Tomatoes, Co-Writers and Delays

I’m sorry I haven’t been writing, blogging, et cetera.  (As a side note:  et cetera can also be written as one word, which is becoming more popular, and is abbreviated etc. – it must always be followed by the “period.”  Some people make the mistake of using “ect.” – I admit I have slipped – but ect. is wrong.  Et cetera means: and so forth.  I share all this because I just looked it up.  My mind went blank when I started to write the abbreviation – that happens to me sometimes, and not just when I’m writing abbreviations.  Now that I’m done sharing, I’ll get back to the post.)

I’ve mentioned I like to garden, and on the advice of a friend, I’m trying a new type of tomato plant (big boys).  (New to me at least, I normally grow cherry tomatoes.)  I planted the big boy seeds in 6 inch pots a while ago, and let them grow indoors in the kitchen window, thinking I had plenty of time to get my tiny garden space ready (it’s a tiny garden because whoever lived here in the past buried their garbage over most of the back yard and after a year of uncovering buried trash I finally found a small area they hadn’t gotten to yet).

Well, one thing led to another and the big boys got 4 feet tall and started taking over the kitchen, but I still hadn’t felt well enough to get the garden ready.  So, this last week, in desperation and terrified that the plants would eat one of the cats, I started working on the garden.  Now I’m only good for an hour or so, and I need constant breaks, but today, with Ademar’s help, I finally got the garden ready.  I got a few of the plants out of the house, but I’ve got to tell you, I’m beat.  Most of this last week I’d work for an hour, clean up, and then hit the pain pills, heating pad and bed.  So, no writing.  But each day I seem to be a little worse, and I can feel that I’m heading downhill quickly and a major flare-up is imminent.  Fearing that I’d lose another week before I could post, I’m humbly submitting some current thoughts now, just in case.

I’ve wanted to talk about my co-writers for a while now, and this finally seems like the perfect time.  “Co-writers”? you say; but I only see your name on the book.  Well, I’m stingy that way I guess – at least I’m giving them credit now.

Mattie with her favorite toy

Let’s start with dear, sweet Mattie; an elegant lady if there ever was one.  Well, maybe not so elegant, - yes, that's her back leg in the air - but she’s darn cute.

Mattie is the best-behaved co-writer I have (and the only one I can trust alone in my office).  If she gets tired from the demanding schedule I keep, she just plops down and naps right on the floor, even though she normally sleeps on a pillow inside a cardboard box.  See, what a trooper.  If I ask her about a plot twist or how a character should behave in a certain scene, she’s filled with dozens of ideas, meowing her little head off the second I say, “Mattie.”  It’s a bit annoying that she thinks best when I’m brushing her belly, since that kind of takes away from the actual writing, but undaunted, she flops down at my feet and rolls onto her back, signaling the beginning of a deep-thinking period, at least seven or eight times a day.  I swear that one day she will be an Internet sensation, if I ever shoot the video, because she loves to floss her teeth, and come on, how many other cats have you seen do that?  (By the way, never let a cat EAT dental floss, since it is extremely dangerous to them – Mattie always throws her dental floss away.)

I've almost got it dad!

Previously I’ve written about Pip’s efforts to help in my office, so I won’t post much on him right now.  However, he’s currently asleep on the printer, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that he’s managed to keep all the other cats away from the printer today, fearing they might waste paper – which happens all too frequently since they think it’s a hoot to step on the print key and watch paper come shooting out of the machine.  Overall, Pip is very helpful – here he is untying my shoe for me.

To know me is to love me!

Rascal snuggling with his sister

Another frequent co-writer is Rascal.  Hold on to your chairs girls, because I’m about to reveal a huge secret: I consult Rascal on every romantic scene I write.  His cuddling skills are unprecedented.  He never misses an opportunity to snuggle, and he gives some pretty amazing Eskimo kisses (albeit, slightly wet ones).  He frequently points out that if you love someone, tuna breath shouldn’t be a problem.  And, he says that if you’re feeling neglected, don’t be shy, just jump on a person’s chest and rub your face against theirs until they give you a hug – it works for him every time.  

  

Rascal snuggling with Pip

All clear here dad - you're safe for now!

He’s very protective too.  For some reason he thinks I hate paper towels, and he often hunts them down and kills them for me. That's Balto with him.

 

Yes, I am this cute!

And speaking of Balto.  He's the strong silent type.  He doesn’t talk much – unless he wants a drink from the faucet – but if I read a scene to him, and he doesn’t like it, he’ll just yawn and go back to sleep.  One time he was sitting on top of my monitor, and I read the first page of a new story to him, and he promptly turned around and started swishing his tail back and forth across the screen – clearly indicating I needed to erase the whole thing and start again.  He’s always pushing me to be a better writer that way.

 

Boo winking at the camera - I told him the teeth were a bit distracting

  

And I can’t forget Boo; he’s the oldest of the bunch and is determined to single-catedly bring the word “aloof” back into the common vernacular.  He doesn’t come by the office very often, he mostly prefers the wide outdoors, but he’ll stop in from time to time to offer moral support, catch a quick cat-nap using my foot as a pillow (I wear thick, padded socks), and complain a bit about the weather.

So there you have it.  Not a page gets written without one of them having some kind of input.  I’ve often wondered if “two many cooks in the kitchen” applies here, but at least I don’t have a mouse problem.  (Just FYI, Ghost, the little female snuggling with Rascal above, now lives with some dear friends of ours and goes by a different name.  We miss her terribly, but I hear she is spoiled out of this world and glad she doesn't have to share a cat-box with three messy brothers.  By the way, that's her yawning in my avatar.)

And as for “Delays.”  I had hoped to get Fighter’s Bane ready for publication this month, but since I’m running out of month, I’m now predicting May for the release date.  I’m still waiting for some readers to get back to me, and just today I thought of a little twist I want to add, but all-in-all, I’m close to being finished.  Gray Area needs a bit more work, but it’s close too.  When the tomatoes get into the ground, the cats and I will try and pick up the pace some – well, maybe, apparently Mattie wants to think about it since she just plopped down at my feet and rolled onto her back (clumps of cat-hair and minor back pain here I come).

New Pages

I finally posted about my medical condition.  Since it was so long, I put the post up as its own page under My Disease Rant.

I also put up a new page with a sneak peek at the first chapter of Fighter's Bane.  The book's finished at 107k or so words, but I'm having a bit of a formatting problem.  I didn't write the story in a single document, instead writing different parts at different times.  When I pasted them all together I realized that I'd used different formatting settings and lately I've been going over the document section by section and fixing the bugs.  A number of things I was able to fix with global commands, like changing all the text to the same font, but little things are still popping up.  (I miss the old days of WordPerfect where you could actually see every formatting code.)

I seem to recall already posting blurbs about the storyline in Fighter's Bane, so I won't do that again, but I thought I might explain a little of the "kookiness" (hum, is that spelled correctly?) that went in to writing the story.

When I was a wee-lad, a certain role-playing game came out.  I got hooked, big time.  I enjoyed the game with friends, and played for years and years until computer versions of fantasy-adventure role-playing games became popular.

I still don't know why, but when I was thinking about writing Fighter's Bane, I got this nutty idea that it would be fun to create a dungeon and some characters, and then write the story by rolling the dice and having the characters work their way through the dungeon based on how the dice landed.

For instance, I used an 8-sided die to determine which direction my characters took, e.g., a 1 or an 8 was north, a 2 or a 7 was south, a 3 or a 6 was west, etc.  Seemed fun at the time - but do you have any idea how many times I had to roll that die in order to finish the book?  But once I started, I stuck with it.  Like I said: nutty.

I also used dice to determine the outcome of battles, treasure, etc.  I kind of really got into it.  And most definitely some weird things happen to my characters as a result of "chance."  Someday I'll post more about the details, but for now you just need to know that I rolled myself up a 100k plus (word) book.

I'm still working on the cover, but one of the die I used is so old and so worn from the adventure, that I'm thinking of honoring it by sneaking in a small picture of it on the cover.

My fervent hope is that I rolled up a winner.  I enjoyed writing the book, and I hope you enjoy reading it when I finally finish all the silly formatting garbage (which is, unfortunately, an important part of actually reading the thing).

Looking Back - March 20th, 6am

I'm a bit obsessive about forgetting things, so I tend to take a lot of notes.  Most of the time when I'm working on ANYTHING I have a blank Word page open so I can jot down thoughts I don't want to forget.

Most of the time of course I FORGET to save the notes or I forget where I saved them at, but that's fodder for some other post.

Today I'm sharing one of those "forget me not" notes because when I found it a few minutes ago it made me remember when I wrote it, and that made me laugh.  I hope you laugh too, but I'd settle for a chuckle or at least a snicker.

Here's the note:

Createspace – Davina’s Magical Radio - March 20th, 6am

I just finished uploading all the information for Davina’s Magical Radio to be published on Createspace.  I would not recommend the process for the timid.  At one point I had 13 different applications/programs open at the same time, just trying to get the details on the cover right.  And at this point I think I’m approaching 30 revisions of the cover, most of which I saved just in case I screwed up the next attempt.  However, I uploaded something, let’s hope it sticks. 

I’ll be happy even if it sucks so bad people talk about it and laugh.  That’s publicity, right?  By the way, I had to pick up the basics for Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrater in order to make the cover.  Prior to this attempt I’d never used either program.  And I’d just like to say, if anyone knows who designed those programs, please kick them in the shin or stomp on their toes (not really, I don’t want to be libel).  But come on, why must "cut and paste" be so difficult?  I’m sure lots of folks love the “layers” thing, but it drove me crazy for the first few days. (Now, of course, I love the "layers" thing.)

Formatting the “interior” pages for the book wasn’t that bad, but I did struggle to find the correct information because I’m working with an older copy of Word (I can’t afford an upgrade until you buy a lot more books).  There was plenty of information on Word, and I'm thrilled about the many joyous hours I spent searching through web sites that didn’t mention their information only applied to Word 2007.  Not.

By the way again, I’ve got Taylor Swift's “Forever & Always” blasting in my ears so loud it’s a wonder I can even write a single sentence the doesn’t include the phrase: “back up, baby back up.”

Everyone was asleep when I hit the final “Complete” button on Createspace, so I opened a can of tuna to celebrate with the cats.  They weren’t even finished with the first can when they started begging me to upload a second book so we could celebrate some more.  So I threw a toy to distract them and then ran into my room and closed the door.

Using ?? as a Writing Tool

Often when I write, I kind of get into a typing frenzy.  I’ve heard some writers are very slow and methodical, picking each word carefully.  For me, what usually happens is I will “see” a scene in my mind and work feverishly to get it all down in print before I forget the details.

Of course I always go back and edit it, sometimes again and again, trying to fill out the initial picture I saw in my mind to get it just the way I want.  But when I’m actually “doing” the writing, I don’t want anything to stop me from getting as much on the paper as I can.  And that’s where the double question mark (??) comes in handy.

Sometimes I’ll type a word and my fingers will freeze because my mind has recognized I either used the wrong word or misspelled what I wrote.  I find that if I dwell too long on trying to fix that specific problem, I’ll lose other parts of the scene.  Poof!  Gone forever.  I hate that.

So I use the ?? (double question mark) to save me.  If I get stuck on something I need to look up, I’ll just type ?? and move on, knowing I can do a search for ?? later (on my version of Word it’s Edit/Find ??), and it will take me right back to the spot I marked.  The reason I use ?? is because it’s easy to remember, easy to type, and easy to spot on the page.

I use the ?? for tons of things I can’t decide on right at that moment, like spelling, double checking specific facts, punctuation, grammar, and so on.  I may be writing about a character and can’t recall if he was wearing a green or blue shirt in the previous scene, but instead of taking the time to look it up, I just ?? and move on.  My rough drafts are filled with dozens and dozens of double question marks.  It allows me to stay in the “flow” of the writing while giving me an easy way to mark areas I want to come back to.

Sometimes I even write myself a short parenthetical note along with the double question mark like: (?? Is parenthetical a real word).  But most of the time I can see the problem just by marking it with the double question mark.

It’s a writing tool I learned years ago, and I’m sharing it with you just in case it helps you too.

Review of Davina's Magical Radio

Special thanks to Shaynie who took the time to review Davina's Magical Radio.  You can read the review Here.  Thank you Shaynie!

I haven't been feeling well the last few days, but I'm still plugging away on the edits for Gray Area and getting Fighter's Bane ready for publication.

I'm also still working on my post about my illness.  I think I'm on my fourth version.  I was working on a draft in Word and when the draft hit six pages I knew I wasn't going to post that much.  So, I'm cutting it down.  I named this blog circumlocution for a reason.

Editing Gray Area

I'm about half-way finished with my edits for Gray Area, my urban fantasy thriller.  I think half-way is okay since the book is a little over 127,00 words.  I wrote it almost three years ago and then set it aside.  I liked the story, but right after I finished it I had a bad flare-up with my disease and just never got around to doing anything with the book.

But I picked it up again a few weeks ago and started going through it, both to edit the story and re-familiarize myself with the work.  So far I'm pleased.  The book is definitely dark and the writing is somewhat gritty, although in this edit I'm softening some of the sharp edges.  But when I was putting together the story dark and gritty was what seemed to fit.

In the past I've said Gray Area is about a group of people who rescue kidnapped children, but the story is much more complex than that.  I did an enormous amount of research for the book.  I already had some background with the topic, having worked with law enforcement in juvenile diversion and as a crime prevention supervisor in my home town, but I wanted to dig a little deeper.  So the background took a while to create.  I will admit, it did help that I have friends working crimes against children in our local law enforcement.

I wanted the story to have an authentic feel, but with so much information I decided to have the main characters work on several cases to highlight the different types of crime children can face.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and I hope my readers will be too.

I mean you have to love the main character Sander Kolman, because he's exactly who you would want on your side if anything happened to your child.  He's tough, smart, and stubborn.  He never quits.  He'll follow the trail no matter where it takes him, doing whatever he has to in order to save the victim.  Some of his "skill sets" are what make the story fit in the urban fantasy category.

It is definitely a departure from Davina's Magical Radio and Fighter's Bane.  By the way, I've got Fighter's Bane with the latest edits out to some readers, and as soon as they get it back to me I'll start getting it ready for publishing.  I'll start with an ebook first, probably through Amazon, and then work on the formatting for CreateSpace.  I'll post more as the process proceeds.

Pip Is a New Curse Word

I’m sitting in my office working on an edit of Fighter’s Bane, uploading Davina’s Magical Radio to Barnes and Nobel's Pubit, chatting on Facebook, answering email, and listening to Taylor Swift at a dangerously loud volume in my headphones.  (I’m either a multitasker or I just have such a short memory that I keep forgetting what I’m working on so I have to start something new.  You decide.).

Nonetheless, every cat in the house is in my office.  (I use the word “office” lightly since it’s really a poorly walled-off section of a back porch.)  But at least I have an office, so I’m happy about that.  But it is a bit of a small room, so I’ve pretty much got wall to wall cats in here.  And almost every one of the little darlings is fast asleep, looking amazingly cool the way cats do when they get all curled up.  Balto has such a fluffy tail that he curls around and uses his tail as a pillow.

Pip's Baby Picture

But did you notice I said almost every cat was asleep?  Because my dear sweet little Pip is most definitely not asleep.  Oh no, not Pip.  Of all my cats, Pip is the one with the innate ability to get into what he should not at the worst possible times for me to stop him.

I decided to jot down this blog post because for the last 30 minutes I’ve been using Pip’s name like a swear-word.  You know what I mean?  I’m so angry I’m practically spitting his name out.  He has managed to get into, knock down, tear open, bite through, and get stuck in every single thing he knows he shouldn’t.   And I do mean knows, because it’s not like he hasn’t been in trouble in here before.  I’m sitting here, exhausted from yelling “PIP,” and asking myself how such a little cat can cause sooooooooooo much trouble.

Now in his defense, he is the best cuddler in the house.  He’s skinny and wiry, and the second I sit down in my recliner he jumps on my chest and does his best to worm his way under my chin.  If I open my mouth he tries to stick his head in.  And once he’s under my chin, if I stop petting him, he just raises up and head-butts me until I pet him again.  Sometimes when he’s up on my chest he puts both paws around my neck and squeezes them together just like he’s hugging me.  It is clearly one of the coolest things in the world.  If you’re a cat person you know that’s nirvana.  If you’re not a cat person I will never be able to explain how cool a cat hug can be.

Pip Showing Off His Climbing Skills

(I need to point out that Pip’s brother Rascal is not far behind in the cuddle department.  If he sees Pip up on me he’ll climb up on my chest too and just lay down on top of Pip.  And when I ask him if he loves me he always rubs his face against mine.  It’s pretty cool.)

However, tonight/this morning is one of those times when I wish Pip had an off switch. And even as I write this he’s sitting atop the monitor, hanging over the front and taking swipes at the cursor.  Yes, I admit, he’s cute.  Nonetheless, since I think cussing is wrong, I’ve now forbidden myself from ever using his name again.