WIP Wednesday - Revise Me, Baby, One More Time!

So, I'm working on revising that novella but, sadly, I'm not working on it.  I can't seem to work up the motivation to revise.  I'm not sure what's wrong with me, but it's making me crazy.  I keep on hoping I'll magically feel motivated to do it but, thus far, Past Wendy isn't doing any favors for Future Wendy.  My husband is out of town for the week, and I was busy today.  I ran in and out of my house.  So, it's not entirely just me slacking off, but I've been reading to calm down at night, and I have to go cold turkey on reading other people's fiction and watching TV for the muse to play nice.  I have a very finicky muse.

I really need to get it done... not only is there a deadline, but there is also NaNoWriMo approaching, and I might still need to do another revision of SECRETS soon.

So, how do you magically motivate yourself to be creative?

Maybe I'll go sit in front of the fire tomorrow and turn the internet off.

High stakes, apple shampoo, grave-robbing, and a glimpse into the occult...

So, I'm still working on Promises of Light and Dark (55, 539 words right now) but I'm holding onto the hope that I may finish it in the next two weeks. It'll need to have a thorough revision before it's shelved for six months to "think about what it's done."

This isn't the first follow-up book in a series I've written, but it's the first book I've written when I hadn't intended initially for it to be a series when I wrote the first book. Writing in a series is different...

First of all there is the continuity issues. I totally forgot the name of one of my minor characters and had to cheat and look it up... then, I changed the scent of Piper's shampoo to strawberry. Luckily, I caught the shampoo thing and fixed it to apple. It's a little thing, but it's not... Gris has associated the scent with her for months.

I'm also trying to remember their dialogue quirks that I've established. For example: Gris never uses the word "though" and he uses the word "because" and "leastways." Piper uses the word "though" and drops the first of "because" and says "cause" and she sometimes slips in a "fixin' to." There are anybody vs. anyone quirks and folks vs. people to remember. Yikes... that's even before you get to their body language. With established characters with a regional dialect... it's a heap of yikes whenever I sit down to write. Their voices have to be consistent... and some of that is just going to have to be fixed in the rewrite.

Then, there is the stakes. In the first book, there was a murder mystery and the constant threat of violence hanging over their head. It's expected that there would be some escalation of what is at stake in a second book. I've escalated the emotional impact of everything because Piper and Gris are now an established couple and I've killed a slew of chickens; I'm about to do some grave-robbing; finally, we've messed around in the occult (thanks to some help from friends on Twitter.) Is it enough?

I just don't know.

Will I have to murder someone?

Maybe.

Last week I went to a book signing with my sister. Jayne Ann Krentz had a new book come out under her Amanda Quick pseudonym. My mom is a huge fan and so I grew up reading her books. For those who don't know much about her, she is a very prolific and established writer. (Her complete book list) She has several series of books set in established worlds with interconnected story lines. I simply can't imagine this. Several people there were HUGE fans and one of them had brought a little list of suggestions for her. Several had comments about her use of characters called "dust bunnies." It was interesting to watch her field questions about her "worlds" and know that writers who write series have that to look forward to. The thought of having to keep track of all that she does... makes my brain explode. Too many balls to juggle.

(BTW, my trip to Seattle did also provide the opportunity to try a Peanut Butter Bacon Burger. (Piper's Special) It was really good. I've conned several people on Twitter into trying one should Sarah sell my book.)

Anyway, so books in a series... are different. Really. And I really should be writing things down. (One of the few things relating to writing that I can't stand... it feels too much like work.)

So, my plans for this week are to continue working on Promises of Light and Dark and hopefully get some house-cleaning done. My kids have been very complicated lately so the house has suffered in a major way. They've made my brain melt. I swear, they have. This week has got to be better than the last two... right? RIGHT?

WIPed by Wednesday

This isn't about Sentinel's Run... which it should be. I finished my revision of Secrets of Skin and Stone last night after eating, breathing, sleeping it for two straight days. It's gone on to my wonderful beta Di to be beaten into submission... for submission. I should be done with that book. (Other than revisions, of course.) I should be.

I'm not.

This also isn't about insomnia... it could be about that also. Last night was day six of my insomnia stretch. It's insomnia so deep and hungry that I'm just exhausted thinking about how exhausted I am. It's whipping me.

It's not about that.

No, it's about Promises of Light and Dark.

Huh?

Say what?

*everyone looks at schedule and taps on Sentinel's Run* *Wendy breaks down into sobbing and rocking in a corner.*

Dudes, it was ridiculous. I'm rewriting the last scene in Secrets of Skin and Stone and it's not... right. I waited until the wonder spouse took the kids off to scouts and activities and read it aloud... and Gris got into my head... and took over and rewrote the whole scene. Okay, fine. Still, it's done... right? No, because then Gris's first scene in the next book stole into my head.

The next book?

*Wendy's head hits the wall.*

All I wanted was to work on Sentinel's Run. Instead I couldn't sleep last night because I had this scene in my head from the next book... the book that didn't even exist until about midnight last night. The book that shouldn't exist because, as far as we know, Secrets of Skin and Stone is a stand-alone book.

Now, I can't get Gris out of my head. Life is not fair. It truly isn't. Writing Secrets of Skin and Stone was hard... and then their accents get into my brain and wriggle down deep, and I sound like a freak until it wears off. I have people ask me if I've been sick... my drawl is that noticeable. "No... I'm just crazy."

Ugh. On the other hand, I know how Promises of Light and Dark begins... and I won't be able to sleep until I get it out of my head and typed down. (Please just let it end there... for right now.) If the rest of March and April is eaten up by something that didn't exist until last night at midnight... *bangs head*

This post should fall under the category of: So, you thought you wanted to be a writer....

*sighs* And the stumble begins....

WIP Wednesday- Secrets of Skin and Stone

I'm just working through a part in the manuscript that makes me cry every time... because I'm a total sap. Luckily my kids are in the other room.

Piper has just seen Gris in his Watcher form (he looks a little like a gargoyle) and she wants to know the truth. Piper has OCD and has always thought she was the darkest thing out there. She wants an explanation and Gris isn't about to explain what he is.

Here is a small bit of that section:

I waited for him to do something—to say something, but he just stood there, staring down at the floor, his bag in one hand, and his back to me. Finally, I realized that he was waiting for me to relent, hoping for it. Maybe he thought I’d start doubting what I saw if he was quiet long enough. “Look, now we both know something about the other that we’ll never tell anyone. You can leave, and we’ll just pretend the other doesn’t exist.”

It was only a few months, and then I’d be gone. I’d blow out of here and work really hard on forgetting Gris and regretting all our time together. Having someone in the world who knew about me made me feel vulnerable. I had ways for dealing with that, though, and Gris’s defection nullified any promises I’d made to him about anything.

“Is that what you want? Now that you know something dark about me… or think you know something dark about me?” he asked.

Of course I didn’t want that. I bathed in the darkness every day. I breathed it. Lived it. I could handle the dark.

“No, but I’m also not going to let you lie to me and act like it’s okay.” That hadn’t sounded quite so wishy-washy in my head.

He turned then with a fury in his eyes and his jaw tight. “So, you’ll be going with option B, then, where I tell you everything about me, and you want nothing to do with me because it’s dark and it’s ugly? Sometimes the lie is kinder than the truth, Piper.”

“Yeah, that’s a set of rules coming in handy when it’s you and not me.” I liked things even. I liked things fair. This wasn’t either, and it wasn’t the way I lived.

“No, it’s something that comes into play when one of us is a monster and the other isn’t.”

I swallowed. “Okay, so… if that’s the case, you may want to tell me which of us is which? Because I’ve thought I was a monster for years now.”

The fight went out of him. His shoulders dropped, and he said my name on a sigh. “You’re not a monster.”

“I don’t think you are either, Gris.”

WIPs and ABNA

I know, I'm a blogging machine. It's truly unreal. ; )

I realized I forgot to mention what I've finished and what I'm working on... or what I will be working on.

Probably most significantly... I finished Honor 7. I actually didn't finish an Honor book at all in 2010. Honor fans have been hinting for months that this is unacceptable. My sister, Jaime, finally asked me to finish Honor 7 for her birthday this last week. She asked back in October... and I said, "Surrrrre." (Thinking... in my ignorance... that it would be cake. I forgot about NANO. Oy.) Anyway, I finished it this week. It was a huge relief to have that one completed. Writing in Reeve's voice was really difficult. I haven't printed it out or really shown anyone aside from my sisters. I don't know why... maybe I'm nervous. Anyway... it's done! Yay!

Also, I submitted a zombie love story for a zombie anthology this week. Yay! That's done. It was a short story, but it seemed to be an albatross this week as I prepped it for submission while still working on Honor.

I've also finished, but haven't completed revisions of a YA mystery short story that I'll be submitting to a contest with a small press... hopefully in the next few weeks.

So, that leaves what's to come. ABNA (Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award) time is here and I've never submitted in the past, but I'm somewhat tempted to try this year. Last year, I had a lot of queries out and I was excited about tackling that. This year, I don't know what I'd submit, but I don't have as much holding me back. I might see which of my friends are doing ABNA this year to decide.

Next, there is Sentinel's Run. I don't know how much I've spoken about this in the past, but I consider it to be the best thing I've written yet. It's only at about half-way and I set it down because I had a bunch of other stuff that took priority. I kept thinking it was "next" but I really need to get back into the mindset to write in it. That was difficult with Honor 7 and will be the same with this one. The POV is so different from my own that it's not an easy switch. I'll need to eat/sleep/breathe it for a while. It's a dystopian and the language syntax is slightly different too because of that. I *wish* I'd just kept writing it and not taken a break... even if it meant going without sleeping for weeks. It's really good... but I'm afraid I won't be able to pick up the threads I dropped. Ugh... I had such a good flow going. I wish I hadn't stopped. Le sigh.

I have a few other WIPs and some folks might notice I've started a new short story anthology for the year to pour new stories into. I like the rush of finishing a piece... and I get that from short stories. Short stories get somewhat addictive in that way. I can get the idea out of my head and onto paper... and it's done... and done is a beautiful thing. Lately, if I get stuck in one of my other projects, I've just started writing a short story to keep my mind going. I don't know what I'll do with this anthology any more than I knew what I'd do with the last one. It's good practice in different writing styles and POVs and genres. Plus, as I said, there is that rush of finishing something.

Revisions... if I get stuck, I also turn to doing revisions. I need to revise all the Honor books in a major way. I've grown as a writer since I first wrote them and I've developed things in the ongoing plot too. So, revising some of those books might also be something I attempt.

So, that's that. That's what I've got planned for the upcoming month. A friend of mine mentioned a freelancing writing position that she thinks I'd be good at... and I'm thinking it might be worth a shot. The only issue is I'd need to develop a resume after being a stay-at-home for ten years and I'd rather shove shards of glass under my fingernails. I might still do it, but that does factor in.

Anyway, so there is your Wendy's writing update for those curious.

Teaser Tueser... err... Tuesday, I mean.

Well, yesterday's post was relatively crabtastic. I've been working on short stories rather than a single WIP. My short story collection keeps growing and growing and I'm not sure what I'll do with it. I'm getting lots of practice working in third person, though... so that's good.

So, here is a portion of one of my short stories I've recently finished, but still needs a revision... sometime. I wrote it on the premise of "What if you met someone every day... and they assumed you were talking in code... and you assumed they were crazy?"

The title is her code for her secret project based on the phonetic alphabet code (Alpha, Foxtrot, Whiskey, etc.) Ken assumes she is trying to sell him information on her prototype. Laptop guy has been hired to find out if she is. Jenny is just there eating yogurt and doing Sudoku.

Romeo and Juliet in Tango

They sat in the same spots in the park every day for three months now. She came down to eat her yogurt and do a page of Sudoku, and he came down at the same time to work on his laptop. Maybe he was a writer or something.

This morning her horoscope had suggested she take the leap that would not be denied… whatever that crap meant, but that wasn’t what had her thinking of talking to him. It was this stupid birthday. She’d be thirty in two weeks and it was time to stop acting like she was sixty. She could talk to him… it would just be talking.

The older Asian man—the one who was blind sat beside her… as he did every day. Wow. They were really all creatures of habit.

“How are you, Jenny Talmage?” he asked. He always used her full name as if anything less just wasn’t her name.

“I’m fine, Ken,” she said, staring at the other man—working on his laptop. Normally, she made eye contact when she spoke with someone, but Ken never looked at her—they just always sat side-by-side and talked. Besides, today… she was going to force laptop guy to make eye contact with her just by sheer will.

Who was she kidding? Maybe he hadn’t even noticed her in three months? Why would he? He looked all rough and steamy… and she looked so normal. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Her mouth had always seemed to be too full, but no one else had ever said anything. Still—nothing added up to equality with laptop guy. Plus, she was queen of the nerds. The building behind her that she worked in basically stamped her as untouchable to a guy like laptop guy. Out of her league… way out of her league.

“Jenny Talmage, how often does the hummingbird flap its wings in an hour?”

Ken asked weird things like this all the time. It was mostly science and animal questions, and sometimes she tried to get ahead of him by asking her own odd questions. It seemed impolite to not venture a guess—so she always did. She’d studied hummingbirds strangely enough for her project, but it was because they could fly backward… if you could make a thing fly backwards… well… that was a beautiful thing.

“Five hundred sixty-one thousand times,” she guessed. It was a reasonable guess.

“Really?” he asked.

Jenny shrugged even though he couldn’t see her. The laptop guy looked up at her bemused… even though he couldn’t have possibly heard her. He was on a bench forty feet away. Weird. Then, he was looking back at his laptop as if the moment had never occurred. Maybe it hadn’t.

“They beat their wings more frequently during courtship,” Jenny said.

“What does that mean?” Ken asked. He tipped his head slightly as if her comment was more ridiculous than normal. Yesterday, they’d discussed whirlpools. This really wasn’t that far from the norm. Maybe he was just old-fashioned and felt even the word “courtship” was dirty.

“That their courtships are more exhausting than humans,” Jenny said, setting her yogurt to the side and opening up her Sudoku book to a new puzzle. With Ken feeling chattery… there would be no way she’d get an actual puzzle done, so she just started making notes in her code to transcribe later in her lab’s computer. She really ought to know how often they beat their wings—it’d be useful information possibly.

“Hotel uniform,” she scribbled into one of the boxes to remind her to look up an “Hu” word when she got back up there. That would be enough to jog her memory. It’d be interesting if she’d guessed close. “561,000,” she wrote in the next box, murmuring it under her breath as she did.

There! Again! She’d seen it in her periphery. The laptop guy raised his head topped with “cinnamon toast” colored hair and his blue eyes focused on her for a second in surprise. Jenny looked behind her. No one there—it was just she and Ken—same as every day for the last three months when he’d been here and she’d been wanting to talk to him. When she looked back, he was back to that laptop. Maybe she’d imagined it. Weird.

“You’re sure? Five hundred and sixty-one thousand times?” Ken asked the oddest follow-up questions. He had a sense of humor so he had to know she was kidding with these guesses, right?

“I would never venture a guess at something as important as wing speed if I wasn’t sure,” she said.

This Geeky Writer Gets Nuts

Okay... so I don't usually do this (create geeky things,) but I'm very excited about this dystopian/post-apocalyptic YA I'm writing. It's called "The Sentinel's Run."

I keep backing up to file away more back-story to reference.

I've adjusted pictures of my two main characters. This is Coby. He's the narrator and becomes a Sentinel.

This is Mori. She is radioactive.

Coby lives in Tereslay, a small farming community. At the age of seventeen, he enters mandatory military service for five years--as do all of the males at seventeen.

He travels to the Dunn which is the main military outpost guarding what remains of North America from an army of machines that have destroyed the rest of the world and made most everywhere inhabitable.

Anything with digital components can be turned against the remaining humans. The sentinels are fighting to push forward the "Line" which is a barricade protecting the habitable land from the "Anbot"/machine army. The Anbots send the machines that they've turned against the humans to kill them as well as digital crows to spy on them. (In this picture.)

Here is what remains of North America. The rest is either inhabited by Anbots, or destroyed and impassable. The dark section is the line which they're trying to maintain.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about it. I've got a bunch more info tucked away like the ranks of the military and slang and speech patterns. It's going to be somewhere between 50K and 60K when finished... I think, and I think it'll be the first of two books, but I haven't worked that out completely.

So, now... I'll go rub my hands together in glee and contemplate the level of my craziness. BAWAHAHA!

Writerly Moments

I'm on vacation right now, so I'll be light on the internet right now.

The longer I'm writing full-time--the more I find my brain trying to capture moments in words. My niece was married on Saturday. She was beautiful. Not in the sophisticated "I spent millions" fashion-conscious way. She was perfectly happy in the moment. Instead of being jealous--I was more aware of how perfect moments can be. It was too windy. Her dress was too "cream-colored" to wear in the temple. Not all her family could be there. It was so far from perfect, but she was marrying someone who she was so deeply in love with. Imperfect moments can be perfect. I don't think pictures will capture that and probably even my words won't.

There are so many moments in our life that are about the context and the feelings. Your first kiss. Your first love. The day you graduate. The birth of a child.

In this dystopian WIP, I'm trying to grab these moments in a setting that is far from perfect. In fact, that's the definition of a dystopian. An imperfect and flawed society. I'm loving this dystopian and it's going well.

Next week, I'll be back to normal. Things are going well. I have eight fulls/partials out right now. I'm afraid to jinx things, so I don't want to say more.

My son did manage to injure me rather impressively. He jumped on my back while I was laying down. His knees may have cracked one of my ribs. I've been on ibuprofen in massive amounts. This certainly wasn't in the plans for our trip. I'm hoping enough meds will help me pretend I'm not in pain so we can do the things we planned.

Have a wonderful week everyone.

As long as it needs to be....

So, I'm suffering from restless brain syndrome. I'm working on more than one WIP at once again. This time, I've added a Young Adult Dystopian into the mix. Normally, when I start a new project, I know how long it'll be. I can take a stab at its length. This time, I haven't a clue. It'll be as long as it needs to be but I have no idea how long that is. I did realize that I need to back up and add more into the beginning. I'm going to try to aim for 50K, but I might overshoot that once I flesh out my main character a bit more.

It's a good thing I finish WIPs every so often. I've got a lot at 20K that are sitting being thought about right now. I should make it a goal to finish all these manuscripts this summer. I just hope no more stories intrude. My body gave out before my mind last night. Ugh. My mind was still racing even as I was trying to get to sleep.

Names don't matter--unless you have a really stupid one--and then they do.

Or... porn name. C'mon. If you had any of the Bond girl names, would they hire you at Disneyland to hang out with a name tag that said "Pussy Galore"? No. No, they wouldn't.

Wait... what was I talking about? OH! Names... or titles or both.

I changed the name of all three of the manuscripts I'm querying during the last two weeks. The funny thing is that the one I haven't been mentioning online by its real name... is now called "Curse Me a Story." Scorched and Re:Straint both now have names that I won't be mentioning online anymore. Why? They're really good names. When I was on Twitter this last week, an editor was bemoaning the fact that she didn't have any Angels/Demons on her docket right then because she'd just thought of the perfect title. She wasn't going to share it of course... because it was that good.

That's the way it goes with this whole business, you know?

I was in a chat room at the beginning of the year and when I mentioned my name... one of the agents commented, "That's a really good name."

Yeah it is... which is weird, of course... because it really is my name, but still....

So, the other reason I'm thinking of it is because I just finished a Maeve Binchy book. It was awesome. It was basically a bunch of short stories intertwined around a town. It was well-written, funny, not stodgy... the voices were entertaining... I couldn't put it down. On the other hand, if it hadn't been a book club read, I never would have read it. NO WAY. C'mon... the author's name was Maeve Binchy. It practically screams "Literary Read for Old People" to me. I was actually prepared to yawn through this book. I didn't. I loved it.

So... what's in a name? A reputation... an assumption... a bestseller?

I've been working on my vampire book... not Honor... the one I'm continuing from the short story I wrote. (Yes, JT convinced me to do it.) I'm never going to publish this book under my name. No way. It's not trashy but it turns out that Darcy is the way she is because she was raped when she was converted into being a vampire. Violence and sex have built some funny quirks in her mind... and not "funny" as in "ha ha"... well, not just funny in that way anyway. I want to finish this story but there is no way I'd want my teenage beta reader to dive into it thinking it's like my other books. It's got some mature subjects in it in my opinion.

So, a name is a name is a name is a lot of stress and pressure and you thought picking the right name for your baby is hard. I still haven't gotten much feedback on this new round of queries. What if the agents take a look at "Curse Me A Story" and say, "You're ugly and your mama dresses you funny!"

What... it could happen....

Whipped and WIP Wednesday

So, the husband is on his way to New York after a few days in New Orleans. The kids have been... interesting to deal with. Okay, by interesting... I mean exhausting. I'm so tired. I got nailed with a migraine that I've just now tamed... probably temporarily. On the other hand, if I can survive, my Disneyland trip is this weekend.

As far as writing goes, I've been working on a new WIP and trying to decide whether to continue to devote time to querying Scorched or what? I keep thinking maybe I should take a break and work on the new WIP while I'm under stress with the kids, but I have fulls and partials out. It feels weird not to keep replacing any queries that come back just so I have a certain number out. I don't know.

So, anyway, my new WIP is freaking awesome on a stick. The premise is fantastic... we'll see how the execution goes. Thus far, it's going much slower, but I'm writing in third deep and I think that's not so odd for it to go slow in third deep. I'm a week and a half into the project and just crossed 10K. I'm getting the feeling this will finish out at 50-60K. It's a YA Literary Fiction with Magical Realism. Just in case I stick up a ticker on it, the name is "My Other Life" at this point.

Well, that's about it. This is rambling, but my life is rambling, so it was bound to be.

Sometimes--writing is hard and ugly and stinky

I know... it's not really a brilliant title, but it's true.

Slogging through this writing game isn't always fun--especially not if you want to get published. There are days that writing and your home life can't co-exist peacefully. I'm there. T is not doing well. Every step forward leads to twenty steps backward. I don't know what to do.

Add to that, this new WIP is not a cheery, light-hearted one. I think it's good, but it's hard. The words don't jump into my head. They seem to be stumbling around in there keeping me awake.

My husband just told me that he'll probably be gone all next week on business trips.

I've got a ton on my plate. I feel burnt out. If I'm not around for a bit... that's why. I want to write, so I can escape my reality, but writing might not be enough to keep me sane.

T is just so angry right now. Everything sets him off.

Anyway... so, I guess the gist of this post is: I've started a new WIP. It's cool, but hard. T is a wreck. I'll be a wreck next week. Heaven help me survive. Le sigh.

Oh... next weekend is my annual "just the girls" Disneyland trip. No kids for four days. Four days. Four days. Such pretty words.

Springing back in

It's spring break for the kids. I've been trying to do therapy every day with T, so we've been busy. I also started another WIP a week and a half ago while cutting back on my OCD meds that stop certain obsessive activities. Since obsessive writing was one of the things that it was stopping, my brain is obsessed with this current WIP. I'm trying to find the right amount of obsession to go with keeping up with T and coping with the stress that comes with kids with needs. I like the rush of obsessive writing. It's frustrating to deal with aspects of my personality that are entwined with OCD to the point that medicating them makes me feel wrong.

Anyway, so... I'm trying to figure out a balance in everything, but that balance may need to wait until after I finish this WIP and the kids are back in school again.

Good Wednesday to everyone!!!

WIP that Muse--The Challenge Accepted

So, Juliette and I were chatting on Twitter and a discussion about Metallica quickly shifted into a cage match between whose muse could beat up whose muse.

Say what?

I'm pretty sure it was mostly me. Juliette is somewhat normal and does normal things for a living. Anyway, so we're both posting excerpts from our muses' most recent efforts (ie our Work In Progress.) I started a really strange story last Friday.

It's a YA, but might end up being a horror. It's so hard to tell really. (Yeah, be afraid... be very afraid.) It deals with a guy named Gris who is a Draconian Watcher and turns into what resembles a gargoyle in order to control the darkness and destroy these wraith things called Shades. (The picture above is one I drew as a reference today. The kids say it looks nothing like a gargoyle.) A girl in the town is being bedeviled by these Shades and he tries to figure out why. (Her name is Piper, and she has OCD and bad things happen to her... and she is worried she is doing them while sleep-walking.) So, this WIP is at 25K and it's a first person with alternating POV from Gris and Piper.

Per the challenge, we're supposed to post 500 words and see whose muse is beefier and ready to rumble in this cage match.

So, two muse enter... one muse leaves. Here ya go, Juliette, hit me with your best shot.

This is "Shades of Obsession" and Gris is talking to his cousin Danny after visiting Piper's room that night and cleaning it of Shades. He is talking about what it's like being a Watcher.

“Great Uncle Critch said it was like being a God,” Danny said. He said it defensively. Like I should give him something to be jealous of. He wanted to be jealous.

“Have you ever seen a Shade?” I asked. No, he hadn’t. I knew that, but I needed to make a point.

“No.” He shrugged and sneered slightly. “They look like a ghost, right?”

“My dad said they used to call them bog men. They glow green and have no lower bodies unless they’re poulter-geisting it. Their eyes are black, so black that it seems beyond anything you’ve ever seen. They’ll climb on top of you and your bones ache with the cold of their hollow souls. They open their blood red mouths and inhale your memories. That’s why they hang around old people so much. They don’t need them. They just want something that you have.”

“But you get rid of them,” he said. His eyes looked glazed and intense. He was getting the full explanation. Most of the other Watchers didn’t share this much with non-Watchers.

I held up my hand and concentrated on my fingers. The sharp, black, two-inch talons slid out. It was hard to prevent the rest of the transform, but his mom would have my head if she heard of even this much. “If I can’t convince them to leave, I reach into their chests and yank out their hearts.”

I heard him swallow, a loud gulp in the darkness I controlled. He probably didn’t know about that part. It felt heavy and woolen around me and I could twist it around any lights and wink them out. I could hide in it. I could push it against Shades so they left until I was ready to deal with them.

There were so many in this town—too many for just me, but I hated to drag Dad down here. I had some pride, after all. The idea popped into my head just then. Danny wanted to feel the weight of being a Draconian Watcher. Alrighty then, Danny Boy.

“So, Uncle Critch may have felt like a God but he was dealing with the damned devil every day… for the rest of his life.” I enunciated each word. When I saw the shiver run through him that had nothing to do with the cold, I added, “There are so many Shades that I’ll probably need your help, Danny. Can I count on you to help me?”

It’d be like having a side-kick or a minion. I’d always wanted a minion.

“Yeah, sure.” He nodded. “Are we going to kill people too? Great Uncle Critch said….”

“NO!” Geez, what kind of crap had Critch been spreading? Probably came out after one of those Thanksgiving dinners when someone hadn’t switched Crazy Uncle Critch to water half-way through. “We don’t kill people!” I shook my hand until the talons went away.

“Never?”

Okay, my minion was a bit twisted if he was disappointed we wouldn’t be killing people.

“I’d be okay with that,” he said.

Holy geez… maybe I was really glad that the birthright had fallen to me.

“Uncle Critch said it wasn’t something you bragged about but sometimes it was just something you had to do. It was the only way. If a person got swarmed by them and they ate their brains.” Danny made a sucking sound while gesturing away from his ear with his hand.

Uncle Critch had killed people that Shades had driven mad?

“I figure that Piper is already there, so if we need to kill her….”

“Holy hell!” I shouted, possibly louder than necessary. “We’re not killing Piper.”

Danny grimaced and scowled. “You’re sure? Your dad probably would… you know, to save her,” he muttered.

I slid a hand across my eyes, blocking Danny and his disappointed face from my view. I needed a moment. “My dad wouldn’t, because it wouldn’t be saving her. It’d be killing her.”

“Well, whatever,” he said.

We’d need to revisit this topic.

Work in Progress Wednesday

I have so much to do today, but my asthma is already kicking my tail. This does not bode well. So, I'm still trying to decide on what to work on now. I'm also still trying to decide what to query and so on. Gah... clearly not a good day to be making useful decisions.

I have decided, however, that I'm going to send in Honor Among Thieves to DAW. Magic 8 ball doesn't think it's a good idea, but you really can't trust them not to be biased. I had it sent out on query, but I think I can assume I got their six weeks "no reply-not interested." It's really difficult for me not to rant about this subject. Give me a form rejection over no reply. Anyway, life moves on. So, I really need to push through Honor... again... and print it out. I might beg some query/cover page help on that this week.

Other than that... B and T are at school today. T had a rough start this morning. (Going back after a holiday is always tough.)

I was busy with a Twitter project this morning and was late to Yoga... by a lot. Then, one of them asked if I had a job in the morning and that's why I was late. Doh! (Of all the things to fess up to... yeah... awkward. Nothing like admitting to a room that you're going public with an imaginary friend.)

So, this morning, I have dishes to do. I should clean. More laundry. Blah blah blah and so on. Hopefully, my lungs start working. Happy Wednesday. For those of you that don't celebrate Wednesday... Happy pre-Thursday.

Alrighty then....

So, I'm feeling burnt out today. I've been working on revisions and contests and queries.... Looking around my house, I really need to unplug and plug in my vacuum--after I manage to find the floors. Unfortunately, I just want to go back to writing Without Honor. I went to reread and catch up in the story from where I left off--and I can't remember where I was going with some of it. I was throwing out bits and pieces of information--and some of them I knew where I was leading--and, okay, some of them I didn't. Still, when the story dropped off, I was left thinking, "Huh... wha? Where was I going with that? There must be more. This was starting to get good!!!" Grr. Anyway, I've had this problem before when I pick up other projects or do major revisions in the middle of working on a WIP. It'll work out, but it's frustrating right now.

Also, I'm noticing that the steaminess factor in this Honor book is amped up to a ten. I think I mentioned this when I was working on it, but I can't remember. Anyway, uhh... whoa. Reeve needs a cold shower. Jaime sent me an email with a "revised" make-out scene that I'll have to check out.

Man, I'm tired. So many days of dealing with all of this writing stuff made sleep impossible last night. The kids were soooooo late to school. It was so bad that it was funny. I slept through all the alarms and woke up to T babbling on and on about something to do with a website. The fact that it was actually light outside was my first clue that we were seriously late.

B is having a rough time. Her sensory system and needs aren't as obvious as T's, so I'm not sure what is wrong. She had a bit of soggy, crying melt-down in Dairy Queen last night. The husband looked to be in abject misery as he had a headache after a long day at work. Poor "the husband."

So, cleaning, laundry, dishes, and lots of caffeine are on the docket for today. Le sigh. I know that polygamy is a touchy subject when combined with Mormonism and, normally, I wouldn't bring it up or try to explain it but, come on, aren't there just days where you wish there was another wife that actually liked to clean and cook? I'm just saying.... (Okay, so I still couldn't handle polygamy but there are aspects that don't sound so bad. Sharing the geeky husband? Sooooo not going to happen.)

Okay, there is today's half-grassed post. (Did you notice how I snuck in something that was nearly a profanity? Clever, eh? I'm going to use it for the rest of the day to see if it takes off.)

Have a good Tuesday, my lovelies! Mwah! Mwah!