Hump Day Hunk

Cleanliness is next to godliness. ;-)

Multivious Monday

multivious ~ leading in many directions; offering many different paths

Is any body else going to be as happy to see the end of November as I am?

I was just barely keeping a cold at bay all week, which means I didn’t get much accomplished other than my blog posts and words to the NaNo. I tried a new strategy for catching up . . . staying off the internet. It worked pretty good, too.

Missed both my Scribe’s meeting and my Poetry meeting, but did take a break and went out for coffee with a friend on Wednesday (well, she had coffee; I had tea).

After a mediocre week, I had a spectacular day on Friday. I wrote over 6,000 words on my NaNo, took care of a few things around the house I’d been putting off, and started reading a new book (as a reward).

Then Friday evening the cold starting getting the better of me. And Saturday morning I woke up with the Super Mega Death Cold From Hell. Which is really kicking my ass, no matter how much cold medication I take.

What’s On For This Week:

Tuesday: The NaNo report has been moved to Thursday, and in its place I have a couple of announcements.

Wednesday: Another hump day hunk for your viewing pleasure. ;-)

Thursday: My last NaNo report of the year – What I Learned From NaNo.

Friday: Chapter 51 of Fire. So what’s Pyre up to that has E.Z. so concerned?

Random Thoughts

Monday: Part 5 of the parts of speech. This week it’s the Pronoun.

Wednesday: Chapter 29 of Shades of Errol Flynn. So Jessica’s going horseback riding. This ought to be interesting. :-)

Friday: The last excerpt from my NaNo novel. If you missed the other ones, you can catch week one’s HERE, week two’s HERE, week three’s HERE, and week four’s HERE .

Also this week:

There’s a new prompt up over at Rattles Flash Fiction. The deadline has been extended to January so you have plenty of time to come up with your thousand words for The Old Sofa. At the Water’s Edge is available through Brazen Snake Books, Amazon, , Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble. As well, you can also find In A Dark Place at Brazen Snake Books, Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble if you’re looking for some inspiration or just a good read.

Anyone want to take bets on whether I’ll reach the finish line for NaNo or not? As I’m writing this (early Sunday evening) I still have about 10,000 words to go. The spirit’s willing but the body is achy, the sinuses are plugged up, and the head is fuzzy from cold medicine. It’s anyone’s guess at this point.

I seriously doubt if Twitter or Facebook will see much of me until I get ahead of this cold. Right now even checking my email seems like a lot of effort. But one thing I’d want to do once NaNo is finished is to start catching up with some of my favourite blogs. I’ve been sadly neglecting my blogging friends this month.

I need to come up with some kind of schedule for myself – X amount of time for blog surfing, X amount of time for writing, X amount of time for editing . . . Maybe I’ll start by keeping track of what I’m doing each day and for how long. I suspect I’m wasting far more time than I realize.

My husband suggested that I have only one goal for the week – Finish Nano, order hat. Works for me! :-)

So there you have it. My week ahead. What’s in store for you?

Happy Thanksgiving to All My U.S. Friends!

Hump Day Hunk

Now that's what I call buns of steel! ;-)

NaNoWriMo Report – Day 22

Well, my mental state has improved, but I’m not sure if it’s in time to save my NaNo. I’m still plugging away though.

At one point I was a whopping 7,000 words behind. I’ve been trying to make up for lost time, but I’m still around 5,000 words in the hole. I’ve had a few really good days, but they seem to be interspersed with a few not so good days.

I made some good progress on the weekend when a character I killed off at the very beginning came back as a ghost and is now firmly entrenched in the story, but then I got distracted by some reading.

It’s funny how things change over the years. I can remember my first NaNo win . . . I got most of my writing done late at night while watching Star Trek movies. Now I’m finding the television is too distracting. I get more writing progress done in my office.

To finish on time I need to write 2,300 words a day. Can I do it? I guess we’ll find out next week.

Misericord Monday

misericord ~ ledge in church to lean against while standing; forgiveness or mercy

I gotta tell you. November has really been kicking my ass.

I’m still behind in my NaNo, but the rest of my writing and whatnot is going well. In fact, I even got my serial posts done in a timely fashion last week. I just wish I knew why I couldn’t get that to happen the rest of the year.

I was so proud of myself for getting last week’s NaNo report written ahead of time that when it came time to posting it I forgot all about the NaNocats to illustrate it! I even had them all picked out and sitting in my folder. I’ll try not to forget them this week.

People all around me are enjoying colder temperatures and in some cases even snow! Here in my little corner of the world it’s been unseasonably mild. So mild, in fact, I noticed dandelions coming up in the park I cut across on my way home from the post office last week. They were also putting up Christmas lights in the town park that day, which seemed so wrong when I’m walking along carrying my spring coat because it was too warm to wear it.

Environment Canada has been promising a cold and nasty winter, so in anticipation of that I changed to flannel sheets on the bed. AND a warmer blanket. Now I’m way too warm at night, even with the window in the bedroom open. *sigh*

We went to a family Christmas dinner on Saturday. It was for my mother-in-law’s side of the family. Originally there were nine siblings, but now it’s down to only three of them. Representatives from each of the extended families were invited and I believe the total headcount was twenty-four.

I read a couple of more books during the week, trying to use the reward system to get more words out for my NaNo. I don’t know how effective it was for upping my word count, but I did enjoy the books immensely!

What’s On For This Week:

Tuesday: the NaNoWriMo report for Day Twenty-Two.

Wednesday: Another hump day hunk for your viewing pleasure. ;-)

Friday: Chapter 50 of Fire. Will the three elementals be able to stop the lava in time for the rescue?

Random Thoughts

Monday: Part 4 of the parts of speech. This week it’s the Adverb.

Wednesday: Chapter 28 of Shades of Errol Flynn. Yes, I know some of you aren’t happy with last week’s reveal about Alexandre’s sexual orientation, but it’s necessary to the plot. Trust me.

Friday: Another excerpt from my NaNo novel. If you missed the first three, you can catch week one’s HERE, week two’s HERE, and week three’s HERE.

Also this week:

There’s a new prompt up over at Rattles Flash Fiction. You have until midnight (mountain time) on November 30 to come up with your thousand words for The Old Sofa. Don't be shy, send in your stories today!

The latest Rattles anthology, At the Water’s Edge, is available through Brazen Snake Books, Amazon, , Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble. You can also still find In A Dark Place at Brazen Snake Books, Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble.

I have a Scribe’s meeting tonight, but I suspect I’m not going to make it. We’ll see how many words I get done for NaNo today. If the writing’s not going well, then I can’t justify the time spent away from writing. On the other hand, if the writing’s going well, I might not want to break my momentum.

There’s a poetry group meeting tomorrow night that has a better chance of seeing me, but again, it depends on how the NaNo is going. At one point last week I was behind by 7,000 words and although I’ve been catching up, I still have a ways to go.

Guess since I’ve been reading books I should think about updating my Goodreads before I forget which books I read and how awesome they were. :-)

There’s lots of little stuff to be done this week too, but I’m sure you don’t want to hear about it. :-)

So there you have it. My week ahead. What’s in store for you?

Hump Day Hunk

That's right, hands where we can see them!;-)

NaNoWriMo Report – Day 15

After catching up on my words last week, even leaping ahead by a whopping 250 words, I am once again behind in my NaNo. Seriously behind. This is what happens when you don’t write for three days in a row.

I have no one to blame but myself. I let myself fall into one of those funks where I’m doubting every word I write and wondering why I’m wasting my time. I know what should go in there, I just can’t seem to get it from my head to the keyboard. I’ve become seriously un-motivated.

Friday I just wasn’t “feeling” it, and let myself be distracted by other things. I tried working on something else for a while but although I got lots done on that project, I wasn’t any more stirred to get working on my NaNo.

Saturday I still couldn’t get into it, even though my friends Jamie and Heidi helped me come up with a name for a villain. I thought maybe a reading break was in order, so I read a romantic thriller, but afterwards I was no more motivated than I was before.

Sunday I started to have self-doubts about my story. I liked the beginning and the ending well enough, it’s just the stuff in the middle was turning out darker than I’d expected. So my characters stepped up and my MMC thought maybe he should tell the girl he’s an undercover agent, and my FMC decided to let me in on her back story as to why she got into writing erotica in the first place and her own sordid past. However, the bulk of my day was taken up by the Santa Claus parade and by the time dinner was over I remembered that I had posts to write for Monday.

Yesterday I finally started to hit my stride again, but I’m going to have to really lengthen that stride if I’m going to catch up.

Today is the halfway point of NaNo and I’m about 6,000 words behind.

I’ll keep plugging away and we’ll see what happens. Completing NaNo at this point is really more a question of concentration and motivation than anything else, and right now I’m seriously lacking in both. And boy doesn’t that line give me a sense of déjà vu.

Meiosis Monday

meiosis ~ understatement of size or importance for rhetorical effect

The big news for last week was that: I haz books! I had a nice big box of books delivered to me on Friday, and they all have my name on them. :-)

Last week started out strong, but kind of petered out by the end. In fact, starting on Friday I had the most unproductive weekend I’ve had in ages. There is serious question of me finishing NaNo this year.

Made it to the Scribes meeting on Monday and to be perfectly honest, my time would have been better spent at home writing. There were only five of us there, only four of whom actually participated (the moderator/leader never participates in the prompt writing). The reading of our flash pieces took maybe fifteen minutes. The rest of the time was spent discussing current news and a particular newspaper columnist.

Thursday several poets from my poetry group were invited to one of the local highschools to give a talk on poetry. This was the second time I’ve participated in this. It was a lot of fun, the kids are really great. I read my Blitz poem, which they enjoyed, and left handouts for the teacher so they could give it a try themselves.

Despite finally finding a name for my villain (thank you Jamie and Heidi!) I have fallen woefully behind in NaNo. More about that in tomorrow’s post.

I took a break on Saturday and read Holly Lisle’s romantic suspense Night Echoes. It was the perfect book to read on a grey and miserable day/evening.

What’s On For This Week:

Tuesday: the NaNoWriMo report for Day Fifteen.

Wednesday: Another hump day hunk for your viewing pleasure. ;-)

Friday: Chapter 49 of Fire. Looks like the mountain is about to blow and they’re cut off. Now what are they going to do?

Random Thoughts

Monday: Part 3 of the parts of speech. This week it’s the Adjective.

Wednesday: Chapter 27 of Shades of Errol Flynn. So, will Jessica be able to help Ewan?

Friday: A another excerpt from my NaNo novel. If you missed the first one, you can catch it HERE and the second one HERE.

Also this week:

There’s a new prompt up over at Rattles Flash Fiction. You have until midnight (mountain time) on November 30 to come up with your thousand words for The Old Sofa. At the Water’s Edge is available through Brazen Snake Books, Amazon, , Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble. You can also still find In A Dark Place at Brazen Snake Books, Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble.

At the top of my list for this week is finishing a letter to my sister. It’s a good thing she’s patient ‘cause I’ve owed it to her for a very long time. Yes, we do e-mail each other, but she made me promise when she first got her hotmail account that e-mail would never replace snail mail.

I need to come up with another form of exercise to supplement the walking. I freely admit I have been slacking off on the walking the last couple of weeks, and not just because the weather’s been bad. I have a couple of DVDs on yoga I might try, or there’s always working with weights. And no, I’m not talking about pumping iron! I’m talking about body sculpting with hand weights.

And there you have my week ahead. What about you? What will you be up to?

Hump Day Hunk

This one is for Trinity Marlow in honour of her current erotic serial, The Paramedic. If you're not already reading it, check it out HERE. She posts a new chapter twice a week . . . usually. ;-)

NaNoWriMo Report – Day 8

I sat up on October 31, waiting as the minutes ticked away. At the stroke of midnight I was poised, ready to start writing. After much internal debate, I had settled on an idea. I knew how it began and how it ended, and a lot of what was going to happen in between. What I did not know, were the names of the characters. So, I went to my favourite baby naming site and asked my husband to pick a letter at random. After finding my hero’s name, I went through the same procedure for my heroine’s name. My villain is still known only as X.

There were several different places to start this novel, and I dithered for quite a while over where would be best. Finally, I just picked one at random, knowing I could go back and change it at any time. Actually, I’ve got a few paragraphs bracketing the beginning that could be turned into alternate beginnings.

So, needless to say, I got off to a slow start. In fact, for the first few days I was falling further and further behind. The writing was coming in fits and starts. I was spending copious amounts of time just staring blankly at my screen. By about day four I was something like 2,900 words behind.

Then a miracle happened. My characters decided to have sex. I wasn’t going to let them do this until they were safely on the spaceship, but my FMC told me bluntly that if I thought she was going to have sex for the first time on a spaceship with a man who had kidnapped her, then I had another thing coming. She wanted to have sex with him for the first time in her own bed. So I agreed, and started catching up on my word count.

Then I remembered that this was NaNo, not a serial, and I didn’t have to write everything in a linear fashion. I could jump around if I wanted. So then I wrote a rather lengthy scene that takes place near the end and again, my word count continued to climb.

And then, I added in a scene towards the end where my MMC has himself put on trial for supposed crimes against the FMC and she goes into the courtroom and proves that he’s just being a noble jack ass. And now I’m pretty much caught up on my NaNo word count.

Next week, I probably be worrying that I’ll run out of story before I run out of words. :-)

Mazy Monday

mazy ~ dizzy; confused; labyrinthine; convoluted

Despite last week being the first week of NaNo, I still managed to get all my blog posts written and up in a timely fashion.

And . . . that’s about all I did last week. My regular stuff and NaNo, which I won’t discuss here because it gets a post of its own tomorrow.

Just so you know, it goes against my nature to leave an empty space here.

I feel like I need to fill it up with something.

Um . . . we had some really nice weather last week . . .

Looks like this week will be pretty good too . . .

*sigh*

I give up.

What’s On For This Week:

Tuesday: the NaNoWriMo report for Day Eight.

Wednesday: Another hump day hunk for your viewing pleasure. ;-)

Friday: Chapter 48 of Fire. Just how imminent is the eruption? Will they have time to get to the ship? And what about Taja and Ravi?

Random Thoughts

Monday: Part 2 of the parts of speech. This week it’s the Verb.

Wednesday: Chapter 26 of Shades of Errol Flynn. Think Jessica will take Howard’s advice and stay out of trouble?

Friday: A another excerpt from my NaNo novel. If you missed the first one, you can catch it HERE. The scene includes a prime example why amateurs should never attempt cover art. I make no excuses – have a laugh on me. :-)

Also this week:

There’s a new prompt up over at Rattles Flash Fiction. You have until November 30, midnight (mountain time), to come up with your thousand words for The Old Sofa. At the Water’s Edge will be available in e-format on November 12. I’ll post the links when they become available – and in the meantime you can still find In A Dark Place at Brazen Snake Books, Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble.

You know, this whole website thing is starting to be either a minor irritation or a joke. I’m not sure which. In any case, I’m tabling the websites until after NaNo.

I have a Scribes meeting tonight, and as per usual I don’t have my 150 words written yet. Would you believe me if I told you I find that measly 150 words harder to write than a longer piece?

I may have to check my records 'cause it's been changed so many times, but I believe this thursday is the day my poetry group is meeting with a group of local high school students for a seminar. We did this last year and had lots of fun, so I expect more of the same.

And there you have it, my week ahead. What are you going to be up to this week? How’s your NaNo going?

Hump Day Hunk

Maybe he should use both hands to shade his head. What do you think? ;-)

NaNoWriMo – Day One

What do you mean you’ve never heard of the National Novel Writing Month? Go HERE and sign up. Right now!

That’s okay, I can wait.

*musical interlude*

Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes
Each one she passes
Goes – Ahhhh.

*end musical interlude*

When I worked in the call centre I used to sing this whenever I was on hold. Used to drive my co-workers crazy. ;-)

Okay, now that you’re signed up, find me and be my buddy. My NaNo name is Lady Cat. It’s a long story, but that’s the name I signed up with many years ago and if I try and change it then all my NaNo stats would disappear, so I’m stuck with it.

Yesterday I promised an explanation as to why I’m doing NaNo if I don’t expect to reach the finish line. It’s for the hat. Not just any hat, THE hat. Every year I have something to give me incentive to keep going – the official travel mug, the t-shirt, the hoodie . . . I have them all. This year there wasn’t any NaNo merchandise I wanted, but one thing I’ve always wanted is a hat. And not just any hat, an Australian leather outback hat.

So. Even though I’ve got two websites to get up and running, and even though I have lots of editing and writing to get done for myself, and even though I’ve got lots of editing/transcribing to get done for other people, I am doing NaNo this year.

It’s all about the hat.