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Typing With Stuffed Paws: Snow Day Edition

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What up. Sebastian Thunderpaws Hart-Bowling coming at you. There is snow on the ground. A lot of it. Writer Chick loves snow. Like really, really loves snow. This is not dampened by the cold she has had all week. Dude isn’t feeling that hot at the moment, but Writer Chick managed to get a load of laundry done. I, of course, am in favor of fresh laundry, as it is warm, and ideal for napping. Those of us who are of the stuffed persuasion can internalize the heat and stay toasty for hours.

As usual, Writer Chick did the blabbity-blab on Buried Under Romance, on Saturday. This time, she talks about saving a good book for a rainy — or snowy — day. Little did she know how appropriate that would be. If you want to read more, it’s here, and this is the picture if you need to find it that way, or appreciate her book and mug photography skills.

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Speaking of reading, which is something Writer Chick is very wont to do, we move now to her Goodreads challenge. Writer Chick has been doing a lot of napping, this cold week, but she did make a respectable library haul, and historical romance actually dominates. That’s for another post, though. Right now, she is ninety-one percent of the way to her goal of ninety books, with eighty-two books read. Skye would be impressed. Me, I just report the numbers. Then I nap.

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weekend reading and then some

Besides being a sick week, in which Dude proved himself a pretty decent nurse/personal chef, Writer Chick had her first week as a contracted co-writer. This involved a lot of thinking really hard about getting up and going to the computer. Sometimes, she actually made it. These are usually the times when she managed to get the really strong tea. Anyway, the times she did make it to the computer, she talked with Other Writer Chick, and they talked about Stuff.

Some of that Stuff included a scene that the publisher humans would like them to put into the book, where it was only implied before. All I am going to say is that the action of that scene would require turning around any stuffed animals in the room with the human characters. I have not read the scene in question, but it is my understanding that there are not any. Yet another instance of stuffed erasure in contemporary fiction. W are real, we are cuddly, and we will not be ignored. We’d make more noise about it, but, well naps. Some of us have squeakers, though. That floppy zebra in the other room? Squeaks like a new pair of shoes on freshly cleaned linoleum.

Another thing Writer Chick and Other Writer Chick had to talk about, was who they are, as a writer. Singular. Writer Chick writes historical romance on her own, and Other Writer Chick writes contemporary with a strong suspense element, and humor, on her own, and when the two different writers collide, it makes something entirely new. That comes with a lot of new questions.

One of those questions is about their combined author brand. Both of them had put a lot of thought into their individual author brands, condensed into catchy taglines, that let readers know what kinds of stories lie between the covers. Together, though? That’s something new, and they are working on figuring out exactly what that is. They already know they are going to need a joint website, which means they are going to need to pick out colors, motifs, a look that tells readers what they might find from this particular tag team.

That’s where I got to find out what it sounds like when two different writers make the “uhhhhh” sound at the same time.  Writer Chick made some notes, and Other Writer Chick made a suggestion that they get their individual brand statements together and see if they can combine the two. We will see how that goes. Writer Chick is going to give this another go once she has full brain back, which should be in time for their weekly Skype session, but that isn’t even their main concern.

That’s kind of evenly split between working on the expanded scene for Chasing Prince Charming, and moving along with Drama King, because they always have to keep looking at the next book, while this one is getting ever closer to publication. There’s also the matter of keeping each other accountable on their different solo projects, because if they can drag each other through one book, they can drag each other through more books.

Maybe drag isn’t the word, but you get the picture. Thankfully, Writer Chick’s penchant for planning and notebooks is super useful when it comes to keeping things like this straight. She will probably have more to say on that. As long as her notebook covers are soft, and the paper is crinkly, I’m good, and, in the end, isn’t that all that really matters?

Oh look, squirrels.

SebastianWindowBye

 

 

Typing With Stuffed Paws: Recently Contracted Edition

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Hey. Sebastian Thunderpaws Hart-Bowling,  here on the windowsill, bringing you the latest edition of Typing With Stuffed Paws. There’s some stuff to talk about this week, but first, let’s get the compulsories out of the way, because it’s a cloudy Friday, and I feel a nap coming on in the very near future.

As always, Writer Chick was at Buried Under Romance on this past Saturday. Last week, she talked about the promise of romance fiction. If you’re curious about what that ight be (besides the Happily Ever After, that is) you can read it here, and this is the picture that goes with it:

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Next we come to the part where I usually update about Writer Chick’s Goodreads updates, but it has been a week. More on that later. Instead of saying she is cheating again on her Goodreads challenge, she would prefer if I said that she is currently reading Heart of Iron, by Ashley Poston. More details on what Writer Chick actually thought of the book, when she has actually finished reading it (she is almost there.) She picked it because she liked another book by this author, Geekerella, which is a Cinderella retelling, but modern, with teenagers, no magic, and fandom. Heart of Iron is a retelling of the whole Anastasia thing, but in space, and with romance. Writer Chick says it reads like a really good medieval romance (actually two romances) but with space and I guess robots or something, but whatever.

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Writer Chick also filled one morning pages book and started another. This one has birds on it.

Okay, I think that’ all the stuff I have to say before the big things. The first of which is that Skye came home. Well, sort of. She is the one in the box. It is kind of sad for the humans, because Skye is still on the other side of Rainbow Bridge, and also kind of nice, because there is now something to touch when they want to feel closer to her. In today’s picture, you see me trying to play nice with my sister. So far, so good. We both have exactly the same degree of interest in the green ball, so we have that going for us.

Now, we come to the next part. Writer Chick and Other Writer Chick now have a book contract. I cannot guarantee that Writer Chick will not blabber about this in a video blog (we thought she forgot about those things, but she has been watching a lot of vlogs, lately, so I can promise nothing.) Chasing Prince Charming, their first co-written contemporary romance novel, is now contracted by The Wild Rose Press. 

Since this whole thing is super new, as in this week new, there is not a lot of information to share as of yet, like when the book will be out, so you can buy it, or what the cover art will look like (you will have to wait for the art humans at The Wild Rose Press to make it first, which means Writer Chick and Other Writer Chick have to fill out some more paperwork when the publisher people send t to them) etc. If you are interested in this kind of thing, hit the subscribe button, to make sure you don’t miss any updates as they come along. Writer Chick and Other Writer Chick (humans call her Melva Michaelian) worked really hard to get this book to this stage of the game, and there is still a whole lot of work left to do.

First, there was paperwork. There is always paperwork. That is one reason I am glad to be stuffed. We never have to do paperwork. Not so for writer humans. There is even math involved. Writer Chick and Other Writer Chick have signed their contracts, and now the fun begins. Writer Chick actually likes the process of doing edits. Other Writer Chick doesn’t like it so much, but that’s probably one of the reasons it’s good that there are two of them. Writer Chick hates tracking submissions and things like that, so this probably shakes out to about equal.

Both Writer Chick and Other Writer Chick are still writing their own, solo, novels. Historical romance for Writer Chick, and the love child of contemporary romance and cozy mystery for Other Writer chick. In case you were wondering what is at the crossroads of combining both of those above genres, Chasing Prince Charming would be it. One of the things Writer Chick has on her agenda for this upcoming week, is to look into a joint website for herself and Other Writer Chick, because that is a different writer than only Writer Chick by herself and Other Writer Chick by herself. Do not ask me to explain the specifics. I don’t know if there will be a blog, but Writer Chick is involved in this, so draw your own conclusions.

There are a lot of things to figure out when this whole kind of two-headed writer thing  gets some momentum. Writer Chick knows what she has, for aesthetic and somewhat in the neighborhood of branding and all of that good stuff, and she could probably pretty accurately put something together for Other Writer Chick, because they have been friends for basically forever, and conference buddies for almost forever, not to mention co-writers for one whole book and part of another already. (I will not mention the “what are we going to do for the next series?” conversations that I may or may not have overheard, during Skype sessions. Public Stuffed Service Announcement: we stuffed guys can hear everything you’re saying, so please keep that in mind, and yes, please turn us around if you plan to do things that cannot be unseen.) What the two of them together look/sound like, though? Yeah, that’s new.  Writer Chick is probably going to use this as an excuse to play in one of her art journals, but, to be fair, she does that with pretty much everything else, anyway. It is what it is.

That’s also about it for this week, so I am going to call it naptime.

Later days,

SebastianWindowBye

 

Typing With Stuffed Paws: Going Medieval Edition

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Yo. Friday again. That means Sebastian time. You’re welcome. This week, I’ve been helping Writer Chick with her writing this week. Here, you can see me checking on her pen storage and morning pages book. Writer Chick is going to need a new morning pages book, around the first of November, so she is now interviewing candidates. Dude says the humans call this “shopping.” Potato, potahto. Whatever it’s called, what Writer Chick puts in this kind of book gets her in gear to do other kinds of writing during the day.

Some of that writing turns up on Buried Under Romance, in Writer Chick’s weekly Saturday Discussion post. This week, it was all about curiosity in reading.It’s here, and looks like this:

Gorgeous featured image on this one, amirite? If I were the poo-ing kind of cat, instead of stuffed, I’d want to look a lot like that. Only more handsome, but I’m already there, so that part would be moot.

Speaking of reading, Writer Chick is now eighty-eight percent of the way to her Goodreads goal of reading ninety books in this calendar year. She has read seventy-nine books, putting her eight books ahead of schedule, and it is only October. I foresee success in her future, unless I am lying on top of the books she wants to read, in which case…okay, she will probably pick me up and move me, because I am stuffed, but whatever.

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A Memory of Love, by Bertrice Small

Writer chick is also making good progress on her goal of reading more historical romance, and, lately, she’s been concentrating on re-reading books she remembers liking, but hasn’t read in a while, and a bunch of those have turned out to have something in common.  Her last three historical romance reads have been by Bertrice Small, the author who got her interested in historical romance in the first place, they have all been standalones, and they have all been medieval. She also has a medieval historical romance quintet, the Graistan Chronicles, by Denise Domning, on her Kindle, and a bunch of Terri Brisbin medieval novellas on her phone, so this is becoming kind of a thing.

Writer Chick has already written one medieval romance novella, herself, and if you want to read a part of that, you can, in New York’s Emerging Writers: an Anthology of Fiction. Writer Chick’s novel excerpt, “Ravenwood,” is in there, and she has the whole book ready to roll, and resume submission rounds. Even though she hadn’t expected to write anything else related to that story, now she is thinking that, maybe, that might be fun to try in the not too distant future. If you read the excerpt and like it, consider letting the publisher know.

It’s not big a stretch. Writer Chick’s medieval hero left his best bro in an abandoned abbey, filled with plague survivors. That isn’t really as mean as it sounds. Book Dude did what he had to do, and Other Book Dude was fine with it, so I’m going to call that solid. It’s also part of what Writer Chick likes about the whole medieval romance thing. The world was rougher, then, depending on who one asks, and there is definitely enough history to influence the plot.  Castles, villages, wars, picking up after a giant up-ending of life in general, and rebuilding again. As. Many. Times. As. It. Takes. Writer Chick can relate to that.

So, how does this tie into the Georgian era stuff she’s currently writing? First, going from 1066 to 1766 (which is still fairly early in the eighteenth century) gives Writer Chick a whole lot of history to play with, here.  Seven. Hundred. Years. How great is that? So. Much. History. So many things that can affect the love stories, that there is not even a chance of running out of ideas that could actually have happened. So many love stories, as well, that she can tell, for generations to rise and fall, time to pass, children from previous books to grow to adulthood, and all of that good stuff. She’s kind of into all of that.

She’s also kind of into getting the current WIPs done and on their ways, so that she can get to the new, shiny stuff. This means there is a lot of planning she can do, to make that kind of thing happen. If you have guessed that this is going to involve pens and notebooks, you are right, but that’s for Writer Chick to tell. Dude wants to take a nap, and if you think I’m not going to get on in on that, I don’t even know what to say in response.

Catch you next time.

SebastianWindowBye

 

 

 

Butt in Chair, Pen to Paper

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There aren’t a lot of articles out there on how to get back into the swing of writing after the loss of a pet. Personally, I haven’t found any. Hence the left foot right foot approach of putting butt in chair, and pen on paper. I work best in longhand. I always have. Still, there are times when it’s going through the motions. Writers and cats have a special connection, and Skye was, and is, my mews forever. At some point in the next couple of weeks, we will brig her ashes home. When we move, in time, to a pet-friendly apartment, we will add a new cat, or cats, to our family. They will be their own creatures, and I can’t say, before getting to know them, whoever they are, whether or not they will agree to blog for me. I have no earthly idea what Friday’s blog is going to look like, and I am okay with that. Maybe it will take a break for the week. I don’t know yet.

Last night, I had my weekly Skype session with Melva, to talk about Chasing Prince Charming‘s adventures in submission (we racked up a really good “no,” this week, so I count that as good) and where we are going next with its companion book, Drama King.  I have a rough scene to smooth out, as soon as the immediate fam sorts out a domestic tornado, and, after I get Melva’s next scene, I get to rough out the scene that comes after that. Those whom I have tasked with needling me about Her Last First Kiss, you are doing a splendid job. That kind of thing works well with me.

For the first couple of days after Skye passed, I didn’t have any energy to do anything but cry, or stare at the bleak, cat-less future. Losing a pet sucks, no question about it. I found myself scrolling mindlessly through the internet. Cat videos have been extremely calming, and looking through all of Skye’s photos also helps. I have spent more time than I would care to admit, scrolling through ranked lists that pertain to a daytime drama I followed avidly in high school and college, but haven’t watched even one episode, since. The teenagers I remember are the parents now, and there may even be a grandparent or two; I haven’t looked. There are some things I do not need to know, especially when I am emotionally vulnerable.

Other things, though, have risen to the surface. Over the past weekend, I had a lot of time to myself. Housemate made a trip to Camp Grandma, Real Life Romance Hero was at work, and I gave myself assignments with a stack of new art supplies. I put pens in a new pen case. Playing with pens is always a sure soothing method, which, for a writer, is also one that is readily at hand.

I read some. Not a lot. Some, though, and there were, in fact, more reading-related activities. I’d been following the worksheets N and I are using to connect ourselves to the projects it’s high time we get out there, when I heard about Skye. Things had been going pretty darned well, actually, and then, in an instant, BOOM. Life will do that to a person.

Melva, also, recently lost a pet, and, in our weekly chat, we tossed around the idea of our two cats on the other side of Rainbow Bridge, plotting something together. Could happen. Who’s to say? We commiserated, gave each other a little more time, and made plans to move ahead.

Which is why this disjointed entry is up here. Melva and I talked about how we need to take our own advice, on writing when dealing with real life plot twists. Adjust expectations. Do what you can, when you can, and, maybe most importantly, remember why you’re doing it.

Those of us writing for publication would like to see a royalty check, sure, but I’m talking now more about capturing that initial spark, the one that turned “I wish I could do this” into “of course I can do this.”  As is often the case, thoughts became more clear when I sat myself down with pen and paper, and let the whole matter leak out onto the page.

Back when I was but a wee princess of eleven, I stole my mother’s copy of a seminal historical romance novel from her nightstand, and scurried to my hidey-hole under the big brass bed in the guest bedroom. My mom followed the flashlight beam, but too late. In the first few pages, while the heroine was still an even wee-er (more wee?) princess herself, I was sold. I’d found what I wanted to read and write for the rest of my life.

Big, thick, epic historical romance, that spans miles (sometimes continents) and years (sometimes decades) and drags both hero and heroine through one heck of a lot of trouble, before the triumph of their HEA…that’s my jam. I want to inhale that now, like oxygen. It won’t fill the Skye-shaped hole. I’ll have to heal around that one, and, when new felines come, they won’t fill it either, but make their own places, on their own terms.

There is still grieving. Other cat people understand that. There is also the steady, inexorable need to make story. Writer people get that. Sometimes the two things happen at the same time, and sometimes, they take turns. I am not in control of how they work that out. The only thing I can control is butt in the chair, and pen to paper. It can’t always be gold, but it can always be. That’s good enough.

Breaking Out the Good Stuff

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Stuff is going down today. I can tell because A) I am the one who planned said stuff, and B) I broke out the fancy pen. Full disclosure, said fancy pen was broken out for photographic purposes, as a quick test proved that it’s going to require cleaning and re-inking before I can actually use it. The actual pens used in today’s work will probably be one of my workhorse pens, possibly erasable because I know me, and perfectionism is the big boss to defeat before I can get into reconnecting with the meat of Her Last First Kiss, which is my assignment for the day.

Tomorrow morning, N and I will have our weekly breakfast and go over our homework, aka the pages that will enable us to kick each others’ posteriors into gear on our chosen projects. For double-digit years, I was part of a weekly accountability/critique group, that included my contemporary cohort, Melva Michaelian, and I was the only person who had something to read, every single week. There were more times than I’d care to admit, that my pages for that week were written in a white-hot burst, down to minutes before my ride came to ferry me there. There were times when I wrote pages that didn’t have anything to do with a current project, but they were pages, goshdangit, and that was what mattered.

When I moved from CT, to NY, obviously, that was the end of that. I missed it, and still do. I haven’t found a local group yet, though I’ve tried a couple, and I do have local writer friends, whom I meet with individually. I miss the group dynamic, though, so still working on that one.

Writing is often a solitary pursuit. I am an extrovert, meaning that I gain my energy from being around other people, and spend my energy when alone. Communing with other writers is a great way for me to refill that energy reserve. The internet is a great source for that. I will never, ever turn down a chance to have tea and writerly talk, face to face, with a local writer buddy, and have been known to travel, to see writer friends who are farther away than public transportation can connect.

That better have pages thing, though, I’ve been missing that. Last week, when N and I had our first regular breakfast after we both went to separate RWA events, we admitted we could both use some accountability. Hence the homework. Hence the excited skip of my pulse as I write this, glancing over the top of my monitor, at the real life version of today’s picture, only a few feet away. A new cup of tea, a pen in my hand, and it will be time, once again, to dive headfirst into Georgian England, and Bern and Ruby, and all the reasons they shouldn’t and can’t be together, which are nothing compared to the fact that they must. Are they going to admit that, though? Not without a great deal of difficulty, and that, for me, is where the fun lies.

Since I’ve already written the first draft, I know how things are going to turn out. This is for going deeper, for making the book more itself. Making Bern Bern-ier, Ruby more Ruby-licious. This is going to mean finally breaking down and setting up the printer, because I need reference pictures, and family trees, and cheat sheets, and all of that good stuff. This means ripping apart the binder I made over a year ago, that I set up in a specific arrangement, then never used.

Obviously, that arrangement didn”t work. Difference between theory and practice, and all that. This is time to fly into the mist, albeit with a general idea of what I’m doing, and the boundaries of the previous draft and a half, to bump me back when I drift too far afield. I’m excited (if you haven’t picked up on that by now) and am about half super pumped to get back to this story (a huge thank you to those writer friends who have needled me about this, because it super duper helps) and half running around in circles, arms flailing, but at least they are controlled circles.

My table/desk is not going to look this neat by the end of the day, when it’s time to clear away the writing stuff and set up for dinner with the fam.  I am okay with that. Probably, at some point, but probably not today, I will do battle with the fountain pens that were last packed when I had a different address, and bring them  back into everyday use. That’s another topic, though, for another day.

For right now, it’s time to brew some tea, pick out pens, and make a cover page for the second half of Big Daddy Precious, then start digging.

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Typing With Wet Claws: Fiction Fest Prep Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another very special Feline Friday, coming to you from Camp Grandma. This time, next week, Anty will be on her way to Connecticut Fiction Fest, where she and Anty Melva get to give their workshop, on writing through real life plot twists. Since Mama will be handing Anty off to Anty Melva, there is a good chance that Anty will get a chance to see me, on this visit. Probably on the way back, but I am not going to complain. Any visit is a good visit (except for vet visits) and, besides, she owes me a laser pointer.

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Although Sebastian has not yet updated Anty’s Coming Soon page, there is news. Both anthologies are now available for purchase.

New York’s Emerging Writers: an Anthology of Nonfiction is available here. That is where you can read Anty’s essay, “Greetings From Boxville.”

If it is fiction you are after, you can read “Ravenwood,” the first two scenes from Anty’s novel, A Heart Most Errant, is available here, in New York’s Emerging Writers: An Anthology of Fiction. If you like this excerpt, and would like to read the whole book, please consider telling that to the publisher humans.

Now, on to where you can find Anty’s writing on the interwebs, this week (other than here, because, well, you already know how to get here, if you are already here, so you do not need me to tell you.) As always, Anty was at Buried Under Romance on Saturday, talking about when reading is slow, and when it is fast. That post is here, and it looks like this:

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Speaking of reading, it is time to look at Anty’s Goodreads Challenge. It is not even September, but Anty would have to do some serious slacking to fall off course now, as she has read seventy-one books, out of her goal of ninety, which puts her at seventy-nine percent of the way to her goal, and twelve books ahead of schedule. Good job, Anty. Keep reading.

The book Anty liked best this week was The Love Slave, by Bertrice Small. Anty said I should mention that it is a very, very grownups-only book, with very mature themes, and younger readers, or gentle readers of any age, may want to read a different book. Anty’s review is here, and it looks like this:

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Some of you may have noticed that Anty did not blog on Wednesday. That is because it was too hot in NY, and she was not feeling well. It is cooler now, and she is much better, and she acknowledges that she owes you a blog entry. She is thinking of sneaking in some updates from Fiction Fest, but that will depend on the wifi connection, and whether or not she can fix her new laptop. No big surprise, because Anty has been dubbed the computer killer.

The laptop is not dead, though. It is only doing the three beeps thing, so Anty is watching some YouTube videos of how to fix the problem at home, and then she will ask Mama to borrow a baby screwdriver, and give it a go. Anty already has figured out how she will keep all of the tiny screws straight (they are not all the same size) – she will divide a piece of paper into sections, and put each screw in its proper section, that matches where it is on the actual computer. This is where it comes in handy to be a planning sort of person.

Planning also has a dark side, though. Anty found that out this week. Even when Anty does not feel well in the heat, and does not have a lot of energy, she still has enough energy to look at her notebooks. Last weekend, Anty finally got the blush stripe cover for Big Pink, that she has been drooling over (not literally; that would be gross) for a really long time, but was hesitant to move into it, because it wasn’t exactly perfect.

That, as you might imagine, was what inspired Anty to rip all of the inserts out of the old cover (that was not very old at all; she will now use it to protect trade size paperbacks when she reads away from home) and put them into the new one. Only, she did not put all of them into the new cover. That is because the hardcover Moleskine did not fit the new cover.  That was rather upsetting, because Anty liked having the hardcover Moleskine in there, but she can buy a new cahier insert, to do the same job. She needs to get more inserts anyway, since she had filled one of them.

Anty also figured out why she could not settle on how she wanted to use the inserts she had set up in Li’l Pink. That was because Li’l Pink is, well, pink, and the inserts are in shades of blue . She’d been wanting (and still wants) to move to Li’l Pink for her everyday carry, and, while the blue inserts are very pretty, they might not be the easiest to read important information on; Anty wants pink or ivory pages for that, but she wants to use the blue pages for reading and writing things.

The same company that sells Big and Li’l Pink, also has a teal (teal is a greenish-blue color, that is very pretty) cover, that is on sale at the same store where Anty got the pink covers. Her current plan is to go to the store, get the teal cover, and put the blue inserts in that one. Then, (or maybe before; I have not seen her schedule for the evening) she will either buy new inserts for Li’l Pink (Moleskine makes a pastel assortment, that Anty likes, or Kraft paper covers are good, too) or she will find a pack of three pocket sized inserts that have pink covers, that are packed away in storage.

Thankfully, Anty was pretty hardcore about labeling the boxes that came from her office, so it should not be too hard to find the box of inserts. She might even share some of them with Mama, because she has lured Mama over to the dark side, and now Mama has a notebook cover of her own. I do not have my own planner, so far, but pocket size is also kitty size, so maybe it is in my future.

That is about it for this week.  Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

skyebye2018

Typing With Wet Claws: Anty in the Corner Edition

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Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday, coming to you from Camp Grandma. Very soon, it will be time for Anty and Anty Melva to head for Connecticut Fiction Fest, and talk about how to write even when life seems to have gone a little (okay, a lot) off the rails.  Anty still does not know if she will drive to the hotel with Mama, and then meet Anty Melva there, or if she and Mama will go see Anty Melva first, and hand Anty off, so Anty and Anty Melva will have a long drive together, but their drives often spark some pretty good ideas, so they are not complaining. They have, at times, joked about renting an RV, and driving from the east to west coasts, and by the time they get back, they will have a new book. At least I think they were joking. It is hard to tell, by remote connection. Personally, I like the handing Anty off to Anty Melva option, because that means that Anty can stop by and see me, which, let’s face it, is the highlight of any road trip, in the first place.

This week, Anty has not been doing as much reading of physical books as she would have liked, but there is good reason for that. For one thing, she has figured out how to get audiobooks from the library, which means that she gets a human with an interesting voice, to tell her a story, and she does not have to figure out where to put anything, or pay for it. Anty will be doing a lot more listening, especially because she can experience a story while she is planning or making art, or anything else. I will have to think about allowing her to listen to books when we are both in the same place, but I think that I probably will. I like soothing voices, very much.

Anyway, Anty’s favorite book that she read all the way through, this week, was Geekerella, by Ashley Potson. This is a modern-day retelling of Cinderella, and there is fandom and cosplay, and the hero is an actor, and Anty is totally there for all of that. Her review of that book is here, and it looks like this:

Geekerella

Anty was, as always, at Buried Under Romance on Saturday, where she asks the important question – what’s in your TBR (that means To Be Read) pile? That post is here, and it looks like this:

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Anty wjll probably read a lot more books between now and Fiction Fest, especially once she finishes the book she is reading right now. Anty likes to take her time with some of the bigger historical romances, and that is what is going on with her reading, right now.

Speaking of historical romance, Anty has been giving her materials for Her Last First Kiss some serious consideration, lately. Granted, the contemporaries have required a lot of her attention, especially when she and Anty Melva had the revise and resubmit request, not to mention that they are now working on a book with a cat in it. (Trust me, this cat will be the real star of the book. I am on hand as feline consultant, to make sure that the cat character behaves the way an actual cat would, in such situations.)

Anyway, right now, Anty is doing a lot of rearranging of pretty much everything. The air mattress in the living room, that had been her command centre, sprang a leak. Actually more than one leak. Do not blame me. First, I am at camp, and second, I have special paws, so that rules me out as a suspect, right from the start. I cannot rule out Sebastian, but then again, he is stuffed, so it was probably something else. Probably.

As if that were not enough, Anty’s new Mac Book has been making a new noise. That noise is three beeps, then a pause, then three beeps, then a pause, then three beeps, then a pause, ad infinitum (that is a fancy word that means forever.) Anty did some research, and found out that somebody is going to have to poke around the guts of the Mac Book. Maybe it will be her, and maybe it will be someone at the Apple store. Either way, Anty needs this machine operational, because A) conference, B) super powers are coming back any day now, and C) it is time to get back to Her Last First Kiss.

Since the Mac Book is currently not operational, this means Anty is back to the desktop, and finding a c0mfortable way to sit, where both her eyeballs and back are happy, at the same time. As of today. that is on the floor, in a corner, back to the wall, and both monitor and desktop on a coffee table. Since I am a floor girl, I think this is possibly the most perfect setup. Anty does not yet know if she agrees, but  time will tell.

There is one big advantage to writing in the corner, and that is (besides being on my level) and that is that nobody can see what is on Anty’s screen. Anty does not like other humans looking at her screen, while she is writing, or seeing any reference pictures she might have on hand while she writes. Anty is particular about that kind of thing. I cannot say I blame her. We cats are pretty big on privacy (ours, that is.  We will walk right into the bathroom with you, every time, if you do not close the door quickly enough. It Is because we love you. Also because we have to make sure you do not vanish.)

That is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

skyebye2018

 

 

Pre-Fall Writing Prep

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Yesterday, I was in pajamas and in bed by 6:30 PM. It was one of those days. Yes, I have been out of bed since, even though bed is also today’s command center. This morning, my Mac Book Pro started with the three beeps thing. This will either mean a trip to the Apple Store (this would be my first) or removing the back of the laptop, to fix the issue myself. I have still not decided, but I need my machine, to get some work done, and, not going to lie, having Sims on my laptop is a definite must, especially when my first ever CT Fiction Fest is now less than a month away :runs around in circles, screaming: and I am not going only as an attendee, but as a co-presenter. This won’t be my first time at the front of the room, and I will have Melva right there with me, and we’ve already gone over who is going to talk about what. We also agree that we are probably going to interrupt and talk over each other a lot ( this is extremely likely.)

Right now, Chasing Prince Charming has three pairs of professional eyes upon it, which is both exciting and scary. I’m not thinking about it too much, as there’s enough other stuff on my mind.

Preparing for Fiction Fest is one thing, of course. Melva and I know what each of us are going to do for our workshop, and I think it’s a pretty safe bet to say that I will almost certainly wearing some sort of black dress, and purchasing new shoes is probably the better route than teying to find the box marked “heels” in the storage unit. I will be headed there anyway, as I need to find my traveler’s notebook inserts, which are also in there somewhere.

Either way, it’s going to be some excavation. This feels appropriate, given the recent retreat. One thing that is gauranteed from nearly a week spent with almost exclusively feline  companionship, and no interwebs, is a lot of mental excavation.

Though such time is basically made for some prime planning, one of the biggest things I discovered on retreat week was that the checklists and trackers I put together at the start of the year still work perfectly fine, for the most part, but I didn’t like them anymore. This means taling a look at what I want to do, and how I want to do it. Hence the planned storage unit excavation, in search of boxes marked “Moleskines” and “cahiers.”

The visual style changes for my notebook pages are the easy part. The scary part is the stuff that will go on them. A.k.a. writing fiction. Over the last couple of says, multiple people have brought up Her Last First Kiss. This elicited, in basically all cases, a reaction that can best be described as “eep.” Sound made by me, in case you hadn’t guessed, followed by a guilty, “I knowwwww.” Usually followed by thoughts of the wire cube where I’d stashed the printout of draft one, and the Big Daddy Precious notebook, before the move.

There was the whole moving thing, and the focus on Chasing Peince Charming and the revise/resubmit request, plus the anthology submissions, and workshops both online and on person, plus assorted medical bunny trails, Camp NaNo, two retreats, and now…it’s time, again.

When I think of returning to Ruby and Bern’s world, my mind goes to the very first scene, where a young Ruby’s life passes its first point of no return. My pulse speeds a little when I think about that. It goes next to the titular first kiss, at the worst possible time, when both Bern and Ruby become fully aware of how deep their mutual doo-doo has become, and the damage that would follow taking things any further.

That moment always gives me a satisfied sigh. It’s not a comfortable moment for either of them, by any means, but it’s one of my favorites, because it’s their point of no return, and, therefore, the book’s. In my initial notes, they both get an FML notation. Bad, bad, very bad, but oh so good at the same time. At least for me, which should, theoretically, make me want to skip to the keyboard, cackling with glee. Rubbing of hands optional.

The reality of it? We will see when I open Big Daddy Prdcious, and put pen to paper. The desktop still works perfectly fine, but I’m going to need to pick an option for fixing the Mac, as it’s about to get a lot of use. At least that’s the plan.

 

 

 

 

 

Fifty Shades of Blush

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Disclaimer I: this post has nothing to do with the E. L. James book, or the movie adaptation. It does have an awful lot to do with stationery.

Disclaimer 2: The fact that my current desktop background is a picture of my old desk , which is still in storage, with a notebook on it, that is also still in storage, probably says something, but I am not probing into that right now.

Blush

Left to right: Li’l Pink, Big Pink, Artist Loft dot grid notebook, powder blue Artist Loft softcover notebook that says “Trust Your Gut,” but I will never not-read as “Trust Your Butt,” brand new traveler’s notebook with four inserts strictly for art, current paperback read, undercover. Pun intended. Front row: skull and crossbones mug, possibly the most me mug I have ever seen, at least so far.

With the lone outlier of the powder blue (but look at it, isn’t it gorgeous?) we can see that my color choices fall into two distinct camps. Black, and blush pink, in that order, will catch my eye every time. If I remove the buffer of the blue notebook, my hope is that the pink and black traveler’s notebooks will have pastel goth babies, because that would be gorgeous.

Since my first (which is also my current) evening pages book is the hardcover pocket sized notebook in Li’l Pink will be succeeded by the Trust Your Butt book (it goes beautifully with the pastel rainbow unicorn book that will succeed my current morning pages book, but that’s another post, because I am on a time crunch, and forgot to take pictures.

I’d originally wanted the pink Artist Loft book to succeed the evening pages book, because soft, powdery blush pink is classy and calm, and smells like baby powder, but it only comes, as far as I can tell, in dot grid

Well, huh. What to do, what to do? Besides get the Trust Your Butt book, that is. The last few months have been a wild ride, and my current planner, which I was excited to have when I started it, now carries a lot of, hmm, how shall we say, bad juju. While I still stood in the store, turning the pink book over in my hands, thinking of how well it fits with Big and Li’l Pink, the flicker of an idea came to me. Why not start a new planner? Clean slate, try a totally different format, dip a toe into uncharted waters.

I didn’t intend for that to tie into the selkie story, but I’ll take it. That’s another tie to something I’ve loved longer than I can remember, and, yet, something I haven’t done yet. I like that sort of balance. What if I started the new planner with the writing stuff right up front, instead of buried in the middle, after the “important” stuff? What if this planner was only for the writing?

In a way, it’s wandering around the woods at night, with buckets on my feet and oven mitts on my hand once again, but I don’t hate that kind of thing. It’s more of a fun thing, picking up the scent and following it where it leads. Where I hope it leads is to that place where instinct kicks in and I don’t have to think about what I’m doing.

Right now, my big task for the day is to get that last scene for Chasing Prince Charming polished, and lob it Melva’s way, hopefully before our Skype chat, where we get all our CPC ducks in a row. I’m at the stage where I’m looking forward to it, looking forward to when we can turn our collective attention back to Drama King, and I have space for Her Last First Kiss once again.

What does all of this have to do with a particular shade of notebook cover, which is not even my favorite-favorite? (Still number two, though; that counts for something.) Darned if I know, but I do remember my very first dance class (to be fair, I was so little that it might even have been a movement class) and the teacher (she was a smart one) color coded the kiddos as soon as we showed up for the first session. Different color leotard for everybody, and pale pink tights for all. My assigned color? Black. Maybe she knew something. Exactly what that might have been, I am not sure, but the black and blush pink seems to have stuck, and I am more than fine with that.

That’s the magic seven hundred (and change) so off I go, to put CPC’s hero through the wringer. :evil laughter trails:

Typing With Wet Claws: X Edition

annabowling 2 Comments

Hello, all. Skye here, for another Feline Friday, coming to you from Camp Grandma. Anty says that most of these updates are probably going to fall into the “special” cat-egory (see what I did there?) until August. That is not too far away, so I suppose I can deal. Camp is fine, and all, and I am learning a few things from Grandma, like the fact that peanut butter is delicious, and jailbreaks can be fun, even if Grandma does have a lot of carpet. I will probably not be going on too many jailbreaks tis weekend, though, because Mama will be visiting camp. Anty has to stay home and write, or she would come along, too. She will come see me, soon.

Anyway, this post is not so special that I can skip the big rule of these posts, and that is that I have to talk about Anty’s writing first, before I am allowed to talk about anything else. That is usually Anty’s writing, anyway, but it Is what it is. As always, Anty was at Buried Under Romance on Saturday, talking about her summer reading bucket list. That means the books that Anty intends to read over the course of the summer. Spoiler alert: she will not stick to that list. That post is here, and it looks like this:

BURbucketlist

This segues nicely into the next part, which is Anty’s Godreads reading challenge. Remote surveillance tells me that Sebastian has found a sunbeam in the living room window, which may account for his slowness in crunching Anty’s numbers for this challenge, but, since Goodreads shows that she is currently ten books ahead of schedule, we will let it slide…for now. Anty’s favorite read of the past week is Leave Me, by Gayle Forman. Miss Gayle usually writes books about almost-grownups, but this book is about actual grownups.  Anty’s review can be found here, and the book looks like this:

BUT leavemeformanAnty has vague ideas of attempting to duplicate the cover design in one of her art notebooks. That looks pretty easy, because it is lines of color, and that’s that.  Anty may find a few surprises when she tries it, though, and that is okay. There are a lot of surprises in the writing life.

Right now, Anty is muttering bad words because of one surprise, and that is that the all day workshop with Gwen Hayes, on Romancing the Beat, will be held on September eighth, which is right in the middle of CT Fiction Fest, which Anty cannot skip, because she is part of it, because she and Anty Melva will be presenting “Writing Through The Tears/Save the Writer, Save the Book.” In a perfect world, Anty would be able to go to both, but this world is far from perfect, so she will have to deal. I strongly suggest she stop by Camp and see me on the way home. That is, unless we are in Forever Apartment by then, in which case she should come straight home and make u for all the missed scritches.

This weekend, Anty will be doing her last-last pass of Chasing Prince Charming, and passing it back to Anty Melva. Then, that is that, and back out it goes. If she has time, she will transcribe the handwritten stuff she has on the selkie story, and do some research on that. Miss N also has gently reminded Anty of how close Anty is to a completed second draft of Her Last First Kiss, and that it is time to start thinking about what project is going to be next.

This is a place that Anty has not been for a while, but that does not mean that it is totally unfamiliar. Anty looks forward to starting new things, like the selkie story, and bringing other things, like Her Last First Kiss and A Moment Past Midnight to their happily ever afters and jumping back on the submission circuit once again. Anty Melva has been handling that for Chasing Prince Charming, but, for the books Anty writes by herself, she will have to handle things like queries and pitches.

Pitches are better than queries for Anty, because Anty is an extrovert, and talking to people face to face is super fun. Synopses and queries, though, are another story. Pun intended. Another part of the writing process that is fun, is brainstorming new ideas, which Anty plans to do with both the selkie story and A Moment Past Midnight. The fact that Anty does not, at present, have a brainstorming group, may prove a challenge, but that is okay. Anty likes this kind of challenge, and she knows a lot of writers, so I am sure that she can find people who would like to do that with her.

To reward herself for doing the last-last work on Chasing Prince Charming, Anty plans to watch some movies, and dive into a couple of historical romance novels that she got out of the library, to re-immerse herself in the genre. She is going to need them, because I am all too familiar with her separation anxiety with a story, once the book is done-done. Maybe this time will be different, because she is writing these books with Anty Melva, and they know what book is next. One never can tell, though, so I will send extra love beams, just in case they are needed.

That is about it for this week. Until next time, I remain very truly yours,

SkyeByeTemp