Category Archives: Cogging for Kibble

Proposal Away!

The proposal was sent off at 4:24 PM. (And I just got a ping from my in-box — a note from my editor saying ‘yay, can’t wait to read it!’ That kind of thing goes far towards making a writer feel better.) I got it down from an extended thirteen pages to a tidy five by summarizing and collapsing detailed point-form chapter outlines. I still don’t think it properly reflects the book in my brain, but that’s all right, because the final product won’t either. And that’s okay, too, because the book the reader reads is never the book I wrote, since everyone brings something different to the book and takes something different away.

I am in full-fledged cold miserableness. Last week was the stomach-digestive system miserableness; it cleared up only to have me be felled by the cold. I am cold and achy and I can’t think straight. Meer, meer, meer.

And oh drat, it’s Wednesday, which means orchestra tonight, and I can’t hear and my fingers don’t move correctly, and thinking, what is thinking? I anticipate a not-so-enjoyable rehearsal.

Okay. Time to shut things down and go fetch the boy.

Finis!

Finished, finished, finished! The file has been sent back. I invoice for the month’s work tomorrow.

I’m slightly dazed: the summer appears to be over. I saw children in uniform waiting on street corners for buses with new backpacks and lunchbags on our way out to drop the boy off the morning. It’s Labour Day this weekend. I missed the general energy of gearing up for school somehow, did not pick up on the subtle desire for new pens and binders and schoolbags that I usually develop ’round this time of year.

I have a cold. All three of us seemed to develop it roughly simultaneously. I seem to be the worst off, with what feels like a golf ball stuck in my soft palate, blocked ears, and a rapidly degenerating throat. HRH burned through it yesterday as per usual; the boy seems to have a bit of a runny nose and that’s it.

I have half an hour or so before it’s time to go pick up the boy. I think I’ll crack open New Amsterdam.

Weekend Roundup

I’ll be glad when I’ve finished this project; it’s hurting my brain. These three files have been so similar that I can only assume there is some reason why there are tiny differences in phrasing instead of using the same script for all three applications. More pronounced differences would make more sense, but then, I am not the architect of this particular project, and as it’s being adapted the company has to work with the original and existing structure. Whatever the reason, the similarities lull me into a kind of vague trance-like state as I compare the current document against the previous two, making it hard to focus on those tiny differences when I do come across them. And there are times where those differences are as basic as a single cell of text in one file has been split into three separate cells in another file, without a word changed or out of place. But someone has to do the reduction of the translated script, and it might as well be me.

Saturday’s fund-raising BBQ was delightful in that the weather cleared and the humidity broke, we spent time with good friends, and had good food. In fact, I saw people I hadn’t seen in well over a year (some who I hadn’t seen in more than two, as well), as well as meeting at least one new person who seems very interesting and is an ex-viola player (not by choice exactly, but because she moved away from the instrument she used to borrow). I also finally paid Kino Kid for her lovely, lovely desk that I have been using for a year and a half, and completely failed to accurately communicate why I enjoy Miseri‘s writing.

Sunday morning we finally resumed our brunch date with the neighbours, after something like five weeks off due to people out of town or otherwise unavailable. Liam romped with their cats until we suggested he do something quiet, like read a book. “Otay,” he said, turning to one of the several bookcases and reaching forward, “I find a book to read.” We all leapt forward because in his enthusiasm he could very well have damaged one of many hard-to-replace books on religious study that Scarlet owns. We found him a board book instead. It made such a wonderful image, though, the two-year-old turning quite naturally to the cases of academic study on Daoism and Shinto and various Abrahamic faiths mixed in with Celtic spirituality and modern religions, to ‘find a book to read’.

He asked for oatmeal for lunch, then Sunday afternoon after his nap Liam helped HRH with the vacuuming, thus ending a two-year moratorium on vacuuming if the boy was in the house. (Up till now he used to cry when it was turned on, no matter how we tried to get him used to it. This time? “Look — Dada, it has wheels!”, and that was that, he was off and bogganing. We’ve shown him the wheels before, of course, not that they made a difference.) Then we headed out to the ADZO family ranch where we had an excellent afternoon relaxing, eating hummus, drinking wine, and consuming delicious burgers and corn and home-grown veggies.

A Lovely Way to Begin the Week

I have just discovered that all three of my books have gone into second printings at some point or another.

I knew that the Wicca book had a second printing six months after it was published. I expected the spellcraft book to reprint at some point because it sells well, but I had no idea when it might because it had the largest print run of the three. The green witch book had the smallest print run as it was a more specialized title, and to be honest I wasn’t expecting it to reprint for a while.

Well, today I got the total sales-to-date figures for all three of them, and as sales of the spellcraft and green witch books outnumber the size of the original print runs, they must perforce have reprinted. In fact, all of them seem to have sold an average of one and a half times their original print run so far. That’s within two years for the spellcraft and Wicca books, and within one year for the green witch book.

I have a backlist that sells, and sells steadily! I am doing the bookgeek dance of joy!

Made Of Awesome

Three sheets edited today, one more than my average on this project. I am mighty mighty, especially since there was a toddler careening around and plastering himself against the French door to my office, pressing his face against the glass and squealing “MaMAAAAAA!” at irregular intervals. One of the interruptions was to give me a daisy he’d pulled out of our garden, complete with huge smile on his face, before dashing back outside with his father.

So yes, I am made of awesome. I think my back isn’t talking to me, though. On the other hand, I am sinking back into the swing of this script instead of fighting against it; it’s a momentum thing. While this is good in one respect, in another I fear I am losing brain cells.

Keeping me company music-wise today were The Cowboy Junkies (Miles From Our Home), James Ehnes (Bach’s Solo Sonatas & Partitas for violin), and Jaqueline du Pre (the Dvorak cello concerto). I picked up Tori Amos’ American Doll Posse when it was released this spring and it didn’t grab me. But I had it running in the background while I worked after dinner, and I’m warming up to it. It will never approach my love of The Beekeeper or Little Earthquakes or Under the Pink, but it may end up hovering somewhere around my feeling for To Venus and Back.