Day in the Life of an Idiot

Just a head's up, I agreed to participate (as Tate) in the Writing Process Blog Tour next week. So, if you're interested in what I'm currently up to and how I do things, you can check that out. I'll be sure to link the post when it goes live, here. If you want to see what a previous one was like, here's the guy who tagged me, Conrad Zero: http://www.conradzero.com/2014-writing-process-blog-tour/

Otherwise, my weekend was made crazier by having forgotten that this weekend was Anime Detour. I mostly attended Saturday, though I did drop by for a little bit on Sunday morning. Mostly, I wandered the halls admiring costumes and buying too much stuff in the dealer's room. I have a few more photos I can share.

Here's Mason in the DeathNote/Clue x-over tee-shirt I bought him. Being the true and awesome nerd I raised him to be, Mason said, "Well, it really should say 'Mr. Boddy' instead of Colonel Mustard," but, we both agreed that it's still funny.


I only took one picture of a cosplayer on Sunday, but I just HAD to get this guy because he's Sigfried from Soul Calibur, and my nephew Jonathan and I wasted HOURS of our lives playing that years and years ago (and now there's an iPad version of it, so Mason and I have played it too.)


Otherwise, my con highlights were hanging out with one of the con's guests of honor, Christopher Jones at diner on Saturday night. We had a great time talking, but we were hampered from our usual mutual Marvel squee by the fact that I STILL HAVEN'T SEEN CAPTAIN AMERICA YET. (Though plans are in the works. I may be hitting a matinee on Tuesday with my usual Marvel crowd.)

Still, that was fun. A lot of the con, for me, was opportunities missed. Because I was Moon-Mooning, I missed out on a big-screen showing of "BLEACH THE MOVIE: Hellverse." I also didn't realize that one of the GoH's was a Dai Satō, a guy who worked on Samurai Champloo, and who, in point of fact, was a major contributor to some of my all-time favorite episodes. I never even heard him speak. The only thing I can say is that I breathed the same air as he did.

*head desk*

But, the other big thing we did this weekend, was get Mason to his UMTYMP test on Saturday. Mason was very nervous (for good reason--800 people apply, only 50 get in.) He decided he would feel best if he wore one of my ties and a white button down shirt. He looked super-sharp. And, he did his best. The testers are warned that they will encounter questions they'll have to guess at, and he said he'd had to guess a fair amount. But, I'm really proud of him for trying. I'll keep my fingers crossed until the letter arrives in May to let us know if he's been accepted. If we don't get in this year, he can try again next year (and up to seventh grade, I believe. So he has two more shots.)

Today I spent the day working on my next installment for Precinct 13's sequel, despite the depressing statistic (which I should never have checked!!) that half as many people read the second installment as did the first... so, my take away? I started out strong and then sucked it up. *sigh* Story of my life. Ironically, I posted the last of my Harry Potter/Bleach x-over this weekend and got more people to read that in a day than read the second installment of the sequel so far, since last week....

Yeah.

This is why people get discouraged with original fiction.

Anyway, it's a good discipline to have to write a 2,000+ word installment every week, though. That's much more progress than I was making before, which was zero. So good may yet come out of this experiment.

Since I'm still an unemployed writer, I've decided to sign up for NaNoWriMo.  I've decided to do this under my real name "lydamorehouse," so if you're also doing it and looking for a writing buddy, feel free to connect to me. 

I've been told the best way to survive National Novel Writing Month (which, btw, starts in a matter of weeks, beginning in November,) is to do a lot of pre-plotting and outlining before the big event.  The idea is that will keep you focused when you're trying to push words out.  But, I have a much bigger problem:  I'm not sure which project I want to focus on.

At Gaylaxicon, thanks in large part to Kyell's enthusiasm for it, I actually got an offer to publish my gay superhero story, which I read as a work in progress at WorldCON.  Being the sort of person I am (*cough*writingwhore*cough*), the idea that there's a built in market for this novel/novella really appeals to me.  Plus, the story is a great deal of fun.  It would not be the sort of thing that I would find difficult to sit down and plow through for an entire month.

However, the editor who offered kept apologizing for the fact that almost no money would be available, and he encouraged me to try to sell that story elsewhere, should I finish it.  At this point in my career, any offer works for me.  However, it does put this project on a more even ground with something like writing the next Garnet Lacey and/or Precinct 13 story as an e-book.

I could potentially make some $$ if I self-published a sequel/continuation of one of my existing series as an e-book.  Presumably there are fans out there who would want to buy an e-book release.  My biggest worry/concern about doing a Tate Hallway e-book is that I'm not quite sure what my rights are in regards to those books.  All of the Tate books are still in print, which means they belong to Penguin USA.  Technically, my contracts stipulate that the publisher has right of first refusal on all sequels/next works of paranormal romance, but I have no idea if that extends to a project like this.  I suppose I should ask my agent.  She would know.

The other drawback is one I probably shouldn't admit to in public, but part of me still resists this business model: self-e-publishing.  It still feels really labor intensive to me, and I remain unconvinced all that work upfront is worth the supposed eventual paycheck.  One of the things I like about having a big, New York publisher is (the advance, but also) that I don't have to mess around with all the formatting details.  Plus, I'd suddenly be responsible for the single most critical part of a book's success--the cover art.  That, quite frankly, freaks me out.  And, I'd need to be super-rigorous about typos.  Anyone reading here or my frist-drafty fanfic KNOWS I have a problem with spelling and I have NEVER ACTUALLY mastered the use of the comma in the English language. 

On top of those super-appealing options is a third one--all those other stories I said to myself, "damn, if I ever get time I'd like to work on those."  The problem, of course, is that I've had time, and nothing has quite grabbed me, alas. But, this feels like the perfect time to take on something that's been a dream project.  So, I don't know. 

I need to decide soon.  With NaNoWriMo approaching, I'm going to need to focus on those outlines.  (Another plus in the Hallaway projects column is that all the potential novels is that they come with book proposals/outlines already written.)