Well, let's see. So far today, I've...

...processed buckets of edits for Discount Armageddon, which I'm planning to get back to work on real soon now. I spent a few hours last night picking stealthcello's brain about competition-level ballroom and tango dancing (hint: it's complicated stuff), and I now feel much more equipped to write the next chapter, which involves an Argentine tango competition, Verity in a very skimpy dress, and, yes, knives. Almost any chapter that involves Verity involves knives. She's comfortably predictable that way.

...received a new blurb for Rosemary and Rue, resulting in squealing and jubilation. I am so seriously stoked about the blurbs I've managed to collect so far, all of which are wonderful and perfect and totally different. It's like kittens. No two kittens are alike, but as soon as they're your kittens, they become the most magical, wonderful things ever to wander across the face of the planet. I like kittens.

...also received the second icon and first wallpaper for the Rosemary and Rue promo set. All icons and wallpapers in this set are being designed by the ineffable taraoshea, who is really a goddess of graphic design. I am totally ecstatic, and can't wait to make them public for your enjoyment and (hopeful) use. Remember, nothing says 'love' like a blood-drenched San Francisco skyline!

...packed all pending pre-orders through 190, and signed and numbered through 200. So there's a max of 100 CDs left to go (I'm still taking increasingly mis-named 'pre-orders' via the website, because it's all about paying my engineer). If I finish the list before hitting 300, we'll just close out the pre-order run early, thus making the numbers even more surreal in future years. (Also creating the opportunity for funny, funny hoaxes on the part of inventive people with pens and copies of my CD.)

...watched two more episodes of my crazy Australian mermaid show.

What's up with you?

So I haven't been posting many word counts recently -- not, as one person jokingly asked, because I've given up writing in favor of playing Kingdom Hearts for the fifteenth time, but because I've entered one of those phases where the word counts are somewhat less quantifiable. If I start out with a file containing 50,000 words, and finish with a file containing 51,000 words, I've clearly written 1,000 words, right? Well, what if, in the process of working that day, I deleted an entire chapter, replaced it with a new chapter, and rewrote three fight sequences? I actually wrote 11,000 words. My net gain, however, is 1,000. And how do you measure revisions? Sometimes I'll spend six hours of quality time with a manuscript and a machete, and come away bleeding, grinning, and down a couple of thousand words. Negative word counts seem a little silly in that situation. I wind up just waving my hands around in the air and saying, blankly, 'lots.'

I've actually been busting ass around here lately. Discount Armageddon got a whole new first chapter, as did Late Eclipses of the Sun; in the case of Discount Armageddon, the original first chapter stayed on as the new second chapter, but in the case of Late Eclipses, well...kill your darlings. I've said it often enough that I really do need to learn how to live by it. I've also done some serious restructuring on the rest of Discount Armageddon, making it tighter, leaner, and much more prepared to dance the samba all over whatever happens to get in its way.

Late Eclipses is going through a similar, but much more dramatic, series of restructurings; several large swaths of the book are being tossed out the window and completely rewritten, including, so far, the original chapters one and two. (One of the other things I say way too often to plead ignorance: the author can be wrong, and that's what rewrites are for.) The story is still essentially the same, it's just getting tighter and more directed in the things that it's saying. That, and I'm slaughtering a lot of wishy-washy modifiers. They're like kittens -- one is awesome, thirty is a crazy cat lady.

I'm just about finished working on Discount Armageddon for a little while, since it's a busy book with places to go and people to see. This is going to mean the return of the word counts for The Mourning Edition, as I get back to work on my favorite zombie universe, and probably the beginning of the editorial revisions on An Artificial Night.

In short, even when it looks like I'm goofing off and having fun with art supplies, I'm working too much to sleep.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee.

And now, my third set of art cards. The thing about art cards is that they're small. So going end-to-end on one of them is a matter of an hour, tops, and that assumes I can't find the colors that I want in the big bucket of markers, or that something got screwed up somewhere, or that my TV show got really interesting all of a sudden. So I just keep doing more of these. (In the meanwhile, I've also totally rewritten Discount Armageddon. Let's see if anyone notices.) Anyway, here's the next set of six art cards. Again, clicking the graphic will take you to the larger version.



From top to bottom, left to right, you have my second Grants Pass art card, featuring my protagonist, Mercy Neely; a random picture of me (as drawn for my ongoing comic strip) with a pumpkin; a set of three cards modeled around Jim Hines's The Stepsister Scheme (my mother asked me to, and I tend to try to keep her happy), and my third Discount Armageddon/InCryptid art card, introducing another of our major cryptid races.

My next set of six art cards is finished, and will be scanned tomorrow, or possibly Wednesday in-between 'getting home from work' and 'running for the airport.' Either way, I'm busting ass to get things done around here before it's off into the wild blue yonder, and back to Seattle.

Excelsior!

It turns out that marker coloring while watching television is just as mindlessly soothing as inking and penciling. Who knew? (Well, actually, I did, from the last time I decided to play around with my vast collection of markers. Which I expanded by twelve over the past few days, thanks to Prismacolor releasing several new colors over the past year. Damn you, Prismacolor. Damn you.) Anyway, here's the second set of six art cards. Again, clicking the graphic will take you to the larger version.



From top to bottom, left to right, you have my first Upon A Star art card, with Corey in Babylon Archer mode, my first Discount Armageddon/InCryptid series art card (hi, Verity!), my second Toby art card, a random drawing of me with velociraptors, my second InCryptid art card, and my second Velveteen art card. This one's for the ladies -- ACTION DUDE and THE CLAW!

I have several more cards finished, but scanning only in sets of six makes sense and saves time, so I'm going to stick with that for now. The hardest part of this batch was Corey's hair, since my henna Prismacolor decided to start dying in the middle, and I had to color most of her with the broad end. I think some of these may wind up getting sold off to pay my art supply bills. Yeesh.

In other news, it's been a busy day.

10. I appear to have started doing art cards. (Because, as Brooke said, I need something to do with all that spare time that I had just lying around.) For those of you who are unfamiliar with the art card 'concept,' they're little pieces of original artwork, done on 2.5"x3.5" cards. Mine are Micron and Prismacolor on bristol paper. I've done three so far, one to go with Grants Pass, one to go with Ravens in the Library, and one of Velveteen and Sparkle Bright during their first year with the JSP. I figure I'll use them as book giveaways. Right now, they're just being colorful and soothing; two things that I need more of in my life.

9. My reboot on Late Eclipses of the Sun appears to have done exactly what I was hoping it would do; the new first chapter is about ten times stronger, faster, better, and generally bionic in all possible regards. Now I'm working on the revisions to chapter two, just to really lock down the changes to the continuity, and once that's done, I can start processing my editor's notes on An Artificial Night. I'm spending so much time with Toby these days that we should really start charging her rent, I swear.

8. I write more poetry than is strictly healthy, sometimes in batches of two to five hundred poems at a time. (These batches are called 'Iron Poet' rounds, and are a variation on a standard writer's workshop exercise. They make me happy. I may be crazy.) I managed to write five poems yesterday, including a counted devan (although I skipped the internal rhymes on the zipper, because I didn't feel like giving myself a migraine) and a counted technical terza rima. Take that, everyone who said there was no use for structured poetry in the modern world!

7. My story in Ravens In the Library is getting an accompanying illustration. This is...this is amazing. Not just because the illustration itself is amazing -- I saw the sketch, and it is -- but because I didn't expect an illustration at all. It made me cry. More and more, I begin to believe that 2009 is the universe giving me one big incredible birthday present.

6. It's not entirely visible to the naked eye, but my website continues to creep closer and closer to being entirely done. We should be getting the first few essays up there soon, and Chris is working on the functionality that will allow me to update and edit the front page all on my lonesome. Meanwhile, Tara works secretly behind the scenes on Wonderful Surprises that only a golden graphics girl could possibly provide. Prepare to be amazed.

5. I get to spend the weekend working on Discount Armageddon! (Quoth Dan: "I don't know anybody who gets as excited about being told what to work on as you do.") I love deadlines, I love directions, and I love Verity. She's so happy to see you. And so happy to kick you in the head. Pleasantly, I just put together my Verity playlist last night, consisting almost entirely of dance music and things with a BPM of over 120. Because Verity just looooooves the beat, yo.

4. It's new comic book day! Always the most wonderful day of the week. At least in theory -- other days are sometimes surprisingly awesome.

3. All my television is coming back on the air. I'm a huge TV freak. It's what lets me decompress after a hard day of working and writing and worrying about working and writing; it's also what I do with the other half of my concentration when I'm inking. (Most of the shows I watch are more verbal than visual, and have clear cues when I actually need to be paying attention to the screen.) I really appreciate the fact that the things I watch are staggered enough to make sure I almost always have something new.

2. This time next week, I will be heading for the airport, heading for the sky, and heading for Seattle, baby.

...and the number one good thing about today...

1. Oasis just called me, and THE CDS ARE DONE!!!!! They're mailing them out from the Oasis warehouse today, and they should supposedly hit my doorstep on Friday. This gives me time to actually arrange for CDs to reach Seattle, prep the first batch of pre-orders to mail out (probably the first twenty or so, more if I can possibly swing it), and generally get my hysteria out of the way. It also gives me time to use the CD boxes to build myself a little fort and crawl inside it to hide from the universe.

What's new and awesome in the world of you?

And now it's time for the very first 2009 installment of my monthly current projects listing, the post where I make it cheerfully apparent that I do not actually ever sleep. Please note that the first three Toby books are currently off this list, as they have been fully turned-in to DAW; the next input I'm gonna have will come with the ARCs. Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching. Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues is also off the list; it's under review with my agent, and is thus not being actively worked on. Newsflesh is off the list because it's being shopped, and that means I essentially can't have any contact with it until the process is done. I miss you, baby!

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have dinosaurs and zombies to keep me company.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out!Collapse )

Well, what happened around here in 2008? Let's see...

1) I signed with the eternally delightful dianafox, who has shown a remarkable capacity for taking the things I say (some of which make very little sense, filtered as they are through my sunshine-and-zombies Pollyanna worldview) and doing something functionally useful with them. Everybody needs a personal superhero.

2) I started this journal. Because everybody needs their sunshine-and-zombies updates as regularly as possible. No, seriously. How can you know what's happening in their magical playland if somebody isn't making a point of telling you on a regular basis?

3) I arranged to have my website fully revamped, thanks to the design talents of taraoshea and the technical can-do of porpentine. Now it's glorious, it's gorgeous, and it's changing pretty much daily as we hammer the text into place and start getting the various sections hammered into their desired configurations. Which matters because...

4) I sold the first three Toby Daye books to DAW! Yes! Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, and An Artificial Night have all been sold, after so many years in my head that it's really not even all that funny. Soon, the world will understand why I love these people so much. I hope.

5) I finished writing or revising six books in 2008. The three mentioned above, along with Late Eclipses of the Sun (Toby, book four), Newsflesh (The Masons, book one), and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues (Coyote Girls, book one). So that's, y'know. Pretty productive of me.

6) I started work on three more books -- The Mourning Edition (sequel to Newsflesh), The Brightest Fell (Toby, book five), and Discount Armageddon (InCryptid, book one).

7) I recorded an album. Scaaaaaary. You can still place pre-orders for Red Roses and Dead Things at my website. I promise that it will be awesome. And filled with corpses.

So it's been a huge, exciting, amazing year, and next year is just going to be a bigger, more exciting, more amazing year. Thanks for being here, and I really can't wait to see what happens next.

It's time for the December installment of 'Seanan's current projects,' the post where I cheerfully make it clear that I actually exist inside a quantum singularity that adds extra hours to my day. Please note that the first three Toby books are currently off this list, as they have been fully turned-in to DAW; the next input I'm gonna have will come with the ARCs. Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching. Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues is also off the list; it's under review with my agent, and is thus not being actively worked on. (Amusingly enough, Newsflesh was off November's list because it was under review, and is off December's list because it's now ready to begin the shop process.)

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have dinosaurs and zombies to keep me company.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out!Collapse )

And now, the November installment of 'Seanan's current projects,' the post where I explain why I have no social life to speak of right now! Please note that the first three Toby books are currently off this list, as they have been fully turned-in to DAW; the next input I'm gonna have will come with the ARCs. Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching. Newsflesh and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues are also off the list; they're under review with my agent, and are thus not being actively worked on.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. I have dinosaurs and zombies to keep me company.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out!Collapse )

Current stats:

Words: 543.
Total words: 24,011.
Reason for stopping: finished chapter seven.
Music: lots of things on random shuffle.
Lilly: dead to the world.

Five hundred words feels a bit, well, anti-climactic, but since it brings me to the end of chapter seven, I figure I won't complain too hard. This book is currently spec-ed out as coming in somewhere in the 80,000 to 100,000 word range, so I'm very close to being a quarter of the way there no matter what yardstick I'm using. Yippee!

Writing a book is a lot like riding a roller coaster. Sometimes it goes so fast that you're barely aware of what's happening until you're going 'wait, did we just...?', and other times, you're trundling slowly up the track, totally in the moment, just waiting for the plummeting to start. Right now, I'm about two-thirds of the way up the first of the book's really high hills, and I think there's probably a corkscrew waiting at the bottom.

I can hardly wait.

Current stats:

Words: 3,200.
Total words: 23,468.
Reason for stopping: it's time for bed.
Music: the new We're About 9 album.
Lilly: in my lap, like a big fuzzy sausage that purrs.

I feel like I've been horribly neglecting this book as Late Eclipses of the Sun and the setup for The Brightest Fell devour my brain. At the same time, slipping back into Verity's world is like putting on a pair of well-loved fuzzy slippers. Fuzzy slippers that may decide to digest my feet and lay eggs in my chest cavity, but still, fuzzy slippers.

Oh, and since the last time I posted a word count, I didn't know the name of the third Verity book yet, here you go: Professional Goreography. (Yes, the second word of that title is pronounced to sound like 'choreography.') It's possibly my worst book title pun yet, and that's saying a lot coming from the author of Newsflesh.

I am now at the point where my plot is driving the situation, rather than my need to introduce characters and setting driving the situation. I love that particular click-over moment in my books. (There are books where situation is in the driver's seat from page one -- Upon A Star anyone? -- but I usually go for the slower build. It's more satisfying.)

I am a happy kitty.

Dear Great Pumpkin;

I have been a very good girl since last Halloween. I have given cookies and candy and cake to people who needed them. I have been kind to spiders. I have revered the pumpkin in all its forms. I have not drowned anyone in a well. I have not unleashed an army of the living dead, obedient to my every whim, and commanded them to destroy all that which might oppose me. Also, I have not called down the pandemic. So clearly, I have spent the entire year on my very best behavior.

This year, Great Pumpkin, I am asking for the following gifts:

* Awesome cover art. Please, Great Pumpkin, make sure that the cover art for Rosemary and Rue is made entirely of wonderful, and save me from the terrible specter of the bimbo on the cover of my book. (To quote the Bohnhoffs: “She is sultry, she is sexy, she is nowhere in the text, she is the bimbo on the cover of my book.”) I have great faith in my cover artist and my publisher, but it never hurts to plead for supernatural aid from the most superior of all squash.

* A fantastic convention season. I’m going to be the Music Guest of Honor at Duckon, Great Pumpkin, and Jim Butcher is going to be the Author Guest of Honor. Please help me to be the very best Disney Halloween Princess that I can possibly be, and smite those things which might attempt to oppose me. Please assist me in winning the hearts of all those who meet me, and all me to position myself well for a best-selling novel. Also, please make sure there’s edible food within walking distance of the convention hotel.

* The perfect kittens. My oldest cat is very old, Great Pumpkin, and in the interests of keeping my younger cat from going insane, I am in the market for Siamese kittens. I am looking for a chocolate and a lilac, both Classic, both with the sweet temper and massive size that I associate with the breed. They need to be sturdy, or Lilly will devour them while I sleep, and that will both make me sad and force me to go looking for new kittens. I don’t have time to go through this twice, so please help me get it right the first time.

* Quick, successful sale of the InCryptid series, wherein the various members of the Price family alternately protect and pummel cryptid ass for the sake of the ecological balance of the planet. If you give me this, Great Pumpkin, I promise to find a way to work you into the narrative, either as a benevolent protector of the pumpkin patch, or as a destroyer of the weak. The choice is entirely yours. Also, if you can, could you make sure the contract is for the first four? Because I really want an excuse to write them all.

* Happiness for my entire family, including my recently-married baby sister and her wife. I am very tired of people trying to say that my baby sister’s marriage is in some way dangerous, Great Pumpkin. She’s happy for the first time, and it’s wonderful to watch, and if anything, her joy is a testament to why people get married at all, not a sign of the marital apocalypse. Please make the stupid go away, Great Pumpkin, so we can all stay happy.

* An army of velociraptors, genetically-engineered to obey only my commands, and equipped with lasers on their forearms. I promise I will only use them to bring glory to your name, Great Pumpkin, and that I will leave enough of the world’s population alive to properly honor you on the next Halloween.

I remain your faithful Halloween girl,
Seanan.

Current stats:

Words: 3,598.
Total words: 20,268.
Reason for stopping: the end of chapter six is ours.
Music: lots of Broadway musicals.
Lilly: sacked out on the bed with her head on my planner.

Woo! Forward momentum! Late Eclipses of the Sun is eating the bulk of my attention right now -- to the point where look, it's even getting mentioned in the word count post for a book from a completely different series -- but I'm really glad I blocked off today for working on Discount Armageddon, because wow, does Verity improve my outlook on life. She's refreshingly blunt, and just so much fun to play with.

My cast is still fresh and new to me, so it's awesome watching the way that they react to various situations. Yes, I'm setting up a series, but the world is entirely shiny and new, and allows me to do whatever I darn well want with it. Yippee!

Because I've been asked: yes, this is an ongoing series, but it's structured to allow for natural stopping points every two or three books. The first two books focus on Verity, and are Discount Armageddon and the followup, Midnight Blue-Light Special. The third Verity book will be number five in the series, and doesn't have a name yet.

Whee!

And now, the October installment of 'Seanan's current projects,' the post where I explain why I have no social life to speak of right now! (Says the woman who's about to go to Alabama for a weej.) Please note that the first three Toby books are currently off this list, as they have been fully turned-in to DAW; the next input I'm gonna have will come with the ARCs. Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching. Newsflesh and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues are also currently off the list; they're under review with my agent, and are thus not being actively worked on.

The cut-tag is here to stay, because no matter what I do, it seems like this list just keeps on getting longer. But that's okay, because at least it means I'm never actively bored. Because, I have dinosaurs and zombies to keep me company.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out!Collapse )

Look what the amazing, fantabulous, incredible Amy Mebberson made for me! (PS: You totally want to track down and buy her comic book, Divalicious. I'll review it properly when I have time, but for right now, it's two volumes -- a mere twenty dollars! -- of sheer awesome, incredibly well-drawn, and fully rockin'.) But anyway:



That's Verity Price, front and center, looking like she's about to go and kick some serious cryptid butt. The three women behind her are the three generations that came before her. In red, plaid, and a rather rabid expression (she has grenades), we have her grandmother, Alice. In green, curls, and a deceptively placid expression (she has grenades, too), we have her great-grandmother, Fran. And in yellow, ruffles, and a manic grin (her husband has grenades, she has an army of devoted followers), we have her mother, Evelyn.

Did I mention that the cast of InCryptid is sort of scary?

Art is awesome.

So periodically, I spend time thinking about the best of all possible worlds -- I call it the world of sunshine and rainbows and zombie ponies, where it occasionally rains candy corn -- and what I'd like to have someday happen there. Beyond the million-dollar book deal, the New York Times best seller, and the death of the previously unknown, fabulously rich relative who leaves me the deed to his sprawling Victorian estate, I mean. Being an enormous comic book geek, I've actually considered who, in my perfect world, would get the chance to adapt my books. And because I'm a nice person, I thought I'd share.

Upon A Star should absolutely be adapted by Amy Mebberson (As If!, Divalicious, my princess icon). Not only is she a joy to work with, but her particular blend of gonzo-Disney and manga-inspired comic layouts would be absolutely perfect for illustrating the story of Corey Markham, accidental teen queen. It would rock my world in the most thorough of manners.

Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues would ideally be adapted by Chynna Clugston (Blue Monday), whose Archie-gone-wrong approach would be fantastic applied to Clady and company. Given Clady's horror movie fixation, having a slightly comic edge to the illustrations would keep things from getting too-too-bloody. Plus, Chyna draws awesome plaid. Plaid is key.

Now that I've had the silly, let's have the sublime: I would absolutely love to have Discount Armageddon (and sequels) adapted by Carla Speed McNeil (Finder, Mystery Date). Who else could do proper justice to a large colony of pantheistic demon mice? Or to the various cryptids and horrible things that litter Verity's world? She'd be totally ideal. If you don't believe me, check out Finder and be enlightened.

Newsflesh owes a lot to Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan, which was the work that introduced me to the idea of gonzo journalism (and unlocked a whole new world of possibilities). So I would totally want Darick Robertson, the man who drew Spider Jerusalem and company, to be the one to handle bringing the Masons into an illustrated universe. It would be insane. Insanely awesome.

Toby is the series I have the most time, energy, and love invested in; I guess that means it would naturally be the hardest to select someone for. After a lot of angst and waffling, I'm going to say Pia Guerra (Y: the Last Man) probably comes the closest to what I see inside my head. Although I could be totally wrong. I don't know. It'd make a gorgeous comic, but only if drawn right.

What works, of your own or other people's, would you like to see in comic form? And who would you want to see behind the pencil? Rock me.

Current stats:

Words: 3,797.
Total words: 16,670.
Reason for stopping: chapter five is closed and done.
Music: mostly salsa music, actually.
Lilly: sacked out on the bed.

I've managed to break fifty pages (and then some -- the book is currently at sixty-one pages), introduce pretty much all my major characters and supporting family members, work in several scenes involving hyperactive religious mice, and drop Verity off several buildings. (This statement is not really a spoiler, as dropping Verity off buildings is currently one of my favorite occupations. It's soothing.)

My mother thinks this series may be the best thing I've ever come up with. I blame this on the fact that she's a huge fan of several reality-based dance competitions, and I use a reality-based dance competition in the series. (Book five is actually set at a reunion of the cast from Verity's year. Yeah, it's already acquired a book five. Don't look at me like that.)

Next up, I start beating people about the head and shoulders with plot, and probably throw Verity off a few more buildings. Life is good.

Current stats:

Words: 3,893.
Total words: 12,873.
Reason for stopping: chapter four is ready to hit the dance floor.
Music: all Counting Crows, all day long.
Lilly: sound asleep on the filing cabinets.

The game's afoot, the gang's all here, and we've finally managed to break 10,000 words. I'm only two pages shy of breaking fifty pages, too, which is always an awesome feeling (second only to breaking a hundred -- every time a book reaches a hundred pages, I have the serious urge to throw a massive and debauched revel). I'm incredibly pleased with the way things are progressing, and I'm even managing to stick reasonably close to the series proposal outline. Which is something of a miracle.

Coming up with the bumper quotes that begin every chapter is far too much fun to be actually legal. They're just random little bits of 'family wisdom,' but they're awesome. The nice thing about bumper quotes is that as long as they fit the story and set the mood you're looking for, they don't have to flow; they're like darlings in amber, yours forever.

I estimate this book at two chapters from becoming substantially more difficult to write, as the heavy-duty plot kicks in, but it's all so much fun that I'm even looking forward to that.

As a rule, I'm working on a minimum of three projects at any given time. For 'working on,' read either 'writing' or 'seriously and intensively revising.' (There will usually be other projects overlapping, but they're generally the sort that require less constant attention -- processing light edits, outlining, setting up the continuity guide for a sequel.) Right now, those projects are Late Eclipses of the Sun (Toby four), The Mourning Edition (sequel to Newsflesh), and Discount Armageddon (Incryptid one). A month ago, they were Late Eclipses of the Sun, Newsflesh, and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues. What a difference a few weeks can make, huh?

I like working on multiple projects at the same time. When something is really on fire, I can buckle down and dig my heels in, and when everything is just chuckling along at a normal pace, it means I keep myself rotating so that nothing ever has the chance to get stale. I know something is going well when I start thinking about the next thing. I'm really comfortable inside a book when it's so familiar that it's practically transcription of things I already know, and that frees my mind to go pondering what happens next in the next thing in the cycle.

When I finished last week's chapter of The Mourning Edition, I was immediately thinking about a pacing problem in the last quarter of Late Eclipses, and finally figured out how it could be repaired. While I was dealing with Late Eclipses, I found myself thinking about Verity, and ways to keep things moving without losing the quixotic edge that makes her story so damn much fun to write. And now that I'm back on Discount Armageddon, I'm pondering what's going on in my happy zombie wonderland. As long as I know what happens next, my mind is free to roam, and the text is almost always the better for it.

People periodically ask me how I juggle things. It's one of those questions that sort of causes me to look blank and blink a lot, because I really just do. I write about as fast as I think, and I need to pause sometimes and think about what I'm going to do next; that's what the alternate projects are for. As for making sure each gets its fair share of my attention, well, that's why I keep to-do lists.

My week so far has looked like this:

MONDAY: Work on revisions to the end of Late Eclipses.
TUESDAY: Finish revisions to the end of Late Eclipses, process reader edits.
WEDNESDAY: Agent revisions to An Artificial Night, start on chapter four of Discount Armageddon.

Today, I'm finishing chapter four of Discount Armageddon, and tomorrow I'll be starting on the next chunk of The Mourning Edition, with a break to work on my story for Grant's Pass. My to-do lists are robust and sassy, and glad to assist me in making progress.

Life is good.

It's time for the September installment of 'Seanan's current projects,' the post where I explain what I'm working on and what its status happens to be! Please note that Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation have once again vanished from this list, as they have finished another stage in the revision process and been returned to DAW. The next input I'm gonna have will come with the ARCs. Ah, progress. It smells like fear. Newsflesh and An Artificial Night are also currently off the list; they're under review with my agent, and are thus not being actively worked on.

The cut-tag endures, because this list is getting slowly longer and longer. This is a natural consequence of living inside my head, where the darkness is. The darkness and the pumpkin pie and the bats. The bats have plague, by the way.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out!Collapse )

Current stats:

Words: 3,130.
Total words: 8,980
Reason for stopping: chapter three is in the can!
Music: weird covers and We're About 9, alternating.
Lilly: standing guard by my chair.

Everybody dance now! No, seriously. With chapter three in the can, I'm getting a firm handle on my world, my situation, and best of all, my main character. (Especially when writing a first book with a new POV person, I can take a few chapters to really figure out what I'm doing. Which is what the second draft is for, obviously.)

Can I just note that this book is so damn fun to write? It should probably be criminal for me to spend this much time giggling to myself, and it's not just because of the mice. Also, it's a great excuse to go mucking happily around in cryptid biology. I am a very happy blonde right now.

I will now go eat tuna fish, watch television, and relax, all bathed in righteousness and glory.

Current stats:

Words: 5,750.
Total words: 5,750.
Reason for stopping: I finished chapter two.
Music: the soundtrack to Weird Romance.
Lilly: standing guard by my chair.

I basically reset the word counter, because I had to rip up and re-do everything after I realized that I had started this book from the wrong point of view. Lots and lots and lots of work. On the other hand? The book is awesome now. First draft awesome, which means it's all going to change, and in six months I'll look back on this post and be all 'what were you smoking?' at myself, but still, I can see that it is awesome, and that it has the potential to rock my tiny world.

Every chapter begins with a little quote from one of the members of the extended family -- and it's very, very extended; I have four generations totally mapped, with options on generations five and six -- to sort of give you an idea of what sort of upbringing our dear Very is the product of. I love the book, but these quotes may be my favorite part. Well, those, and the mice.

So the first two chapters are now out for review, and I'm going to return to somewhat more pressing pursuits, like processing edits for Late Eclipses of the Sun and Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues and The Mourning Edition and dear gods, I am clearly an android. But I'm a happy android. I have introduced people to Verity.

All good things will come from here.

1) Return home from work basically a walking swamp, due to the summer deciding to have one last party here in California. Collapse into desk chair and download heaping piles of edits rather than doing anything that actually requires coherent thought.

2) Add some pages to the new Toby Wiki, as this requires little more than cutting and pasting, at least for now. Later, this thing is going to require heaping piles of effort and thought, but right now? I cut, I paste, I format, I get bored, I wander away to do something else.

3) Perform major surgery on Late Eclipses of the Sun, slicing the events of chapter three into four equal chunks and stapling them together in a new order before covering the scars with sticky tape and glue. Discover that the chapter is way, way better this way. Grumble.

4) Try to explain the continuity changes to the cat. The cat fails to care.

5) Send the new version of Late Eclipses to my proofing list. Get antsy. Start transitioning Discount Armageddon from third person to first person. Again, discover that the text is way, way better this way. Orders of magnitude better. 'There is no possible way you were wrong about the POV change' better. Grumble more.

6) Process some minor edits to Late Eclipses, including one that points out the fact that there is no such date as April 31st.

7) Decide to go watch Eureka with the cat.

Current stats:

Words: 3,080.
Total words: 4,195.
Reason for stopping: I finished chapter one.
Music: weird covers and salsa music, mostly.
Lilly: asleep in the bed.

Good news: I have finished the first chapter of Discount Armageddon, part one in the story of Verity 'Very' Price, possibly the world's only professional salsa dancer-slash-cryptozoologist (which is a combination that very rarely comes up on Craig's List). Chapter one of a brand new book, all finished and shiny!

Bad news: Yeah, I totally wrote that from the wrong POV. I was trying to experiment with actually writing a book in the third person for a change, and while that's an awesome goal that will one day be accomplished -- probably with Nativity of Chance -- this is not the book to accomplish it with. Just for giggles, I translated a few paragraphs from third person to first person, and was suddenly handed a great big bucket of awesome. Let that be a lesson to me.

Good news: I figured out what I was doing wrong after 4,000 words, not 40,000 words, and with me, that's always a bit of a risk. So while I'm going to have to do a lot of revision and rewriting and reframing, it's going to be a lot lighter and less painful than it might otherwise have been. Again, this is the good news part of our program.

Bad news: The fact that I need to do this at all is going to set me back several days in my overly-ambitious personal timeline. But again, that's okay; it means I won't get another fifty pages of text finished and wind up going 'aw, shit' as I'm forced to tear it all out and throw it all away. Flashbacks and prior-to-current-generation material remains third person, everything else, going straight to first.

And that's a wrap.

(For purposes of this post, 'post-weekend' means 'Thursday night to now.')

Well, things continue to be hectic around here, which is exactly how I like them, so I really can't complain. Since Thursday, I have...

* Finished the initial revisions on Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues. This was draft one-and-a-half, to let me fix all the continuity glitches and authorial stupid that had managed to creep in around the edges; now I'm ready to kick off draft two, during which I'll lose 10% of my hard-earned word count and hit all my characters repeatedly with a hammer. Because that's social. I'm feeling super-good about this book, and I love, love, love the fact that it's finally, blessedly finished.

* Purchased tickets to head for Seattle for my first pre-Conflikt rehearsal. Conflikt is the Pacific Northwest's own filk convention, and I'm going to be their Guest of Honor in 2009 (it's a January convention). I'm super-excited, but I'm also super-nervous. Rehearsal will make the nervousness become less while the excitement becomes more. It's a match made in heaven. Plus I get to hang out with all my awesome Seattle area friends, and that never fails to make me happy.

* Processed a bucketload of edits on Late Eclipses of the Sun, aka, 'Toby Daye book four,' aka, 'Seanan, if you just sold the first three, what the hell is wrong with you that you're working on the fourth one already?!' OCD cat is working marginally ahead of the curve, yo. OCD cat is also endlessly amazed by the editing process, because, well...I'm a pretty good author. I think I can say that without bragging, since, y'know, sold the trilogy and all. But give me a bunch of good proofreaders with machetes, and things become amazing. I'm watching this book just get better and better, and it's incredible.

* Finished the third chapter of The Mourning Edition, bringing me one step closer to world domination through zombies. I like world domination through zombies. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

* Entered about ten pages of data into my Toby Continuity Wiki, where it gleams in hyperlinked, clickable glory, thrilling my OCD heart to no end. It's gorgeous. I'm trying not to think about the part where it's the beginning of several hundred cumulative hours of work, because it really is going to make my life infinitely easier, and just dwell on the part where it's gorgeous.

* Started Discount Armageddon, book one of the Price series. Because I know you're gonna say it anyway, say it with me now: CHEESE! AND! CAKE! Also, ballroom dancing, snarky chameleon girls in fancy hotels, apartments sublet from Yeti, and La Parkour. It's good at be this kind of crazy.

My weekend was awesome. How was yours?

Current stats:

Words: 1,115.
Total words: 1,115.
Reason for stopping: I had to go to my epidural.
Music: the Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors.
Lilly: sacked out in my lap.

Please note the lovely new icon. What does the lovely new icon mean? The lovely new icon means there's a lovely new book in the neighborhood, kicking ass and taking names. And doing it in high heels roughly half the time, mind you. Meet Verity 'Very' Price, the eldest girl in the current generation of a family of cryptozoologists working to protect the cryptids of North America from mankind -- and mankind from them.

Discount Armageddon is the first of two books to feature Verity. The second is Midnight Blue-Light Special, but that is, thankfully, some distance in the future. Anyway, a thousand words is a drop in the bucket, but it's a drop that gives me something to work from, and more, it's letting me test my footing in this new universe. The only people on-screen so far are Very and the mice, and that's more than enough for the moment. Besides, the mice can take up a lot of screen.

Verity Price. Kicking cryptid ass with ballroom dance so you don't have to.

It's time for the August installment of 'Seanan's current projects,' the post where I explain what I'm working on and what its status happens to be! Please note that Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation have once again vanished from this list, as they have finished another stage in the revision process and been returned to DAW. The next input I'm gonna have will come with the ARCs. Ah, progress. It smells like fear.

The cut-tag endures, because this list is getting slowly longer and longer. This is a natural consequence of living inside my head, where the darkness is. The darkness and the pumpkin pie and the bats. The bats have plague, by the way.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out!Collapse )

It's time for the July installment of 'Seanan's current projects,' the post where I explain what I'm working on and what its status happens to be! Please note that Rosemary and Rue and A Local Habitation have returned to this list after a brief vacation, because they've finished their initial review at DAW and are now entering the glorious revision process. Ah, progress. It smells like fear.

Also, this time we're cut-tagging, because the list has, as is so often the case with me, managed to get longer. My brain, ladies and gentlemen. Nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live here.

( What's Seanan working on now? Click to find out!Collapse )