Myriacanthous Monday

myriacanthous ~ having many prickles

Time for another change on the old blog. :-D

I've put the list of what happens on the blog during the week over on the side bar. It just seemed kind of silly to show the schedule each week when nothing really changes.

Last week I had the pleasure of hearing award-winning author Terry Fallis speak at a gathering that was held in the library of our local high school (because our library is temporarily closed due to flooding). He was a great speaker, which was enough of a draw, but what also interested me is that he began as a self-published author. When his first book The Best Laid Plans was turned down by 165 publishers (I believe that was the number he mentioned, I could be wrong) he self-published it. The following year it won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and shortly after was picked up by McClelland and Stewart and was just recently turned into a mini-series that aired on CBC. Talk about inspiring!

His first three books are available for free on iTunes in the form of podcasts, and he has permission from his publisher to make his newest one available in that format as well. These books are: The Best Laid Plans, The High Road, and Up and Down. He read from his novel Up and Down and it's a real hoot. :-)

It was a good start to the week, and while I can't say I was run ragged, at least I was more productive than I have been lately.

If you'd like to see how productive I was writing-wise, check out the Current Projects tab. I finally remembered to update it.

I got a few more rows done on the catghan and my goal for this week is to at least finish the main part of it so I can start on the border. As much as the sheer size of it made for tedious work, at least I don't have to sew a bazillion little squares together. :-)

I made a bit of time for reading last week, and I'm hoping to keep up the good work this week. At the very least I have a doctor's appointment and that should be good for an hour or so with my Kindle.

Started to gain a little speed on the edits for Water last week and I hope to keep gaining momentum this week. I'm still finding the journal entries a pain in the butt, but I only have about eight of them left to do. What's going to be holding me back this week, I think, is the research I want to do on caves.

For those who think they know the story, think again. I've made a LOT of changes to it and it's very different from the one that appeared on this blog. And I'm going to use that as my excuse for why the edits are taking so long. ;-)

When I came up with the foolish idea of a story for Valentine's Day, I had in my mind a longer story that could be released in e-format for down loading. But there were a few problems with that, not the least of which was the time constraint - Valentine's Day was creeping up on me a little too quickly. My original idea had a conflict that could not be resolved in the manner in which I intended, so I had to abandon the idea for further study. Idea number two was promising, but what was supposed to be a light hearted ghost romance turned into something a lot more complicated, and way too long to be finished in a week. Which brings us to idea number three, which I'm trying to keep to a flash length but it's not easy because I keep wanting to make it more complicated that it needs to be.

You may now commence taking bets on whether I'll get the story finished in time for Friday. :-D