Whazzup?

I seem to have found a buyer for my old house, so that's been a distraction. Once it's done, though, that will be one less time-suck to deal with. It's going to be REALLY nice not to have to commute out there to mow and weed and replenish the flyers and make sure none of the dumber real-estate agents have managed to destroy the place. (No lie: Last winter some genius turned off the furnace during a cold snap--unbelievable!)

Let me do a tally, anyway: 23 chapters and 37,900 words. Length-wise, that's pretty much in line with where I want it to be.

Progress report

1,410 words done! The second part of the grand finale is done!

You know, it's funny because it's been pretty easy to keep the book appropriate for a young adult audience, but right now I'm trying to establish a little romance, and it's surprisingly tricky. It's like, they can't be too into each other, you know what I mean? It's really different than writing for Philippe, who would never say "Nice rack!" but it's not like he doesn't notice....

Progress report

So, yeah, things got busy, and then on top of everything, allergy season has kicked in with a vengeance (even the cat is sneezing), which makes it really hard to sleep. But today I edited the past several chapters, so hopefully things will flow from there.

"Someone please tell me it's not a train"

(Ah, Cracker.)

So, at the risk of calling the Fates down upon my head, I wanted to let people know what's been going on in general.

A few months ago, I took over the affairs of someone who can't handle them any more. And it's been very much like when I bought my house out of forclosure last year--this person's affairs are complicated and have been badly neglected for some time, and I've been spending the past few months metaphorically getting the rats and ivy removed, getting floors put in, and getting rid of the Tree That Is Going To Fall and Kill Us All.

We're now at the point where the emergency work has been completed. (We think. Assuming there are no more surprises--ahahahahahahaha. Still, it seems quite unlikely at this point that anyone is going to have to go to jail for tax evasion, which is a definite improvement.) We could move on to, you know, planting bulbs and putting in furniture and making this house truly a well-functioning home.

Except that 1. I am getting resentful (seriously, some days all I do is go to Staples and talk to lawyers), and 2. the person whose affairs these are does not handle change well. Positive change is still change, and this person is going to need some time to adjust to the fact that the attic is a lot less noisy, there are bushes visible in the front yard, the floors are no longer bare concrete, and the tree that was growing such pretty mushrooms out of its trunk is now gone.

So we've decided that it's in everybody's interest to give it all a rest for a bit. Which should mean that I can start writing again soon (bring it on, Fates!), and hopefully I'll stop seeing searches like "Mary Sisson died" when I go look up my site stats.

The inevitable freaking out

So, looking at what I've been doing today, I think it's safe to say that I am in the inevitable freaking-out stage that apparently must precede any return to writing after a period away. Tax year 2014 is in the bag, and despite my best efforts, I cannot convince even myself that freaking out about tax year 2015 is entirely necessary. It won't happen tomorrow, but hopefully Tuesday will mark my return to the life of a novelist.

Progress report

I'm still working on the cover, but here's what the front/e-book cover will look like, minus the title and author's name (plus I need to clean up the head a bit).

So, it's supposed to remind you of the game Snake. It's a dragon (a bad dragon), and it's either going to be eating the book title or it's going to be breathing flames and the title will appear on the flames. Actually, looking at it here, the latter idea is just too complicated to work in that space. So, the dragon will be eating the title--sounds good.

It's still neat when this happens

So, yeah, things got busy again--we have to get everyone's ducks in a row before April 15, which can be tricky when you take into consideration the fact that some people weren't entirely aware they had ducks....

But I woke up this morning with a cover for the young-adult fantasy novel just completely there in my head. It's something that I think will be visually interesting, it's something I can do myself (i.e. it requires no actual drawing ability), and it would reflect certain plot points in the book. What I don't know (and I guess I won't know until I use it) is if it will trigger some sort of expectation that isn't fulfilled by the books itself. ("I was sadly disappointed by the complete absence of bananas in this book!")