. Maybe I’ll be the nutty writer reading her stories to her cats!

But it’s 1:50 am now, time for bed.

Today was the last day with my current group at my day job. They are nice folks and I’ll miss them as well as miss seeing the projects and theories we’ve introduced come to fruition.

To say goodbye, they took me to a restaurant called Claim Jumper. This place serves HUGE portions and I was trying hard to not go nuts. I did pretty well - until my boss and co-workers decided that I HAD to have their 6 layer chocolate cake “Motherload” for dessert. We’re talking about something over a foot tall.

I tried to beg off but they ordered it anyway. Pictures were taken, I ate 1/6 of it with lunch and about died. The rest I got packed up to take home (along with the rest of my lunch).

I did manage to finish packing my office, in spite of my desire to lock the door and take a nap on the floor.

But I’m sure my week will suck as far as dieting….