Weekend Effort

I had some good intentions, but failed once again. I managed about an hour of writing on Saturday with the intent of a bit more today.

When I stopped, Old What’s Her Face was on the phone with our daughter. She was doing laundry and being bored. I mentioned that if she drove to Boise, we would buy her dinner as a joke.

It took legs from there. Our daughter brought two large baskets of laundry and ran it through our machines.

We wound up going to Olive Garden because it’s our daughter’s favorite. I have to admit being impressed with their new menu. My meal was wonderful

She stayed this morning until around 3:00, and I’m not going to dive into my MS this late in the day. It was virtually a lost weekend, but I’ll take it.

I already mentioned that in three months or so, our daughter is going to leave the state. Seeing her will become damned near impossible after that, so I’ll take all I can get.

There will be other weekends, and I will finish this project eventually. Back to work tomorrow.

Ugh!

I had high hopes for today. It’s a Friday flex day and that’s usually when I make the pixels fly. Best laid plans, and all that.

Life has changed with our daughter moving home. I’ve never put her off just so I can write, and never will. When she wants to chat, I pull up stakes and try to be present in the moment. Fathers and daughters, what are you going to do?

Jackson, her cat is another matter. He was kind of hiding out and checking all the corners for a couple of days. He’s content now and quite friendly. He decided to camp in my lap, which doesn’t make for good word count. He’s so cute, I couldn’t say no.

Frankie decided she was jealous and had to get up here, too.

Now they’ve moved on, and Otto is up here with me. He’s a veteran and sits off to the side, so I can at least type. Thus, the reason why I’m blogging. Even though he’s one big hunk of bulldog.

I won’t complain too loud. I could have gone in the other room, but I enjoy the company to a degree. I might have to do that tomorrow or the next day. Depends on how the conversations go.

Grand total of about one page before I gave up completely. I know it’s one more page than I had before, and have often shared that thought with others. In my case, as a weekend warrior, it can also be looked at as one page this week. That doesn’t make it look all that special.

Still, daughters, bulldogs, and kitties have value, too. There will be hours somewhere, so I’m going to enjoy the other things for now.

I’m trying to limit my blog tour to twice per week, and I’ve shared here as they post. I have new content out there if you’re following along. I’ve moved some books and the first couple of posts were quite successful. I hope it holds up in the coming weeks.

Talk to you later. Maybe I’ll have some decent word metrics tomorrow.

Of daughters and pirates

I intended to work on my book today, but didn’t intend to hit it hard. I allowed myself to wake up whenever Otto decided he was hungry. It was still 6:30, but it’s two hours later than my alarm goes off.

I took my time. Read some blogs, dealt with email, and enjoyed my coffee. Even managed to pay the bills.

I started by backing up two chapters and made a few more adjustments than I usually do. I’m on the downhill slide here, and the denouement is writing itself pretty well. Since this is a trilogy, I have a lot of characters to cover.

I no sooner started than the phone rang. My daughter wanted to chat. Her premise was her sore feet. The backstory is that she rolled her ankle a couple of times in the last few years. She works on her feet and they get sore.

When she was here a few weeks ago, I showed her my rolley thing that you put on the ground and roll around with your foot. It’s like a short rolling pin, but is lathe turned so it has grooves. After about five minutes her feet felt great. She called to tell me she ordered one from Amazon.

“Okay. Good job. Thanks for calling…”

Nope.

Ninety minutes later we were still on the phone. Budgets, shoes, work, Covid, etc. Mostly nothing special, but it was her. I can’t cut her off, and actually enjoy chatting with her.

Once we finally disconnected it was lunchtime. I decided to make myself a hoagie sandwich and used the stout beer mustard Old What’s Her Face bought me. It was really good.

Then I started writing, but knew I wasn’t going to finish. I brought things up to the point of Serang’s denouement, and on the cusp of the root monsters. I just never made it that far.

I have all weekend and am certain to finish the draft. I’m finding it kind of sad to bring this full circle. I’ve sailed a few seas with these characters, but it’s time to give them their happy endings. If my daughter claimed some of that time it’s fine by me.

My sincerest hope is that everyone’s ending is suitable for my readers. What I have in mind is realistic, and feels like it makes sense for the various characters.

I’ll get another chance tomorrow, and that will be fine by me.

B. W. I.

Okay, not particularly intoxicated, but well lubricated. What does an author blog about when he isn’t writing? Stuff like this.

When we walked into Old Chicago at the Boise Town Square Mall, the Blood Mobile was parked out front.

Old What’s Her Face asked, “Do you want to donate, dear?”

I said, “Yes, but I want to donate from that guy over there. Grab him.”

You probably had to be there, but we had a good laugh.

They actually had a Belgian beer on tap tonight, and those are kind of hard to come by. I had two. I had two different ones as well.

Supper was mediocre at best, but I got to actually watch a Diamondbacks game on their televisions, and they actually won. (A rare thing these days.)

My pizza was one of those with so much sauce the toppings all slid into my lap. Otherwise it was wonderful, but it wasn’t what I’ve become accustomed to at OC.

Old What’s Her Face went for a pedicure while I watched the game and swilled good beer. She has her thing, and I have mine.

I’m not going to get to write this weekend, but I did work on a blog post for Story Empire. It’s all scheduled now. If you enjoy the Expansion Pack series, there is another one up on Wednesday.

My daughter made a surprise visit this weekend, and we had a nice chat. She even offered to cut Dad’s hair, and I couldn’t pass that up. She really does a good job.

While this isn’t a writing weekend, I have some vacation time scheduled. I’m milking the flex schedule, and by taking two ten-hour days off, I actually get six days off in a row. It all starts next Friday. My hope is to give Lanternfish a good launch.

Aside from that, I need to work on some blog tour posts for Viral Blues. The release will be upon me before I know it. I want to do a tour of favorite sites, but I may get a mutual promo tour with some friends going, too. I’m kind of excited about that. We all draw some people and the crowd is bigger because of that. Maybe one of their regulars will be interested in my release, and maybe one of mine will be interested in theirs. More on that later.

We have some home improvement stuff to deal with tomorrow and I’m dreading it. I’m not a tool guy, and not particularly handy in that department. I’ve replaced the kitchen faucet before, but I really don’t think my back is up to it these days. I’ll update on this later. It will either be a successful replacement, or a trip to the hospital. Either way I get a blog post.

On another note, my side project is moving along well. I’m in the mucky middle, but about to move out of it. I’m finding that a side project might not move as fast as the targeted book, but it doubles my productivity.

That’s it, B. W. I. How did I do?

The power of a positive attitude

The day started off with She Who Cannot Stop Taking and all the problems she had with her job. It would be pretty easy to blame a non-productive day on her, but I wasn't taking the bait.

This lasted for about two hours, and damnit, I understand. I've held a job since I was thirteen. (1973 for those keeping score.) Sometimes the job is a pain in the butt.

I wanted to go through the the multitude of emails, and honestly, I shut her down to a degree and did it anyway. My wife always sleeps late on Saturday's, and this is my prime writing time. I was a little upset, but kept my mouth shut about it.

While she jabbered on about life in general, I decided to print out my critiques. Only one of three worked, and I had to ask the other two to send a different format. They were happy to do this, but I could have ended my day right there and blamed all my problems on circumstance. This is where the positive attitude kicked in. The guys provided an alternate format, and I printed all of them out. I even managed to finish one of them. We meet Tuesday, so I need to make these a priority.

I have a lot of things on my list, and knew some of them could get done anyway. I've worked myself into a catch 22 on The Yak Guy project. This is my novel, and I'm so used to this kind of problem that it's old hat. I want Yak Guy to face a larger problem. I want him to have limited resources when he does. Then I want him to achieve a goal he doesn't even know he has. The problem comes from needing the goal to happen before he achieves it. I'm probably not explaining it well, but it happens in every novel length project. I'll think about it and come up with something. I always do. The basic thought for this post is that it isn't time to be working on the novel. Some serious thought is required here. Getting it wrong now will cause problems four chapters down the line.

This is the beauty of having other projects on the side. My short fiction is a godsend this way.

I wound up getting some new Lisa Burton art in the morning email today. (Surprise! Two weeks before I expected it.) This has to do with my next crazy promotional adventure. I'm not ready to announce it today, but it required me to set some things in motion. This involved sending out a pile of emails. By creating a form, I easily achieved this goal. I'm really excited about this project, and several more of you might be hearing from me in the next few days.

My wife took my daughter to town this afternoon. I knew better than to tear into my novel, but I have a short story that I've been working on for weeks. This came in a more manageable portion, so I opened the file and went to work. I finished the rough draft of the short story. It came in at about 3200 words. I'm relatively happy with it, and would like to include it in a future Experimental Notebook.

After I finished this draft, I edited one of the guest posts I'd been working on, and made it into something more palatable. I even wrote a different one from scratch. These are about The Playground, which I'll be publishing soon. At some point, I'll need to have some guest posts ready for the street team, and need to keep working on them. Still, some progress is better than no progress.

When my wife returned she announced that it was time for date night. We went to the Yardhouse for dinner and beer. I had one of my favorite beers, Anderson Valley Wild turkey Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout. It's a mouthful, but it's absolutely wonderful. I switched to Belgians after that one, and had a sour, and a Belgian Quad. Quad means four times the alcohol. If this post winds up intelligible, blame it on the Belgians. The people, their beer, the whole country actually.

For supper, I had a crab and lobster omelette. It was wonderful too. My wife ordered a turkey pot pie. Check out this picture. It had to be about 16 inches wide, and was more suitable for her and about four friends. She was embarrassed when they delivered it, and that brought me great joy. I snapped a picture to commemorate the event.

Yes, she texts at the table

She did her best, but some of it came home. It's open season for someone tonight, and our son might get it. If he doesn't, a part of it is destined for the old pitbull tomorrow morning.

All in all, a positive attitude prevailed. I got my next crazy project launched, I finished a short story that I've been struggling with, and I knocked out a portion of my critique chores. I even managed some progress on Playground promo material. There's always more to do, but I'm pretty excited about the way things turned out. We even managed a wonderful date night.

 

Trying not to be a writer

I’ve mentioned before that I’m trying to tone things down during the summer months. My writing pursuits can wait until winter for all I care. I just want a good outline when I start.

To that end, I’ve been dabbling in related projects. None of them are really serious.

I called my parents, like I do every Sunday. We talked for about an hour and a half. No real topic, but the killer hawk is defending its nest in Mom’s front yard again. I told her she should start carrying a salmon net. Maybe she can train it to leave her alone.

When we finished, I added some cards to the remaining outlines I didn’t work on the other day. I’m considering a gender swap for one of my characters. Maybe “she would do anything to save her man” has better punch than the other way around. They’re still the bad guys, and I need to manipulate the fealty readers will have for them. It still doesn’t feel quite right.

The whole time I was doing this, I felt like I was being watched. Something made my senses tingle, but I was just being silly.

Maybe my new blood pressure medicine has something to do with it. Like I said, I’m not taking things seriously this summer. I spent some time throwing my virtual goat out of a catapult.

Good air on this throw

My daughter got up and decided to make us some breakfast. She got scared by a large spider in the kitchen. Maybe not a big deal, but it was the morning for creepy stuff. Breakfast was good. Egg burrito with chipotle sauce.

We talked for about 45 minutes before she had to go upstairs and start getting ready for work. I went back to another project. I plodded through two chapters of an old book and corrected a couple of typos.

My Spidey senses tingled once more. I turned in my chair so my back was to the wall.

My daughter leaned over the stair rail. “Holy crap! What is that?”

I leaped up and looked out back.

I want your nuts.

My nuts are just fine where they are, thank you very much. I think even the old pit bull could have caught this one. He was asleep beside the air conditioner duct, and we gave this squirrel a pass.

Not a lot of writing related projects today, but some. I need to clean up the sauerkraut crock before it’s cabbage season once again. I also need to deadhead some roses. Maybe I’ll do that this afternoon. I’m keeping an eye on my nuts though.