One star is still a BIG FAT SHINY STAR

I got my first one-star rating on Goodreads. I guess that means I'm arrived! I wish the person had done a review so I'd know what they didn't like about the book, but at this stage of my career any rating--even a one-star--is good.

I hope everyone out there had a good Thanksgiving, or a good weekend if you're not in the U.S. My little vacation is almost over and this week will be crappy, since I'm punished for having a holiday weekend by having to work Monday-Saturday this week. No Thursday off.

My NaNo book is still hovering around 15,000 words, about half-done. I'd hoped to write a few chapters during my time off, but of course that didn't happen. Sometimes I think holidays are more stressful than not actually having the time off at all. On the other hand, I don't give one tiny damn that I'm not going to cross the NaNo finish line this year, which just tells me I shouldn't have bothered with it this year.

Hey, there's a book by me available...

I can't believe I forgot.

Seriously, I forgot I had a book releasing today. I forgot about it entirely, in fact. It's Blood and Ashes, original working title Blood and Taxes (which I preferred until suddenly I realized just how much better the new title was), sequel to The Taste of Magic.

I feel I've done a disservice to Etopia Press, who released both books. Mom was still in the hospital when The Taste of Magic came out, so I wasn't able to do anything to promote the book. Then I posted a while after its release and complained that I'd tried to reread the book, and I no longer liked it. Way to talk up the book! Then, and this is simply inexcusable, I totally forgot about the release of the sequel--a book I've always loved and which I think is much better written than the original (which I also always kind of liked, although not as much as Blood and Ashes).

So I was going to go all link-happy in this post to encourage people to buy the book, or both of them, but when I went over to Etopia's site, they're doing some kind of an upgrade and they don't have anything about my new book posted at all. So here's a link to Amazon, where you can buy the Kindle edition of Blood and Ashes for $5.99. Rah rah rah!

19 books behind

At the beginning of 2011 I set myself a goal on Goodreads of reading 50 books in the year. I figured I could do that, and I certainly did--in fact, I was so close to reaching my goal this spring that I upped it to 100 books.

Then Mom had her stroke and I stayed with her in the hospital for an entire month, and I was incapable of reading for about three weeks. I couldn't face fictional angst when real-life angst was so painful at the time. And even after I started reading again, for at least another month I wasn't reading at my usual pace.

Then we moved to our new house, Mom and I, and I sold a bunch of books at our local used bookstore. I need the shelf space. And since I like my Goodreads shelves to reflect exactly what's on my real shelves, I deleted the books I sold from Goodreads. Which took them off my list of "read" books, which dropped my count for the year.

Since then, despite gearing back up to my normal reading rate, I've been consistently 19 or 20 books behind my goal. And there are mere weeks left in the year. And I don't count books I don't keep. So I still need to read 30-odd books that I like enough to keep on my shelves by the end of the year.

Why do I do these things to myself? Oh yeah, and I'm 15,000 words behind on my NaNoWriMo book.

Undead shark for the win!

I almost forgot to mention that my story "Red Teeth, Red Sails" has been accepted by Big Pulp! It'll appear in the March 2013 print issue. 2013! Dang!

Since I've been complaining about it so much, I'll give everyone an update on my Apex submission. I sent a note this week asking if I'd missed their response, and got back a note that I should have heard, but maybe my story had fallen through the cracks during a problem they'd had with their email, and did I want them to pass it along up to the new editor? *heavy sigh* No. No, I guess not. So I waited over a year for nothing.

And still nothing from Angry Robot. There's a lot of waiting in this game, isn't there? Sort of like baseball.

Downtime

I didn't realize how little writing time I actually have these days until I started NaNo last week. I'm still just over 4,000 words, despite a complete outline and a pleasant interest in the project. I manage about 500-1,000 words a night, which means I'm desperately behind. This may be the first year I don't cross the finish line, although if I actually finish writing The Cabin on Wildwood Hill (young MG, estimated total words 25-30k), I'll consider myself a winner.

Of course, I did have some free time yesterday afternoon. It was wonderful. I curled up in the living room with Mom and watched a big chunk of Project Runway season 4 on DVD. She loves that show and I ought to hate it...but I found myself sucked in and really enjoyed watching it. I had my laptop open, but I only wrote a few hundred words.

But this morning when I left for work, Mom said, "I wish you could stay home with me today. We had so much fun together yesterday." So the down time was worth it.

Short on sleep, short on words

It's Day Two of NaNo and I've written, um, 659 words. That includes the title and 'Chapter One.' But I work ten hours on Tuesdays and I'm still short on sleep, so I didn't have time to write last night. Tonight will hopefully be different!

Still no word from Angry Robot. Still no word from Apex. On Sunday, it'll have been my one-year anniversary of that story's shortlisting at Apex. I plan to write and ask if I maybe missed their response. A year+ on a 2,400 word story is just ridiculous.

State employees got a one-time bonus this month, so I have a little extra money. I think I'm going to buy a block of ISBNs and go ahead with some self-publishing. Everyone else is doing it, I feel left out! My goal is to make back the money I spend on the ISBNs.