A new home

As the enthusiasm of the New Year has worn off, I've stopped trying to get all my goals done NOW and am focusing at the moment on two editing projects. My new Acer is helping me out there, bringing it to work to use at lunchtime to get an hour of work done is proving very useful - especially if I feel like I'm starting to flag by 21:30 in the evening! This way I don't worry about having an early night sometimes.

One of the projects should be done (or rather the first stage of it) by the end of this month, and it will then be on the back burner while I work on the other in February. So I'm whittling things down!

I've been looking into the self publishing project some more, thinking about covers and even come up with a couple of designs. I did go to art school many moons ago, so I have got some artistic talent. The trick is actually turning them into covers. I don't have any fancy art software. They're just quite simple designs, but still, they have to look slick. I'm thinking on about it.

I've also been brainstorming about a couple of ideas for shorter pieces, novellas I suppose, around 20k long maybe. Unless of course they rage out of control into novels. But I do want to give shorter pieces a go. All part of diversifying.

And I've been thinking about my blog, and how I'm going to go forward with that. I need to widen the range of subjects, since the world needs another writing blog from a nobody like it needs another hole in the ozone layer. So expect all kinds of stroppy opinion pieces, and various other stuff from me this year. Also, if I can get them sorted, guest posts. I've already drafted this weekend's post. It's called "That's not romantic!" But it's not about romance novels. Well, unless the thing I'm talking about happens in one. Hmm... I guess I could write something with that scenario... plot bunny attack!

Had some snow a couple of days ago, and we're now stuck with it thanks to freezing temperatures until the weekend. Aargh! Trying to walk anywhere is a nightmare. And on Friday I'm heading into the wilds - Northumberland - for our monthly RNA lunch. Hope I can get there okay!

So I made a hash of setting my alarm and woke up an hour after it normally goes off this morning. But strangely that didn't end up with a great big panic. I had the minimum time needed to get bathed, made up and dressed and out of the house to get to work on time. No time to have any breakfast or potter about checking emails etc, but I could check emails on my phone, got a coffee from Starbucks on the way in and I got a nice breakfast in the works canteen. So I actually feel ahead of the game in that I had an extra hour in bed with no consequences. :D And I don't have any dishes to wash from breakfast. Result!

So how am I doing on the editing franzy I posted about-eep-last weekend! Very well actually. I'm on track with everything. This weekend was a bit crazy as over three days I had to write three blog posts - two for the We Carry the Torch blog and one for my own site: Me, m/m romance and the Bechdel Test. Check out (well all of them of course!) today's entry on the Torch blog for a sneak preview exceprt from the story I have in the Lashings of Sauce anthology, coming out in July.



Just when I didn't need a new thing to obsess over, a friend gets me into an old show called 21 Jump Street. It's from the late 80s, and it's most famous for being the show that made Johnny Depp a star (much to his annoyance, obviously. Never were good looks, talent and success such a burden to a man as they are to Johnny Depp. ;D)

( More wittering and eye candy! )

So, I'm working on editing two novels just now. I edit usually by printing that beast out and marking up the changes (in this case I'm using a purple pen, not a red one. Red is horrible.) to a chapter and then go to the document and apply the edits, make a few more tweaks, then move on to the next chapter. And this is exactly what I'm doing with Ganymede Tilt. Markup, apply, move on.

BUT - what about The Company Man? Since that's not the priority, I'm marking up a chapter when I can, then putting it in the folder with the rest. Once I'm done with Ganymede Tilt I'll start applying all those marked up edits. But it occurred to me the other day - what about backing up that work? It's okay for GT, I apply the edits to the document, then the document is backed up, so great. If I somehow lost all the marked up paper, it's no big deal. Once the edits are applied it doesn't matter too much what happens to the marked up printout.

But since TCM markup isn't being applied right away, what then? I can't carry that big-ass lever arch file everywhere I go to keep it safe! If I lost that paper copy, the work is gone, I have to start from scratch.

So...scanning! :D Yes, that's how backup obsessed I am. I am scanning the marked up paages into PDFs, which are then backed up into the cloud. So, worst comes to worst, I can pull 'em down and print 'em off. Or work from them onscreen, whatever.

I think I just have that weird kind of mind, that will look at a process and say "here's where it could go wrong. (They love me at work, as you can imagine.) I suppose it's a writer's kind of mind. We look at something buzzing along happily and imagine how it could go horribly wrong and what the consequences would be.

I think I heard something on TV once that the Pentagon, or some such body, got in a group of Hollywood screen writers to come up with ideas for potential security threats, because they didn't have the imagination themselves to think up the kind of terrorist attacks that could occur, and they therefore needed to have contingency plans for. Apparently, it takes either a religous fanatic terrorist or a writer to come up with ideas like flying planes into buildings.

Anyway, I'm back at work after the long, long weekend of Jubilee festivities (which I took pretty much ZERO part in.) And I don't know why I bothered. I'm taking tomorrow off now, because the blooy Metro is going on strike and I really don't fancy the awful bus service, especially as it's going to be raining heavily tomorrow. Oh, yay, thanks for that. I should have just taken these three days off and got some writing done.

Did get a good bit of editing and brainstorming done over the weekend, which is good. And a load of busywork on my website, figuring out how to make it less bloggy looking. Which I have done - with some obscure Wordpress settings. It still needs work, but I was about ready to fly a plane into WordPress's building, with how much it was annoying me, so I will go back for more later.

So, I'm working on editing two novels just now. I edit usually by printing that beast out and marking up the changes (in this case I'm using a purple pen, not a red one. Red is horrible.) to a chapter and then go to the document and apply the edits, make a few more tweaks, then move on to the next chapter. And this is exactly what I'm doing with Ganymede Tilt. Markup, apply, move on.

BUT - what about The Company Man? Since that's not the priority, I'm marking up a chapter when I can, then putting it in the folder with the rest. Once I'm done with Ganymede Tilt I'll start applying all those marked up edits. But it occurred to me the other day - what about backing up that work? It's okay for GT, I apply the edits to the document, then the document is backed up, so great. If I somehow lost all the marked up paper, it's no big deal. Once the edits are applied it doesn't matter too much what happens to the marked up printout.

But since TCM markup isn't being applied right away, what then? I can't carry that big-ass lever arch file everywhere I go to keep it safe! If I lost that paper copy, the work is gone, I have to start from scratch.

So...scanning! :D Yes, that's how backup obsessed I am. I am scanning the marked up paages into PDFs, which are then backed up into the cloud. So, worst comes to worst, I can pull 'em down and print 'em off. Or work from them onscreen, whatever.

I think I just have that weird kind of mind, that will look at a process and say "here's where it could go wrong. (They love me at work, as you can imagine.) I suppose it's a writer's kind of mind. We look at something buzzing along happily and imagine how it could go horribly wrong and what the consequences would be.

I think I heard something on TV once that the Pentagon, or some such body, got in a group of Hollywood screen writers to come up with ideas for potential security threats, because they didn't have the imagination themselves to think up the kind of terrorist attacks that could occur, and they therefore needed to have contingency plans for. Apparently, it takes either a religous fanatic terrorist or a writer to come up with ideas like flying planes into buildings.

Anyway, I'm back at work after the long, long weekend of Jubilee festivities (which I took pretty much ZERO part in.) And I don't know why I bothered. I'm taking tomorrow off now, because the blooy Metro is going on strike and I really don't fancy the awful bus service, especially as it's going to be raining heavily tomorrow. Oh, yay, thanks for that. I should have just taken these three days off and got some writing done.

Did get a good bit of editing and brainstorming done over the weekend, which is good. And a load of busywork on my website, figuring out how to make it less bloggy looking. Which I have done - with some obscure Wordpress settings. It still needs work, but I was about ready to fly a plane into WordPress's building, with how much it was annoying me, so I will go back for more later.

Last weekend should have been the late spring bank holiday in Britain, but they moved it to this weekend and added an extra one, all for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. Okay, extra day off work, yay! So far so good. BUT! Last weekend that should have been the holiday weekend was abso-f'ing-lutely gorgeous weather. There was a high of 29 celcius. This weekend, the highest we can expect is 15. And it's going to be at least grey, if not raining, all weekend. AARGH! For once, FOR ONCE, we'd have had a gorgeous, sunny bank holiday weekend, the thing all British people dream about and that so rarely happens. What usually happens is at best we get some watery sun and a cold breeze and sit on the beach anyway, pretending we like it.

I shall carry this resentment for years to come - we had a sunny bank holiday stolen from us. I won't forget.

/bank holiday rant :D

Started June off nicely with the editing. Chapter 1 of Ganymede Tilt edited, and chapter 1 of The Company Man marked up. And blogging! Check out my monthly links post for some good posts, and for a link to some especially fabulous pictures - thanks to Josephine Myles.

June know what I’ve got for you? Links!

I felt so chirpy on Friday I even bought a bunch of flowers to cheer the place up for the weekend. Flowers pretty! (That's the extent of my horticultural knowledge.) Maybe I've got a touch of the Jubilee spirit after all.

I'm ready to have a total editing fest in June. I've completed all the new scenes and rough rewriting for Ganymede Tilt. Now to edit it chapter by chapter. There are 13 chapters, but they're a bit longer than my usual ones. Just seems to work better for this story. The word count is currently just over 50k. Will it shrink or grow by the end? We'll see!

I'm also going to start marking up The Company Man, to make a start. But I'm focusing on Ganymede Tilt, that will be a sort of "when I have time" one. I bought nice now files for the two manuscripts today. Part of a ritual now! GT had a yellow file and TCM has a green one. It had to be green, because somehow, that story is green. I don't know exactly what that means, but that's the colour the story makes me think of! I'm weird.

I'm also going to do a daily 15 minutes (or more) brainstorm on the foward planning for the Indiaman series, so I can eventually get an outline done for the next book after The Company Man and a more loose plan for the books after that.

Busy, busy busy! With the four day weekend coming up, I can make a cracking start on all this.