Day in the Life of an Idiot

 It's lovely out today, so I started this morning with a bit of light gardening.... or maybe garden repair? I love gardens and gardening, except I hate the work needed to put in even the most basic maintenance. I'm hoping that if the weather stays decent, I can solve some of this issue by doing little bits, here and there, every morning.

After that, I worked on Unjust Cause, the sequel to Precinct 13.  

For those following along at home, I recently realized that thanks to all the mucking about I did on Wattpad back in the day, I have most of a complete novel--at least in terms of a story arc.  There has been, periodically, some talk from me about 'finishing it up and making it into an e-book,' but I was never able to muster the wherewithal to actually DO any of that. Finally, it occurred to me that one way to force the issue was to see if Cheryl Morgan of Wizard Tower Press (the folks that brought you the e-editions of my Archangel Protocol books), would be interested in publishing Unjust Cause. Wizard Tower Press is a royalty sharing publisher, so that's no advance for me, but also no risk for them. Much, much more importantly, Wizard Tower Press will do all of the e-formatting, printing, etc., (something I, just frankly, dread) AND will provide me a hard deadline--the thing I need probably more than anything.  We are currently hammering out the last of the details, but a contract should be signed by me in the next couple of weeks. 

The previous manuscript, the one I was writing just to keep writing, is a gigantic mess.

If you've read everything that I posted on Wattpad all those years ago, I think that when the time comes you will find the Wizard Tower Press version to be a completely different experience. I'm writing it now to function both as a standalone and a proper sequel, which is to say, commercially viable. I'm trying to make it read like an actual book, not the meandering stream of consciousness that I had been doing. I mean, not to dis what i was doing on Wattpad, but I was really just trying to keep writing something original... and it kind of shows? There's lots of good stuff here, though, so much of it will work its way back into the novel, just maybe more...succinctly?

This is involving a lot of writing from scratch, which is why i insisted on a November 1 deadline. 

In other work related news, I have been contracted for another manuscript critique from the Loft, so I have find time in my schedule to work on that. (I'm thinking evenings?) 


Blah, blah, blah... work, work, work.

I will catch you all up on my weekend at some other point. Mother's Day was nice enough, though Shawn got her big dinner out on Friday night--we went to Taste of India, her favorite. I have decided that from now on, any celebration for me, will involve dim sum. The other big thing I did over the weekend was read a LOT of manga, thanks to a trip to the library. I may have to head out to see if they have the rest of the volumes of Pluto, which is one based on the world of Astro Boy, which I did not expect to like as much as I did. 

Right, okay. Nose back to the grindstone.

 I've determined today to get a decent start (well, re-start after talking to Wyrdsmiths,) on my proposal for a mystery cozy that my agent was looking for. I'm a four pages in and all I want to do is... anything else.  

In fact, I just got back from running an errand and am eyeing up the dishes. I hate doing the dishes.  The only thing that makes doing the dishes bearable to me is the fact that I usually watch anime while doing it.

I even started the laundry, another job I loathe.

All to avoid writing.

I'm SUCH a stereotype.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned the cozy here before.  There's no real "interest." All that happened is that my agent was talking to an editor (as per her job) and the editor said something to the effect of, "You know what *I'd* love to see....? I'd love to see a cozy mystery set in the craft beer brewing community" and my agent, being an actual decent person who seems to legitimately have my back, passed on this bit of industry gossip. I'm probably the absolute worst person to try to write this. For one, I don't drink beer. AT. ALL.  I grew up in a brewing town and the smell of hops kind of makes me think, unpleasantly, of overly hot, swampy days. So I never bothered to acquire a taste for it.  I've done some home brewing of wines, but never (obviously, since I don't drink it) beer.

HOWEVER, the universe seems to want me to give this a try, because, by absolute chance I met a woman at Minicon who not only is a craft beer enthusiast, but ran her own craft beer brewery.  So, I contacted Kathleen on Facebook and she's agreed to be my expert advisor.  In fact, we got together a couple of weekends ago and talked about the local craft brewing scene. I learned a lot of interesting stuff and immediately got an idea of how the murder could happen.

So, I've been diligently poking at this proposal for several weeks now. I really want to get it done so that I can start on the part that's going to be the most difficult for me: writing the sample chapters.  I should probably just start writing those, too, but [insert typical writerly whine, aka "WRITING IS HARD!"].

Who thought this was a good career for me, anyway?  Oh, wait. I did.