I'm still here

Yeah, I'm still alive. I had to travel to take care of some family stuff, and I figured I'd get writing once I was back. Now I've got six banker boxes of financial records that I need to go through thanks to that trip, but the thing that's really been killing my time is that I finally decided to see an allergist.

I'd always had allergies, and moving out to farm country made the hay fever bad enough to send me to the doctor, but it's definitely one of those things where I didn't realize exactly how bad it was until I started trying to address the problem--I'm much more allergic than I thought. Some of it has been good (I put a dust-mite cover on my mattress and slept 12 hours a night for something like four days straight), but getting shots has been difficult both because I don't function very well on antihistamines and because it turns out that I don't react very well to the shots. The last reaction was bad enough that I'm going to have to start the shot series over again, this time with MORE antihistamines on board.

I'm hoping to get up to the maintenance dose as quickly as possible (I don't want to have to worry about missing shots because I'm snowed in), but we'll have to see how things go once the new antihistamines come in. I was trying to do two shots a week, but each shot was wiping me out for two days apiece, which is unacceptable. Hopefully on the new regime I can keep to that schedule and still write, but we shall see....

All eaten up

Well, the plan to turn my attention to a few other things before getting started on Trials turned into HAVING ALL MY TIME EATEN BY MONSTERS. Some of its good (the house appears to have a new buyer), some of it really needed to happen (I finally got a check-up), some of it is upsetting (another attempt to rip off an elderly relative), and all of it is time-consuming. Hopefully this squall will end soon, because I'd really rather be writing.

Progress report

I read over what I've already written of Trials--there's definitely rough spots (like the places where I just wrote "FILL IN BACK STORY--MAGIC MAN"), but overall, I think it's working pretty well. Again, when you take a long break, it's much more like you're reading something written by somebody else, and I was finding it pretty entertaining, so that's a good sign.

Tandem noveling

So, I've got the rough draft of the young adult novel finished (YAY), plus about 34,000 words of Trials. So what I think I'm going to do is my first! ever! experiment with writing two novels at once.

The idea (and we'll see how this works in practice) is that working on one helps clear the brain to edit the other. So I'm planning to get back in on Trials, finish that draft, then edit the YA book, then edit Trials, etc.

Where I really see this breaking down is once things get to the production stage--I don't see myself laying out two books in a row and living to tell the tale. But that just means that, at that stage, I can choose which book goes out first--and I'm thinking that book should be Trials.

Anyway, all this of course relies on sleeping (I woke up at 4 am today and had a bloody nose. Either I'm a cokehead, or it is allergy season) and the general cooperation of life. We'll see how it goes.

Progress report

2,270 words done! The fourth part of the grand finale is finished, as is part of the fifth part. Which, if you're curious, is also the last part of the grand finale. (There's an epilogue to be written as well.)

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.