Well, here we go: the final current projects post of 2009. When next I prove that I don't sleep, it will be 2010, the last year of the first decade of the new century. It's a little boggling to realize that, well, I just frittered away an entire year, measured out in coffee spoons and word counts. And now here we are again. This post and its kin are the reason I scream like a lingerie-clad blonde in a horror movie every time someone asks me "What are you working on?" The answer takes too long to actually deliver. Anyway, this is the December list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first four Toby books are off this list, because they have been finished and turned in. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. You can pre-order A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. An Artificial Night and Late Eclipses are off the list until The Editor tells me otherwise.

The first Newsflesh book, Feed, is off the list because it has been turned in to The Other Editor. Not only that, but my page proofs have been finished and returned. You'll see this bad boy again when it comes rolling off the presses! Discount Armageddon is off the list because the first draft has been finished, and it'll be a little bit before revisions start.

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 horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

Words: 4,297.
Total words: 81,336.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter fifteen.
Music: Moxy Fruvous.
Lilly and Alice: waiting for me to go to bed.

So I finally broke 80,000 words. In a very short period of time, I will break three hundred manuscript pages (the current manuscript paginates to two hundred and seventy-eight pages). Again going by Feed as my benchmark for "this is how long books in this series will trend," I have less than half the book left to go. I'm looking at about 45,000 to 50,000 more words, to say and do and accomplish everything that's left to say and do and accomplish.

Yes, I can do it.

Yes, it's going to hurt.

Yes, I set a very high bar for myself with Feed...but I think I can actually reach that bar again, with this book. Because some of the places it's going are painful as hell, and with something like this, that's a damn good sign.

Now we must rinse.

Words: 6,418.
Total words: 77,039.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter fourteen, time to work on my page proofs.
Music: Eddie From Ohio.
Lilly and Alice: warming my feet.

What does a two hundred page zombie novel do to its author? Anything it wants. I swear, working on this book is like riding a roller coaster with no brakes. The ride operators are evil clowns, and if I sleep, they'll eat me. I get up, go to work, write on the train. Get off work, go home, write on the train. I feel like I'm in a foot race with my own brain. But I really like what's coming out on the other end; it could definitely be worse.

I did the math today, and realized that I'll only have fifty-nine days between the release of A Local Habitation and the release of Feed. That's nowhere near long enough. That's all the time in the world. So in the interests of only going a little crazy during that narrow window, I'm slamming through Blackout as fast as I can without losing my footing, and I'm enjoying every second of this crazy ride.

Plus it's an excuse to contact scientists and ask them horrible questions.

My baby is turning into a real live book, with a real live plot and real live problems, and I couldn't be happier.

Words: 7,217.
Total words: 70,621.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter thirteen. BEHOLD MY PROGRESS!
Music: the Food Network. We all have our process, right?
Lilly and Alice: flanking me here on the couch.

Deadline is now two hundred and forty-four manuscript pages long, which means I'm trucking right along. (Sadly, I'm less excited about potentially hitting three hundred pages than I am about my increasing proximity to 100,000 words. This is because I am a very simple creature in some ways.) I managed to finish one of my favorite action sequences, and now I'm poised to go rocketing into the next stage of the book: blowing more things up. I'm a big, big fan of blowing things up.

Looking at the manuscript for Feed, I'm right around halfway through the first draft. This is a little behind where I'd be if I hadn't been seized with the sudden burning need to finish Discount Armageddon, but a) I'm still on track to finish the first draft by the end of January, assuming I can stick to my daily assigned word counts (without getting sidetracked by another ambush novel), and b) I'm still not sorry, since rather than having two unfinished novels driving me crazy, I now have one unfinished novel driving me crazy, and that leaves me with a lot more sane to aim at the book in question. (The Brightest Fell doesn't count, it exists in its own separate partition of my brain.)

I'm really excited with where this book is going, and not just because there are zombies and lots of lovely excuses to blow things up and talk about viruses and have I mentioned recently that I completely adore this universe? Because I do. I adore this universe. I am the happiest zombie princess.

Alive or dead, the truth won't rest. Rise up while you can.

First off, I apologize profusely for the lateness of this month's current projects post. While my self-imposed schedule may not matter to most, I know it matters to some, and I know that my current projects update is due on the ides of every given month. I plead jetlag and exhaustion, and will attempt to make up for it by...well, largely by demonstrating, once again, that I am not a huge fan of either free time or sleep. This post and its kin are the reason I start to twitch like a tarantula riding a record player every time someone asks me "What are you working on?" The answer takes too long to actually deliver. Anyway, this is the November list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first four Toby books are off this list, because they have been finished and turned in. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. You can pre-order A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. An Artificial Night and Late Eclipses are off the list until The Editor tells me otherwise.

The first Newsflesh book, Feed (formerly Newsflesh), is off the list because it has been turned in to The Other Editor. Not only that, but my page proofs have been finished and returned. You'll see this bad boy again when it comes rolling off the presses!

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 horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

As it is now the fifteenth of October, it is once again time for me to make my monthly current projects post. Some people measure out their lives with coffee spoons; I seem to have taken a slightly more masochistic approach. This post and its kin, by the by, are the reason that I burst into tears and flail around like a squid on an electrified floor every time someone asks me "What are you working on?" The answer just takes too long to actually deliver. Anyway, this is the October list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first four Toby books are off this list, because they have been finished and turned in. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. You can pre-order A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] now. An Artificial Night and Late Eclipses are off the list until The Editor tells me otherwise.

The first Newsflesh book, Feed (formerly Newsflesh), is off the list because it has been turned in to The Other Editor, and I won't see it again until the page proofs. Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching.

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 horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

Words: 6,598.
Total words: 63,304.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter twelve. Time for cold medication.
Music: depressing goth rock.
Lilly and Alice: both sacked out on the bed like plush toys.

Deadline is now two hundred and nineteen manuscript pages long. Can I get a "whoop-whoop" from the audience? Because as milestones go, "breaking two hundred pages" is one of the big, exciting ones. (One hundred pages; 50,000 words; two hundred pages; 100,000 words. You know. The big guns of post-zombie apocalypse manuscript goodness.) Also, I'm into the next internal Book, and I'm approaching one of my favorite set pieces for this volume. So it's been a good next installment, all things considered.

I'm currently shooting for a finished first draft manuscript by the end of January, and am planning to spend a goodly chunk of my holiday trip to Seattle wrestling with my happy little zombie apocalypse. I started—and finished—the first book at Tony's kitchen table; something about being in Seattle just makes me want to work with the Masons on a very deep and detailed level. I don't have a problem with that, especially since the first book, Feed, will be out next May, and it would be good to be hammering on book three before book one is on the shelves. This is the closest to deadline I've ever worked. (Yes, I realize that I still have buckets and acres of time available to me. I also realize that I am very tightly wound where deadlines are concerned.)

The more I work in this universe, the more I fall in love with it, and the happier I become that Newsflesh, unlike the Toby books, is genuinely a trilogy. Because I think these books would break my heart completely if I tried to push them much further than that.

Alive or dead, the truth won't rest. Rise up while you can.

Words: 4,416.
Total words: 56,706.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter eleven. Time for horror movies.
Music: oddly enough, lots of show tunes.
Lilly and Alice: lounging.

I sort of hate to stop where I'm stopping, because Deadline is currently one hundred and ninety-six manuscript pages long, and two hundred pages is another of those super-exciting milestones that I so enjoy. Ah, well. I know that I'll be able to hit it in chapter twelve, and I didn't sleep well last night, so my eyes are sort of crossing now. Continuing to work would be counter-productive, and I shall instead conclude my labors in triumph. I like triumph. It tastes of spending the evening watching shitty horror movies and eating tomato sandwiches.

Pacing is always interesting in the Mason books, because I'm combining a very medical thriller/science fiction plot with, well, zombie apocalypse and massive violence. I need to both make sure the "let's talk about droplet-based transmission" scenes don't dominate the book, and also make sure that I'm not writing a Michael Bay movie. (Not that there's anything wrong with Michael Bay. It's just that if I'm going to write a movie, I'd rather write a James Gunn movie, or maybe a John Carpenter movie. One of the good ones. Not Vampires.) It's a very delicate balance, and it sometimes takes me a little while to find my flow in a given chapter. Well, tonight, the flow was on.

Before it sounds like I'm getting too cocky, remember that the final manuscript for Feed came in at 145,000 words, roughly. So I'm only barely a third of the way there. And that's a good thing, because oh...

...you ain't seen nothing yet.

1. Sketched and started inking my third possible Borderlands bookmark. See, Borderlands Books in San Francisco does limited-edition bookmarks with interesting art on them, and—after my signing/book release party/circus sideshow earlier this month—they invited me to design one of the upcoming bookmarks. As is so often the case when I am paralyzed by choice, I said "screw it," and am doing multiple bookmark designs for them to choose from. The first one, involving clownfish mermaids, is completely done; the second, involving seahorse mermaids, is in rough pencils with some inks; now, so is the third, involving Allomai and a fuck-ton of ribbons. I find this soothing and infuriating and an excuse to buy more art supplies. Everybody wins.

2. Bought the new Kelley Armstrong book, Frostbitten. This was sort of a comedy of errors, since the guy at Borders hadn't put it on the shelves yet, but had put it on the "we're putting this on shelves" cart, which meant there were no copies in the back of the store. I eventually located the cart, thus locating my book, and money was exchanged, rather than bloodshed.

3. Read the new Kelley Armstrong book, Frostbitten. What? I read fast. Also, it was so awesome I couldn't put it down. I love Kelley Armstrong's work so much.

4. Watched the final episode of season three of Primeval, the second-to-last episode of season one of Warehouse 13, and two more of the audition episodes for the current season of So You Think You Can Dance. A few people have informed me that they don't believe I watch as much television as I say I do. To them I say: you're probably right. I think I watch substantially more.

5. Sort of accidentally knocked out a thousand words on Deadline, which will get included in the next word count post, because I'm feeling too lazy to bother with doing that much math right now.

How about you?

Words: 3,102.
Total words: 52,290.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter ten, I need to sleep.
Music: angry goth rock.
Lilly and Alice: sprawling on my bed like throw rugs.

It's time to get serious about Deadline, which is due at my publisher in June of 2010, and is only about halfway finished. Luckily for me (and for the way I work), eight months is both sufficient time to finish things cleanly, and sufficiently little time to feel like A Real-and-True Deadline, thus causing my good little girl "turn your homework in early" genes to kick all the way in. Ideally, I'll be most of the way clear of this book by Christmas, and be able to spend my holiday break sitting at Tony's kitchen table, doing cleanup and adjustment. Because that's just how we roll around here, yo.

Anyway, this installment marks two major milestones. First, the book is now more than 50,000 words long. Yay! 40,000 may be the point where a novella becomes a novel, but for me, 50,000 words has a strange, iconic power that I simply cannot deny. Second, the three volumes in the Newsflesh trilogy are novels divided internally into books. This installment marks the end of Blackout Book II (Vectors and Victims), and begins Book III (name to be disclosed when I decide which of the possible options it actually is). Feed is four books and a coda. Blackout is either going to be five books and a coda, or Book III is going to be extremely long. I don't know yet, and I'm really excited to find out.

I felt this book come all the way to life tonight. For a zombie novel, that's a good thing. The engine's on, and the car is purring.

Let's see what kind of damage we can do.

Beware the ides of...well, every month around here, since that's when I make my monthly current projects post. Since it is now September 15th, it's time for me to demonstrate once again that George R.R. Martin may not be your bitch, but I just may be. (This is also the post that explains why the question "What are you working on?" sometimes causes me to burst into tears and point vaguely toward my Livejournal, as if actually saying it out loud would break the spell, wake the princess, and call down the demons.) Anyway, this is the September list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first three Toby books are currently off this list, because they have been finished and turned in. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies] now. A Local Habitation will be returning to the list briefly in the near future, when my page proofs arrive, but will then be disappearing again to prepare for publication. The fourth Toby book, Late Eclipses, is off the list because it has been finished, and is in the hands of The Editor, having been formally sent the hell away.

The first Mason book, Feed (formerly Newsflesh), is off the list because it has been revised and turned in to The Other Editor. Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching.

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 horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

Words: 4,229.
Total words: 49,188.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter nine, time for Eureka.
Music: random shuffle, lots of Counting Crows.
Lilly and Alice: I'm really not sure, which makes me nervous.

I'm finally back to work on Blackout, which has been patiently waiting for me to finish with those silly fairies and come back to my beloved zombie apocalypse. Don't worry, baby, I didn't forget about you, I just needed to finish mopping up the release debris from Rosemary and Rue before I could pay the proper attention. Hopefully, tonight's dose of sweet love and mad virology has convinced you that my affections are still true.

I sort of wanted to keep going until I hit fifty thousand words, but the fact of the matter is, chapter nine is over, and chapter nine ends exactly when and where it needs to end. Anything more would just be word count for word count's sake, and that's not fair to anyone. Besides, my characters would kill me if I forced them to keep going right now.

I love my zombie distopia. I love the Masons. And I love Kellis-Amberlee.

I feel so good about this book right now.

It's the ides of August, which means it's time for my monthly current projects post, the post where I demonstrate that George R.R. Martin may not be your bitch, but I just may be. (Also the post that explains why the question "What are you working on?" sometimes causes me to burst into tears and point vaguely toward my Livejournal, as if actually saying it out loud would break the spell, wake the princess, and call down the demons.) Anyway, this is the August list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first three Toby books are currently off this list, as they have been fully turned-in to DAW. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies] on September 1st, 2009 (or pre-order it today). You can purchase A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies] on March 2nd, 2010 (or pre-order it today). Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching.

Late Eclipses is off the list because it has been finished, and is in the hands of The Editor, having been formally sent the hell away. Feed (formerly Newsflesh) is off the list because I somehow managed to do a full revision in the space of a month, and now just need to process some technical edits before sending it off to The Other Editor.

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 horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

I have become deeply grateful for my current projects posts. They may be an example of just how Type-A I really am, but they're incredibly easy to point people toward when they ask what I've been doing with myself, and they allow me to keep convincing myself that yes, in fact, I am making progress. Progress tastes like flailing. Flailing, and candy corn. Anyway, this is the July edition of my monthly list of current projects, because I am the gift that keeps on giving.

To quote myself, being too harried to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first three Toby books are currently off this list, as they have been fully turned-in to DAW. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies] on September 1st, 2009 (or pre-order it today). You can purchase A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies] on March 2nd, 2010 (or pre-order it today). Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching.

Late Eclipses is off the list because it has been finished, and is in the hands of The Agent, who won't give it back. Feed (formerly Newsflesh) is off the list because it is currently under review with my editor. It should be back on the list next month, now with bonus things I need to work 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 horror movies and terrible things from the swamp to keep me company.

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

Words: 4,937.
Total words: 44,959.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter eight finally accomplished.
Music: random shuffle and the book-specific playlist.
Lilly and Alice: on the bed, lazing about at an Olympic level.

Well, after another unplanned hiatus (this time sponsored entirely by the fourth Toby Daye book), a series sale (the Masons are coming to a bookstore near you!), and a name change (welcome to Blackout, formerly known as The Mourning Edition), I've managed to pass two fairly serious, fairly scary milestones.

Milestone #1: Chapter eight is finished, which means that things are about to start getting a lot more hectic and unsettling for my poor protagonists. Also, if this book follows the pattern set by the first one, this means I am close to a quarter of the way through the book. That's a pretty big deal.

Milestone #2: According to the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) Nebula rules, something is a novella right up until it hits 40,000 words and becomes a novel. By that definition, Blackout has ticked fully over into "novel" territory. Oh, it's a really short novel at the moment, and it doesn't actually have a complete plot...but it's a novel, not a novella, and it's just gaining steam from here. This is a book that's going places. Dark, scary, unsettling places. Luckily, the book has a chainsaw.

I am so excited, I can't even say.

Do you want to know how tired I am? I am so tired that I wrote a paragraph apologizing for not making this post on the fifteenth, like I normally do...before I checked the date and realized that it was the fifteenth of June right now. Isn't jet-lag awesome? In that way which is completely, totally, and utterly not even a tiny little bit? Anyway, this is the June edition of my monthly list of current projects, because I am your cat toy.

To quote myself, being too tired to say something new: "These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing."

Please note that the first three Toby books are currently off this list, as they have been fully turned-in to DAW. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies]on September 1st, 2009 (or pre-order it today). Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching. 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 and editorial revisions begin. 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 )

Hooray, hooray, the month of May—a month which has, thus far, seen me dash across the country to Michigan, finish a book, start revising two more, knock out a bunch of short fiction, and eat more tomatoes than anyone wants to believe. And now it's time for the May edition of my monthly list of current projects, because I like to make it obvious what I'm doing. These posts are labeled with the month and year, in case somebody eventually gets the crazy urge to timeline my work cycles (it'll probably be me). Behold the proof that I don't actually sleep; I just whimper and keep writing.

Please note that the first three Toby books are currently off this list, as they have been fully turned-in to DAW; more, the page proofs for Rosemary and Rue have been reviewed and returned, and I will never be allowed to change it again. You can purchase Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies]on September 1st, 2009 (or pre-order it today). Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching. Late Eclipses is off the list because it's under review with my agent. 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 )

The ides of the month are upon us once again, and that means it's time for the April edition of my monthly current projects listing. At least this time I haven't just staggered home after a whirlwind tour of New York, New Jersey, and the New Jersey Pine Barrens, which makes me marginally more linear. Marginally. Again, these posts are labeled with the month and year, just in case somebody wants to find a specific entry later on. Anyway, this is 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; depending on the timing of the proofs, they may or may not ever appear here again, since my window for any further revisions on my part will be very, very narrow. You can buy Rosemary and Rue [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxies]on September 1st, 2009 (or pre-order it today). Ah, progress. It smells like fear and uncontrollable twitching. Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues is off the list because 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 )

It's the fifteenth of March and I've just staggered home after a cross-country plane trip, which makes it the absolutely perfect time for the March edition of my monthly current projects listing. Again, these are labeled with the month and year, just in case somebody wants to find a specific post later on. Anyway, this is 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, and you'll be able to buy Rosemary and Rue on September 1st, 2009. 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 )

I am currently engaged in a truly fascinating dance of projects. I'm writing The Mourning Edition (sequel to Newsflesh) and Discount Armageddon (first of the Incryptid books). I'm doing a full revamp and revision of Late Eclipses of the Sun (October Daye, book four) at the same time, preparatory to getting back to work on The Brightest Fell (October Daye, book five). Each of these projects is filling an important niche in my mental ecosystem, since they're different enough that I don't get them confused, and they refresh me in different ways.

Right now, my writing regiment looks like this:

* Day one, revise/rewrite a chapter of Late Eclipses.
* Day two, start a chapter of The Mourning Edition.
* Day three, finish the chapter of The Mourning Edition, process edits on Late Eclipses.
* Day four, revise/rewrite a chapter of Late Eclipses.
* Day five, start a chapter of Discount Armageddon, process edits on The Mourning Edition.
* Day six, finish the chapter of Discount Armageddon, process edits on Late Eclipses.
* Day seven, revise/rewrite a chapter of Late Eclipses...

...and I bet you can catch the pattern from there. In amidst all this madness, I'm answering email, writing blog entries, finishing essays, doing book reviews, working on my website, detailing art cards, finishing comic strips, doing random pieces of promotional art, and, of course, sleeping. I've also been watching an average of twenty hours of television per week.

Yes, we think I steal time from a parallel dimension.

Writing something new is always exciting, but right now, it's the revision of Late Eclipses that really fascinates me. I have the shape of things entirely in place; I know who's where, when they get there, and what they need to do. Now I'm patching the logic problems, fixing the bits that seem out of character or don't make sense, and generally having a lovely time wading through my own world. (If it seems odd that I'd be having logic problems, consider the fact that by book four, I have roughly twelve hundred pages of continuity that needs to be acknowledged and worked with in order for things to make sense. It's both freeing and confining. Much like a really good corset, which gives you excellent support, but makes eating a big lunch a bad idea.)

A lot of things are coming clear to me as I work on this book, and I'm really starting to think that my second trilogy is going to be made of awesome. Which is good. I sort of lose the ability to gauge the quality of my own work after a certain number of revisions -- I don't see the clever, I just see the commas -- so I really enjoy these moments where I stop, and blink, and go 'hey, wait, this is good!'

Busy blonde is busy, but busy blonde is happy, and that helps a lot.

Words: 5,372.
Total words: 39,995.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter seven, head is spinning.
Music: random shuffle and the book-specific playlist.
Lilly: not entirely sure, which is a little worrisome.

After an unplanned hiatus sponsored entirely by the Toby Daye series, chapter seven of The Mourning Edition is finally finished. Take that, zombies! Take that, journalists! Take that, actual structured narrative! This was very soothing, once I managed to get back into the swing of things. I've been editing so much in 2009 that I've been doing very little 'new' writing, so it was nice to just spend a day chasing people with the living dead.

Like any good zombie adventure, The Mourning Edition occasionally has to slow down and take a deep breath before charging into the next glorious Guignol on the docket. This was one of the slower chapters, and while those can often be the most difficult to write -- oddly, it's easier to blow stuff up than it is to tell a story; perhaps this explains most summer blockbusters -- they're also the most gratifying to finish. I always feel like I've really moved things along with these pieces.

According to the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) Nebula rules, something is a novella right up until it hits 40,000 words and becomes a novel. By that definition, The Mourning Edition is about fifty-five words from leveling up again. I'm not going to mess with it tonight, however. I know when it's time to shut down and watch some Tales From the Darkside to celebrate.

We done good.

It's the fifteenth of February, which means it's both the Feast of St. Markdown's, and time for the February edition of my monthly current projects listing. I've decided to actually start labeling these with the month and year, just in case somebody wants to find a specific post later on. Anyway, this is 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 )

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 )

Words: 3,573.
Total words: 34,573.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter six, time to move on.
Music: Emilie Autumn, rocking the goth.
Lilly: asleep in the middle of my coat.

Chapter six of The Mourning Edition is finished! Ha! I bet you thought I forgot, didn't you? That I'd wandered off to greener pastures? Not this zombie girl! The living dead continue to be one of my life's great joys. It's just that sometimes, those great joys get faintly derailed by the need to battle Toby to a stand-still. Something about the girl having her own series already under contract makes her all pushy. I have no idea where she gets that...

So anyway, The Mourning Edition continues apace, and my understanding of the world is continuing to expand. Chapter six actually took as long as it did to finish because I kept back-tracking, ripping things out, and planting them later in the text. (Also because I got distracted perfecting my story for Grants Pass, but come on, the nice people invited me to their pandemic. They deserve the best I can possibly give them.)

I'm heading to Seattle for the holidays again this year, and while there's going to be a lot of rehearsal crammed into a reasonably small stretch of time, I'm also expecting long days where everybody else is off at work, and I can just write. If this goes anything like last year, I'm basically going to power through fifty thousand words and then look faintly confused.

And now, bed.

Current stats, The Mourning Edition:

Words: 2,440.
Total words: 31,010.
Reason for stopping: the cold medication says writing is hard now.
Music: mostly show tunes.
Lilly: really wishing I'd stop coughing.

I am now solidly into chapter six of The Mourning Edition. It was a bit rocky at first; it's always rocky going from one Book into another. (Remember that, in this context, a 'Book' is an internal division within the greater novel. Newsflesh was five Books and a Coda. The Mourning Edition will probably be something similar.) I'm still inside the general word count region that I consider to be '20% of the way there.' This is good. This is very, very good, when you compare it to the speed with which Newsflesh was written (see also 'glacial,' at least by local standards).

It makes me happy to realize that I have one full book finished, about one-fifth of another book in first draft, and an outline for the entire series. I feel very much like a real author when I can say things like that. Of course, I also feel very much like a real author when I give myself concussions to get more sleep at conventions, so hey.

And now, as a special bonus treat before it splinters off into its own recurring entry...

Current stats, The Brightest Fell:

Total words: 20,305.
Reason for stopping: again, the cold medicine is king right now.
Music: mostly show tunes.
Lilly: probably afraid of cross-species transmission.

Yes, this is Toby Daye, book five, and yes, I'm almost as far into it as I am into the second Mason book. Don't judge me! I'm a compulsive sequel-writer, it's what makes me happy, and besides, I want to have as much done as humanly possible before Rosemary and Rue hits shelves. Some people don't want to commit to long series, and I realize that. Others don't want to commit to book one unless they know for sure that books two and three are really and truly going to happen. Since I can't conceal the fact that this is a long series, I'm going to do my best to provide proof that honest, the whole thing is going to happen. Really. I'm writing the rest right now.

Since I am now nicely cushioned on a backlog of lovely words with which to pacify my various editors, I'm going to return to my sick day.

The tiny little part of my tiny little blonde head that controls essential tasks—those things that have to be done, but which I absolutely dread and abhor doing, like formatting submissions, writing cover letters, and outlining projects—decided that the perfect time to write the series outline for the Mason Trilogy* would be while I was all hopped-up on cold medication. Because my brain is special.

Series outlines are the bane of my existence. Basically, they're your "short pitch," your chance to try to sell your story in a format that's longer than a cover letter, but shorter than the whole manuscript. Series outlines are sort of like high school book reports: they're packed with spoilers, and they strip out most of the detail of a story. "A young girl travels to a foreign land, kills the first person she meets, and teams up with three strangers" levels of stripping out the detail.

Feed is over five hundred pages long. Deadline is on track to be just as long. I have no real idea about Blackout, but I'd be astonished if the last book in the series was somehow shorter than the first two. I managed to condense all three volumes to nine pages. My agent loves me right now.

Fear me. And now? I'm going back to bed.

(*This may or may not be the official name of the series, but since all three books are about Shaun and Georgia Mason and their exciting journalistic adventures, it's as good a name as any. My original name for the project was "a good excuse to study virology and talk about zombies a lot," so this is really a pretty big improvement, marketability-wise. I'm great at naming books. I'm terrible at naming series.)

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: 4,760.
Total words: 28,570.
Reason for stopping: chapter five and book one are finished.
Music: oddly enough, lots of folk music.
Lilly: queen of everything atop her cat tree.

As predicted, the end of chapter five of The Mourning Edition was also the end of Book I! Woo-hoo! So now I can honestly answer "How's the book going?" with "Oh, I finished it yesterday, I'm working on the next one now." (This is fun because of the looks it makes people give me. I adore confusing my friends.) Also, the end of Book I brings us past the magical hundred-page mark. Yes! This book is now over a hundred pages. The magical stamp of 'I can be a real novel when I grow up' has been applied. Since Newsflesh came in at just under 150,000 words, I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and say that I am now 20% of the way to 'done.' So that doesn't suck, either.

(Book I, for the curious, was titled 'Point of Infection.' Book II is titled 'Vectors and Victims.' Telling you the titles of the various books really doesn't give anything away unless you have the actual text to provide some much-needed context. Because I'm just sneaky that way. Also, zombies.)

The Newsflesh/Mourning Edition universe is an incredibly fun one to play around in, even though each individual book has a body count that basically equals what I've managed in five volumes of Toby. (The series really needs a better title. I usually just call them 'the Mason books' and figure people know what I'm talking about.)

Zombies.

Yay.

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 )

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: 6,080.
Total words: 23,810.
Reason for stopping: I'm done with chapter four!
Music: mostly Rob Zombie. Hey, it's topical.
Lilly: dead to the world in the middle of my glow-in-the-dark spiderweb pillow.

Like Newsflesh, The Mourning Edition is a novel internally divided into 'books.' (Hey, it's a fun structure to play with, and my happy zombie wonderland was the first chance I really got to take advantage of it. Besides, it's nicely confusing, because it makes the answer to "How's the book going?" entirely unpredictable.) I am now four chapters into Book I, and it looks like Book II is going to start with chapter six. I'm one chapter away from the end of Book I. Also, since the chapters are averaging roughly twenty pages each, I'm one chapter away from hitting the hundred-page mark.

Excuse me while I blink a lot and go 'um, dude.' It's interesting: I understand that I write a lot, and I understand that my 'rotate projects so that everything stays fresh and engaging and you get more done' method of approaching books means that they gain page count at a scary rate, but I'm always a little tweaked when I hit a hundred pages. That's my internal watermark for 'sorry, you've devoted too much time; can't walk away now.'

It's too late to walk out on this book.

Secretly, I'm glad.

(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: 5,420.
Total words: 17,730.
Reason for stopping: chapter three is finished.
Music: Science Groove! Also, really weird cover songs.
Lilly: prowling around the room and spelunking in my dresser drawers.

This book remains both very comfortable -- it's a return to the world of Newsflesh! How could it be anything but comfortable? I love that world like burning -- and very complicated, since it's been a while since I first pulled Newsflesh off the ground and sent it racing downhill. And it's very weird to be doing this in tandem with the rewrite on Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues, because of the differences in scale. 'Barely started' for The Mourning Edition is the same as 'a third of the way' in Lycanthropy.

Soon, I get to start sinking my teeth into my gonzo zombie-verse virology in a big, big way, and that delights me all the way down to the bottom of my incurably geeky little soul. Also, I'm making substantially faster progress on this book than I did on the first one of the series, which I consider to be an awesomely good sign.

I'm king of the dead! Er, queen. Er...something.

Current stats:

Words: 1,050.
Total words: 12,310.
Reason for stopping: I've reached the end of chapter two.
Music: mostly Broadway soundtracks, that being my current crazy.
Lilly: loafed up next to my chair, guarding me from the scary, scary hallway.

This brings me to the second of my major milestones on this book. Milestone number one was ten thousand words. Milestone number two was reaching the end of chapter two, which would give me sufficient 'book' for me to feel like it was time for me to send the text-to-date to my proofing list for its very first review. This is the point where my baby gets to leave my hands for the very first time, and as always, it makes me sad and jubilant and a little scared. But excited, too. Because I love all my literary children, and it's wonderful to set them free.

I'm really excited about this universe, which is good, since I'm really only getting off the ground with book two of a planned three book series -- losing my enthusiasm for the world now would really suck for me. And for the people who want to know what happens next. I think they'd beat me with my own machete until I stopped screwing around and gave them their zombies already. Which is pretty damn awesome, when you really stop to think about it.

Working on this in tandem with the revisions to Lycanthropy and Other Personal Issues is actually a really good thing, because it lets me 'cleanse my palate' between chapters, as it were. From zombie adventure to frothy horror chick werecoyote adventure in two easy steps.

Life is pretty good right now.

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 )

Current stats:

Words: 1,222.
Total words: 11,260.
Reason for stopping: if I don't go to sleep, I am literally going to pass out.
Music: random things, including a small child telling me about her day.
Lilly: presumably back in Concord, unless she's gone looking for me.

I'm at David and Michelle's for the weekend, but would have felt bad if I didn't at least pretend to do some work on The Mourning Edition. So I pretended my way through a thousand words and a big chunk of the current chapter, which is, y'know, pretty impressive, if a little bit unnerving. I should pretend more often.

Please note that as of this entry, The Mourning Edition has its own icon. That means it's a real book. Also, that means I got my Photoshop working for a little while today. All things come with time and with grace. (I have no idea what I'm going to use as a Discount Armageddon icon, I really don't.)

Progress is pleasing unto me, and I really like where this book seems to be going. We're still in setup, but it's very solid and substantial setup, and it makes me happy. Also, I got to map the driving route between Birds Landing and Berkeley, and that confused Google Maps to no end. Life is good.

Zombies improve everything.

Current stats:

Words: 6,948.
Total words: 10,038.
Reason for stopping: it's time to get ready to go out, and I haven't eaten.
Music: my Newsflesh playlist, which needs to be updated, but still mostly applies.
Lilly: in and out of the room all morning long.

So Friday night, I said 'I am going to hit ten thousand words on The Mourning Edition this weekend,' because I am sometimes a cocky little brat. And indeed, it is now late Sunday morning, and I started writing at seven AM, and I have just hit ten thousand words on The Mourning Edition. Sometimes, cockiness comes with certain undeniable rewards.

I realized after finishing what I thought was chapter one that I had, in fact, written the second half of chapter two and the first half of chapter three; it's good text, but it's not a beginning, it's a middle, and this needs to be an entirely new book. That's okay, because writing it to begin with had managed to shift me into the right mindset for a party with the Masons, and the new chapter one came just as sweet and smooth as silk. I am utterly pleased.

Assuming this book keeps true to the pattern of the first in the series, I am approximately one-seventeenth of the way through my first draft. I can basically live with that.

I love my zombies. They make it better.

Current stats:

Words: 3,090.
Total words: 0.
Reason for stopping: need to eat dinner before I eat the cat.
Music: mostly Children of Eden and Dr. Horrible.
Lilly: nowhere to be seen, which should probably worry me.

How do you know I'm in the middle of editing three books and feeling the specter of free time looming over me in a dark and spooky fashion? I start a new book, of course. (Honestly, I should probably have been spending the time working on Lycanthropy, but as I spent the entire day at a funeral, I think I can be excused a little cathartic zombie-time.)

It took a little thought to really figure out how to slide back into the dark, slightly twisted dystopia inhabited by the Mason twins and the Kellis-Amberlee virus (coming soon to a CDC installation near you!), but once I got the rhythm back, I got it back. I blinked and it had been ten pages and a couple of thousand words. Not that three thousand words means much when the first book finished at roughly 150,000, but hey, every little bit counts.

I love my zombies. They make it better.

Okay, now we REALLY have to have a dino dance party. Why, you may wonder? Why, you may ask yourself? Because I have just finished my first post-editorial pass through A Local Habitation, book two in the Chronicles of October Daye. And I have turned that puppy in. Yes! No longer is my manuscript malingering around on my thumb drive, looking lost and lonely and wondering whether it ever gets to go anywhere! It's gone, off to the magical wonderland of sunshine and zombie ponies that is DAW Books. (I've seen the offices at DAW. They're totally filled with sunshine and zombie ponies. I swear. Okay, not really, but wouldn't that be lovely? Zombie ponies for all!)

I kinda completely love this book right now. I mean, I kinda completely love this book all the time, because hello, my baby, all grown up and ready to go play with the big books, but also, I've just gotten up close and snuggly with all its little bells and whistles, and this has resulted in me kinda completely loving it. This is sort of awesome, as I have a very love/hate relationship with my books while I'm working on them.

I'm reasonably sure all this glowing happy 'yay my books are finished yay' is just the endorphin rush before the inevitable and soul-consuming crash. I'm basically okay with that.

Meanwhile, off in the land of 'people doing arcanely productive things that I don't understand but which fill my universe with buckets and buckets of awesome,' Tara is mostly finished with my website redesign, and Chris continues to keep the site itself alive and not eating people who happen to be passing randomly on the street. Let's be clear, here: my skill with HTML basically extends to the cutting-edge of 1997. I can close a tag with the best of them, as long as it's not, y'know, a hard tag. Once it gets difficult, I crawl under my desk and hide until Chris manfully rescues me. So credit for every ounce of visual and functional awesome? Goes to Chris and Tara, rather than to me.

Plans for this weekend include a lot of house cleaning in preparation for Terence's upcoming visit, a family funeral, and probably starting to dig myself into The Mourning Edition (which is the sequel to Newsflesh). I may also head for the Starbucks and spend a few peacefully isolated hours inking, as that's the best way to get ahead of myself.

I have finished this week in triumph.

DINO DANCE PARTY!

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 )

It's time for the June 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 are temporarily off this list, because they're under review at DAW. They'll be reappearing when the editorial process kicks in.

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.

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