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Posts Tagged ‘deadlines’

Hectic January

Posted in A writer's life, am wrinting, author appearances, Author signing event, Trying to focus, tagged , , , , , on January 16, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I thought December was hectic. Last minute travel, visitors, Christmas and the lead up to New Year. Alas, January has been hectic and it’s not done yet.

At the moment we are on a bit of a break up near Palm Beach. There was a series of storms last night and now the forecast is for rain until we leave on Sunday. The forecast at home was for 3 days of rain, but that’s changed to sunny days which puts our garden in the soon to be dead zone. Sigh.

I also didn’t bring anything warm because it was so hot so I’m borrowing a shawl. It truly is relaxing here. No traffic, just the lap of waves and the sound of wildlife. I am meant to be writing but did a bit of admin first. I swear I’m losing my mind but luckily I found it again.

I have done a bit more work on Amber Rose and I was very worried I was stuck. However, my good friend Maxine said not to think about it and it would come to me and it has in bits and snippets. I think the important stuff is the emotional side of the action and I think that’s hit me now. I have a few days here to get stuck in. I hope to clear 50,000 words this week.

We are back in Sydney next week for a Wardruna concert, travelling by train. We were here last weekend and I think the one before. My daughter has moved and it looks to me I’ll be here more often than previously. My sister is back from NZ so she will be my next destination in the Sydney area.

With this change I’m getting a bit spun about. How to do I make goals for the new year? What should I focus on? I feel like I’m just running and running and going here and there. I’m sure it will settle once I get used to the changes in my life.

Travel wise, I’ll be at the ARRA signings in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne in March 2025 and the Ages of Pages in Hamilton New Zealand on 26 April 2025. Do come along! There are going to be panel discussions and interesting things.

Wait for it! My banner

You can see why I really need to finish Amber Rose and get it ready! It’s on the advert!

At least my dizzy feeling of being spun about is shared by my partner, also a writer, and he at least has deadlines to meet and is diligent about writing. I must give up streaming stuff, or only watch after I have done my quota.

Well I best stop writing now and get to work. Until next time.

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Finally I can sit at my desk

Posted in A writer's life, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on December 26, 2024| Leave a Comment »

With family visitors, the office needed to be gutted and my desk moved. I have only just now uncovered it. We had two drawers to assemble for our new bed and we had to deal with them before I could sit down and type. How wonderful it is!

We celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve with way too much food and loads of presents. I was so full I feared I would burst. I received Tansy Rayner Roberts’ latest kickstarter because it was so shiny and I asked the Dweeb to get it for me. But he also was my kringle choice so he also got stuff on my wish list. A photo printer, papers, and a voucher to frame a print. Other goodies some lovely tawny port, some really beautiful embroidery items from Ms Li brought from China. A lovely fan and a lovely scarf, some redwood earrings from California, chocolate and more.

A picture of Kickstarter from Tansy Rayner Roberts.

Yesterday, is my day off. People eat leftovers generally and we did and I watched rom coms the whole day. T’was the Text before Christmas, and the commentary was: “would someone really chat to a stranger? ” and you had to suspend belief for this one, but I liked it, I wanted to watch While You Were Sleeping (an oldie). Prime wanted $19.00 for it and I figured I’d just go buy it but then I found it on Disney for free. The Holiday was another one I hadn’t seen before but really liked. I also watched Love Actually before bed.

Christmas presents and not all there yet.

This morning I was out of the house at 6.30am to walk around Lake Burley Griffrin with my younger daughter. A good five kilometres! I needed it and a bit more. Today like I said uncovering the desk and finding my computer after some furniture assembly.

Food

My writing plans before Christmas went out the window. I had to go to NZ in a hurry for my brother-in-law and sadly he passed away after suffering a lot. I had to leave my sister behind but she’s surrounded by her son, her daughter-in-law and grandkids and I’ll go see her soon when she returns to Aussie.

I ended up maxing my credit card and spending all my money. Something I have not done for a while. Luckily I get paid again next week and things are better now and the need for spending has ended. I did save for Christmas but a few unexpected things came up. We also go the dishwasher repaired twice so that was not a nice Christmas expense. We found the problem was these soap sheets we were using made too much suds. We weren’t using them right in any case but the technician said don’t use them and use a level teaspoon of powder. My iphone battery died too and needed replacing. NZ trip and hire car.

We are also dog sitting because my elder daughter and my youngest grandchild have relocated to Sydney and we are watching the dog for a bit until she gets him after New Year. The cat is not impressed as he’s confined to one part of the house and he usually owns the whole place. I had to encouraging to leave our bed last night because I couldn’t get my pretzel shape comfortable and it was too hot to have car fur against my leg.

That’s about it. I haven’t thought of a plan for the year yet. I do need to get more of Amber Rose drafted ASAP. I appear to be more worried about the Dweeb’s deadlines than my own. He got a nice lecture from me this morning. Lol.

The immediate family and visitors are all well and happy and that’s a lovely thing.

I hope you had a Merry Christmas if you celebrate and my best wishes for the New year.

A lovely tranquil view from me walk this morning around the lake.

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Achievement unlocked

Posted in A writer's life, tagged , , , , , , , on July 30, 2024| 3 Comments »

Just a quick post before I start my dayjob.

Destiny’s Blood has been popped off to my lovely beta reader for comments. The ending was a bit rushed by I will revise when I get some comments back.

Yay! I made my goal.

I received the edits back on Robot Hearts’ short stories. I admit at first they went into the too hard basket. I was writing Destiny’s Blood and then I had Gammacon on Saturday. On Sunday I bit the bullet and it was worth it. Three stories under my belt. That leaves the remaining stories which I have tonight and tomorrow to work on. I have ideas how to respond to the editorial comments. I think I can do this. Why the deadline? I’m heading to Glasgow and worldcon on Saturday and I have already booked a proofread. Having lined up a professional I can’t stuff them around. A day maybe, but yeah must do. Great for creating deadlines. Thanks Keri!

Gammacon was well worth it. I went half with Chris Andrews on a booth. It looked great. Chris arranged for a fantasy back drop and the way he arranged the tables gave us a great footprint. Our position wasn’t great but we had a number of good book buyers. Enough that we broke even and maybe made a small profit.

This was our table just after we had set up.

This is a close up of my side of the booth, with Chris in the background setting up. Chris writes fantasy too but also useful booklets for planning novels and books on writing. They sell really well.

Anyway, this week is a roller coaster until I get on my plane.

Cheers for now. Must log on.

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It’s an ‘ug’ kind of morning

Posted in A writer's life, distractions, Dragon fantasy, Dragon Wine, Editing, Edits, epic fantasy, Feeling blah, geekgirl, Publication news, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 2, 2017| 2 Comments »

I was bright eyed and bushy tailed yesterday.

This morning not so much.

Of course there are a number of reasons for this. Yesterday afternoon I sent off Ungiven Land (The Silverlands Book 3) for proofreading after quite a while working through the toughest edits yet. It was going to take me a lot longer but on Sunday I hit of spot of chapters that had light edits and I pushed through them and built up some momentum. That left yesterday morning to finish it off. I had some family obligations during the day, but after that I did some more tinkering and sent the book off. It’s a bloody long book at 145,000 words.

Then yesterday evening, I picked up the revision I was doing of Bloodstorm (Dragon Wine Part 4) without much recollection of how much more I had to do. Well, I was further along than I thought so I pushed through and sent that book off to the editor last night. It’s a shorter novel at just under 90,000 words. I think I have more work to do on a battle scene but the edit will help with that I think. It gives me a month to think about it and make notes. I needed to push it off my plate as I have important PhD stuff to do.

So you would think after an excellent sleep that I’d be ready to roll and full of vim and vigour. Obviously my stories are still in my head. I was thinking about both of them while driving and drove right past two turns offs to my university and didn’t realise until I made a t-junction. Oops! So I had to go to another entry and park in a different spot. Then I realised I hadn’t brushed my hair. This called for emergency coffee and I hope  it kicks in soon.

After having these deadlines I don’t think I like them. I had listed Ungiven Land for pre-order on Amazon. For some strange reason beknownst only to my back brain I put down 31 May 2017 as the delivery date. However, I had not allowed enough time for processing proofreading changes so I had to push it back by two weeks. Amazon lock you out of the file about 3-4 days before release btw. I have had now had my pre-order privileges revoked for one year because I pushed back the date. Thank god for that. I can’t be tempted to put in hard dates that give me stress. I don’t want to do that again because that deadline plus the ones I had with the editors really put the pressure on.

As I don’t have more fiction planned other than putting up books of which I have the rights back, I’m going to give deadlines a miss for a while. I have my PhD novel to think about.

Fingers crossed I get some covers this week because Shatterwing and Skywatcher are ready to go. Deathwings and Bloodstorm the next two parts of the Dragon Wine series are coming soon.

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