Not only did I get a call from work last night – I’m going in this morning for a couple of hours to assist with a room turn – but I have another section of the Iditarod story up here.

Have a great day!

It started when I walked home from work this morning because it was later than I thought it would be. sigh Didn’t get home until 1am. Ate dinner, unwound, took a shower and was in bed by 2.

Of course, my body insisted on getting me up at 8am. In too much pain to stay asleep. That last hour of sleep was more of a drowse as I tried to get comfortable. Thank the gods it doesn’t get much worse than that, and doesn’t hit me so bad as often.

So, working on less sleep and a lot of good weather. It’s taken me all durned day to get my 1k, but get it I did! Woot! Working on Gwen’s POV - she’s wondering what she’s gotten herself into and whether she should have stayed in town and worked on the mayor instead of falling for Loomis’ subtle power. Gwen’s just now meeting the two little girls of the homestead and the boy. Terry’s going to be rude to them and Kevin’s going to be rude right back, thereby sealing their eternal friendship as only boys can do.

Now it’s time to veg out . . .

Loomis’ POV as they get home. Fessing up to Gwen about why she took them to her home. Lucky’s almost X-rated enjoyment of a tomato. Kevin’s post traumatic stress syndrome.

1036 words and chapter five finished.

Next chapter (tomorrow) will be Gwen’s POV as she deals with meeting the family, cleaning up, eating real food, and speculating on Loomis.

1055 words today. Finished off chapter 4 and got a healthy dollop of chapter five started. I’m actually a chapter ahead according to my outline. Chapter three ended up being only one scene instead of two and I’ve had to move the scenes on to other chapters as I get to them. Wonder how often that’s going to happen? (My chapters are minimum 2k words, and I average two scenes per.)

Three days off next week. I think I’m going to spend some time on the floorplans of the cabin. I’ve got the Loomis property scribbled out on notebook paper, and the same for the house, but it’d be nice to have something a little cleaner to work off of.

Photo in the News: Ultra-Lifelike Robot Debuts in Japan

Photo in the News: Ultra-Lifelike Robot Debuts in Japan

Look out, Data of Star Trek, here we come!

In I don’t know how long . . . Definitely interesting. We got a lot of odds and ends work done. The group in house isn’t particularly messy (although they do have a tendency towards detail – i.e. requests for the room to be 65 degrees rather than ‘can you make it cooler?’)

My normal process after work is to come home and unwind online – read email, goof off in chat, cruise the web. But that’s because I already get my writing done in the morning before the afternoon shift. That’s not an option on day shift. I need to completely retrain myself for my eventual full-time transfer to days or my writing’s going to go the way of the dodo.

With that in mind, I went to Borders after work yesterday. Had a Tazo Refresh tea in their coffee shop, and worked on chapter three of Orphan Maker. All was good. No internet to connect to (I use my Palm and I don’t have a WiFi card,) so no distractions. Came home a couple of hours later, still burning for the story and finished the chapter out after reading email and while goofing off in chat. 2308 words.

I doubt I’ll be able to keep up the pace (about 7k in 3 days so far.) Some of this stuff was already written last year. I’m simply fleshing it out and editing it now. Chapter four starts with the last bit I have on file. I might be able to get it finished today, and then I’ll be in virgin territory.

2380 words total, chapter 2 of Orphan Maker complete. (I’m back to work tomorrow, so don’t expect the high word counts to continue.) Established Gwen’s tendency to become the main squeeze of the most powerful person in her circle as a survival trait, and introduced Marissa Loomis and family.

The next two chapters have been uploaded at my website. View part five here.

Is finished at 2346 words. That’s after I cut 530 words from the first scene and started over with only the opening paragraph. I think the first attempt was stodgy and melodramatic. (That’s what I get for listening to 80’s internet radio while writing. I’ve since changed to my standard playlist, and things are going much more smoothly.)

My fingers hurt. My elbows hurt. And I’m still considering going on to the next chapter. It helps that some of this has already been written. I’m cutting and pasting into the new document, then editing what I have. That’s only going to last a day or so, because I don’t have all that much done.

First scene finished. Over 1200 words. I’m off work today, so I’m going to get started on the next scene. Perhaps I can finish the chapter today. Then it’s on to scene three.

The scene takes place in the past – five years to be exact. Typical school yard fight . . . except . . . it’s in the street outside a church. And there aren’t any adults breaking in to stop it. And one of the combatants makes obvious sexual references to what he’s going to do to the girl he’s fighting. And the kids have weapons.

I think that’ll keep the reader turning the page, won’t it?

Only got 190 words on the Slow Movin’ short yesterday. Then switched over to the beginning of Orphan Maker. Total for the day was only 583 words. Ah, well, it was a run around day anyhow. The wife and I hit the town early to run errands, get haircuts, and have a late and leisurely lunch at Waterfront Park. Rose Festival this week. There’s a midway down the center of the Park. Had some of the best weinerschnitzel and homemade spatzel from the Bavarian House. Nummy.

Today, off to work a little earlier than normal. Only got about a hundred words in. The wife is on summer break, so she’s home in the mornings. I’ll have to be firm and put on my headphones to get any writing done.

. . . set in yesterday. I vacuumed, swept and mopped, tidied the living room, played around with the computer network, cleaned up some files, changed icons on some of my documents, added a whole other section to my Cyberpedia on Shadow Plan, wrote two posts for my email RPG . . .

And still had time to put out 1197 words. Hopefully, Slow Movin #7 (Sneakers!) will be complete either today or tomorrow.

Today is the wife’s first full day off from school. No summer classes, though she plans on starting her work study program soon. We’re going to do the wild thing . . . get our hairs cut and have an early dinner at the Waterfront Park where the Rose Festival ‘Village’ has been erected.

Though not many. Just updated the pages for Tiopa Ki Lakota and Warlord Metal to include the really damned COOL covers Steph Solomon-Lopez did! Damn, these thing ROCK! Go to the menu bar on the left and check them out!

Interesting blog entry from Lazette Gifford. If you’re an aspiring writer, go read!

To quote:

“Just remember two things:

“Not everyone can work in the same way and if something doesn’t work for you, it doesn’t matter who presented it—published author or not.

“And don’t lie to yourself about what you’re doing. Don’t suddenly pretend that you are writing near perfect first drafts just because it will be less work for you. If the story is worth writing, than it is worth making certain it’s right. That will often include editing. That’s all right. Editing is part of the writer’s tool kit, and throwing it aside is not a good answer.”

Amen, sistah!

Finally sat my ass down and went over the Born of Silence outline. Ended up cutting four or five scenes and adding a total of fifteen. Those scenes alone will add another 30k to the word count, putting this puppy right up where it needs to be to entice a major publisher.

I’m trying something different this time. While I was scribbling down scenes on paper, trying to come up with a cohesive outline, I realized I had three scenes that had to go earlier . . . and I was already on the second page of my outline. Ugh. I’ve tried index cards before, but shuffling through them to see what I wanted wasn’t fun.

This time I’m trying the Post-It Note method. I’ve got an old art pad on my desk, covered in forty-eight stickies. Each is a scene from the book, put in order. I’ve numbered the bottom corner, just in case they come off the cardboard, but that’s the only permanent placement. If things change, new scenes are added, etc, I can easily move things around and still see everything. Depending on how this works, I might continue with it. We’ll see how it goes.

I think I’m going to outline Orphan Maker this way, too.