Merry Christmas Eve Eve

I guess I should update. It's not like I haven't been around, I just haven't had anything to say. Mom is not doing well. She's on hospice now, which is end-of-life in-home care. Yesterday a friend of hers visited and told me to call if I ever needed someone to sit with Mom while I napped or ran errands or whatever. She said she could read while Mom slept. I didn't say so, but reading while Mom sleeps, or just sitting with her and watching a stupid TV show, is precious time for me. Those are the good times. The times when I wish I could call someone in to take over are ones that I would never delegate to anyone else: like half an hour ago when I wished Mom goodnight and turned out her lamp, and immediately heard her start vomiting up her evening meds. I had to jump into crisis mode--crisis mode is a daily occurrence now, which is why I'm always exhausted--and get her cleaned up, the bed stripped and remade with clean linens, her back in bed, and now I have two loads of laundry to do.

So. Well, maybe I shouldn't have posted tonight after all.

I hope everyone out there has a peaceful and non-vomit-filled holiday season.

Cover time!

Oh, and after hitting "publish" on that long, rambling post a few minutes ago, I just remembered what I was actually going to post about. I have a cover for "Goldie," my steampunks Goldielocks novella being published in January by Musa. Isn't it beautiful?

The trouble with ebooks is that it's not practical to hold giveaway contests. It's not like a print book where you have a copy you can pick up and sign and put in an envelope and send to the winner. But maybe I can think of something else to give away when "Goldie" is released. Any suggestions?

Read like the wind

Goodreads is giving people badges for their pages if they meet their reading goals. That's it, I have to spend the next few weeks doing nothing but reading. Fortunately, that's precisely what I was wanting to do anyway. And I only have 21 books left to meet my goal!

Mom's started back on her chemotherapy this week, and her new schedule is miserable (although at least it's not giving me migraines the way it is poor Mom). Before, she went in once every three weeks for a session that lasted about six hours. It was a long, wretched day but I could spend most of it reading or writing while Mom napped or listened to her MP3 player. Now, though, she's been switched to a one-hour session every day for a week (M-F) and then two weeks off. That means that I have to drive Mom to her session in Knoxville in the morning, drive her home and get her settled, drive to work late (I'm using three hours of sick leave every day this week, more than I have, so I'll be into leave without pay again by the end of the month), and drive home. I'm putting over 100 miles on my car every day. And there's not enough time for me to read more than a few pages per her chemo session, and all my free time is spent in the car.

So if I don't get my Goodreads badge, blame Mom's oncologist. I plan to.

I've been reading a lot of mysteries lately, especially an awesome police procedural series I discovered a few months ago by Barry Maitland. They're the kind of books I was hoping to find earlier this year. Unfortunately for my book count, they're long and densely written. Maybe I'll make up my Goodreads numbers by reading a lot of picture books. That counts, right?

Read and finish

It's been a grim and exhausting week, and a few nights ago I opened Word and clicked on my Bloodhound file. I wanted to read something dark and bleak, yet full of violence with a noble purpose, and at the same time I needed it to be something I'd already read so I wouldn't have any nasty surprises. So obviously I chose my own book.

I'm giving it a careful reread with some revisions on the way. When I get to the unfinished ending, I'll just finish it. I know what I want to do with it, and I want to finish it before the end of the year.

The end of the year. How did 2011 flit by so quickly?

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.