Rose-Owls and Pumpkin Girls

It's July, it's a week to the San Diego International Comic Convention, and it's been a while since I posted a Rosemary and Rue ARC giveaway. These things aren't intrinsically connected, but my need for distraction makes them acquire a natural bond. At the same time, I feel the need to be more creative than my exhaustion is presently allowing. So here's the deal:

1) To participate, comment on this post with a suggestion for what the next ARC giveaway should be. Get creative! We've had a poetry contest and a LOLtest so far—is it time for round two? Is it time for a break-dance competition? "Conquer a nation, win an ARC"? Well, maybe not that last one. Try to make it something that people can actually accomplish.

2) Weigh in on other suggestions, if you feel the urge to do so.

3) Just before I leave for Comicon, I will select one of the suggestions to be ARC giveaway #7. The person who makes the winning suggestion will be the winner of this giveaway.

Game on!

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.

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Words: 3,671.
Total words: 11,736.
Reason for stopping: I'm at the end of chapter three, and I'm out of go.
Music: the random shuffle of my entire music library.
Lilly and Alice: eating and chasing invisible bugs, respectively.

Yanking the existing text of book five (foolishly written before the final revision of book four) into line with the finalized continuity is providing to be surprisingly easy, probably because I'm currently sunk so neck-deep in Toby's universe that I could place her Starbucks order. I don't even like coffee all that much! (Tomorrow's to-do list includes 3,000 words on Blackout. Whiplash is fun!)

The Brightest Fell is a book that I've been wanting the opportunity to do right by for a long time. I love this story, I love this period in Toby's life, and I'm really excited to finally be tackling it with my eyes open and my skills honed to the task at hand. This doesn't change the part where I'm going to be swearing my ass off in another 20,000 words, or the fact that Discount Armageddon is going to be finished purely to keep me from punching Toby in the face, but right now? Right now, I'm ecstatic.

Whee!