Drunken Owls and Other Delights

For someone who pretty much had five days off in a row, I'm feeling a bit exhausted. I'm pretty sure it's because we had something going on all of those days! Shopping, walking, gardening, cleaning, playing with the cats, driving, visiting the in-laws (twice!), and actually going outside on warm days! It's been a full schedule these last couple of days.

I made the slight mistake of not following up on a very minor mistake in uploading the remastered edition of A Division of Souls so the drop date WAS MISSED AND EVERYTHING IS RUINED FOREVER no, I just fixed it late yesterday and properly it's up and running now. I've also pulled the old edition from the Smashwords site so the new one will take its place. Here's the link of you're so interested!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1838502

And yes, I do plan on 'remastering' my older books (at least the trilogy and probably Meet the Lidwells and In My Blue World) over the course of the next couple of years, because they're my books and why the hell not? :)

Anyhoo, I'll be doing my usual Friday-Saturday stupid-early shifts the next couple of days (and wondering what drama unfolded in my absence) and everything will be back to normal. Back to the grind!

Okay, so I think I can finally sign off the Remastered Edition of A Division of Souls (a month early! yay!), which means I can now get back to working on Theadia. Woo! I'm still a bit nervous that I may have forgotten something important like proper formatting or missing a really stupid and obvious typo, but I think I've caught all the ones I'm going to catch this time out. More important however is that I fixed a few minor continuity and clarity issues that had always bothered me.

This of course is going to mean that I'll have to figure out how I'm going to promote this thing. I don't want to just throw it out there and say 'have at it' and get nothing in response. Which means I'll be spending most of August creating different possibilities. I've also pulled the physical copies from Amazon as I no longer want them available there when I can have them done POD through Draft2Digital where all my other novels are. That'll be something for 2026: how to make my works available in physical form through that platform.

Anyhoo, I'm crawling back to normal creativity once again, and that's good enough for me!

Even though my weekends are pretty much only a day and a half of free time (I open Saturday mornings and get out at 2pm), I'm happy with the fact that I still manage to get a lot done in that time! And I even got to sleep in this morning!

Yesterday we headed over to the Petco to buy a new cat tree as the old one is getting quite worn out and flimsy (verdict: Jules is quite happy with it, but Cali is yet to give it much attention). This one has a slightly different footprint so we were able to slide it up against the window, giving me a lot more room behind my desk chair and the ability to access my filing cabinet. And as for today, we did a very-much-needed trip to the grocery store (not mine, but an affiliate) to restock. The great thing is that we're both under the same corporate umbrella so my hard-earned rewards points and associate discounts work there as well, and we ended up saving a ridiculous amount of money. Sweet!

And now it's time for me to get cracking on the writing session. I'm about twenty pages from finishing off this cycle of 'remaster' revisioning of A Division of Souls, so I'm well ahead of schedule for getting this one ready for release. Go me!

The rest of my week isn't so bad...there's only one midshift this week and the rest are opens, and I have Thursday off in which to relax a bit before A and I go on a little midmorning roadtrip down the peninsula to a lovely garden park!

Not sure if it was a cold, or allergies, or both, but I'm finally seeing the end of it after two weeks. I was either constantly nose-blowing, congested, or coughing, and it would wake me up constantly in the middle of the night. And thankfully this morning I woke up feeling surprisingly rested with a much clearer head. The sniffles are still there but at slight allergy levels now, and I haven't had a scratchy or phlegmy throat since yesterday, so I'm hoping I'm on the mend.

It did take a bit of wind out of me, but I had the foresight to use whatever energy I had post-work (or pre-work) to focus on the Trilogy Remaster, and whip off an easy 750Words entry. That was about it, however, so my blogs fell by the wayside. Hopefully this coming week I'll be back on track there.

Thankfully, next week's work schedule is going to be mostly opens which means I'll be able to catch up a lot easier and not have to shoehorn too much work in not enough hours! I just have the one midshift (plus a bonus sixth day to cover the other bookkeeper on Sunday, but that should be uneventful). I've got today and tomorrow off, and I'm using the time to sleep in, catch up and relax a bit.

Hope everyone has a good week!

I very rarely work on Sundays, and when I do it's usually because our head bookkeeper took the day off and I'm pretty much the only one to take his place. Today was such a case, meaning my weekend will be tomorrow and Tuesday instead. Thankfully the last few post-Valentines shifts have been extremely laid back and uneventful (and fully-staffed!) to the point where I could do what needs doing, take my own time doing it, and not have to worry about doing five other equally important things at the same time.

Unfortunately I haven't quite been on top of my writing schedule these last couple of weeks. Some of it is due to my work schedule, but a lot of it still boils down to distraction. I'm definitely on track for the Trilogy Remaster work, but I feel I could better utilize my time elsewhere as well. I'd rather not keep Theadia sitting there doing nothing. So again -- I need to readjust my time. I'll admit it didn't help that I had that neck pain followed immediately by a week's worth of head cold, but now that I've gotten past both I think I'm more than able to do so.

So what am I doing the next couple of days, aside from the writing? Not much other than laundry and relaxing. After six straight days of the Day Job I need the break!

I've got on-call jury duty this coming week so I may or may not need to go in, and won't know each day until the night before. Now, I'm hoping that it won't be like last time in which I'm called in on the very last day as that was a pain in the ass on several levels. This also means I'm suddenly free on my schedule...so that means I really should use that time wisely and get a lot of writing work done. I'll admit I was super lazy on my birthday (and felt ever so slightly guilty about it) by doing almost nothing except futzing around on the computer.

So yeah, my plan is to focus on Theadia and also get started on the Anniversary Remaster of A Division of Souls. I really need to get started on the second one considering I've given myself a hard deadline for it! [Why September 3rd? Because that's the date of the first scene. Heh.] I don't believe I need to to a huge amount of work on it, but there are passages I think could use some light dusting and straightening out.

Today we covered two hours service time at the community garden (the agreement is that we work at least twelve) and spent it doing some major and much needed weeding. We're both exhausted and achy now, but it was definitely worth it. I also met one of our other lot neighbors for the first time so that was neat as well! We still plan on redoing our lot and putting in new gopher wire, and I'm both looking forward to and dreading that. Dreading as it entails a crapton of digging of the current soil, tearing out the old chicken wire that shouldn't have been there in the first place, and then putting all that crapton of soil back, with a fresh layer of compost as well. It'll be worth it once it's done, but I'm pretty sure my back and knees are going to scream in agony the entire time. Ah well...!





Hope everyone has a good week ahead!

Someone wrote up a really nice review for A Division of Souls! And not only that, they left them everywhere: on GoodReads, Amazon, Smashwords, and their own blog! That truly made my day. :D

I've been so busy the last few days that I've lost track of time. Day Jobbery keeps me on my toes, especially when an apocalyptic snowstorm hits the east coast and shuts down not only the print facility but the both USPS and FedEx delivery hubs, and clients still want to know why their checks are late. *headdesk* Plus I seem to have given myself a much tighter editing schedule than I expected in regards to The Persistence of Memories, which at this point may be pushed to end of February. As much as I hate to admit defeat, it's still much too long (it's about 10k longer than A Division of Souls...which, by the way, has been getting rousing applause by readers but has the same problem: it's also far too long). Since the ending is in sight for this one, I'll finish this run off and start over ONE MORE TIME to see where I can cut.

Which brings me to a related thought...I will, at some point, need to head back to ADoS and do the same. As much as I love the deliberate pacing for this trilogy, it's not for everyone. I will admit that there are definitely some scenes that can be cut, shortened, or sped up. I'm not entirely sure when I'll be hitting that one next, as I'd like to work on The Balance of Light after I'm done with TPoM. We shall see.

And what of Walk in Silence...? *sigh* As much as I'd love to get that out by April, my schedule isn't playing fair, so that one may not be released until autumn. I don't want to put out a half-assed book I'm not proud of, and I do my shittiest work when I kludge it together and call it done. I will of course keep everyone updated on this.

So...what else is going on? Well, I'm currently living the bachelor life for a few weeks, as A is currently in Manila on a work-related trip. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the time difference (9am today here in SF is 1am tomorrow there), but we make do. She's been tweeting all kinds of really tasty food she's been buying and eating, which is making me jealous. And believe it or not, the apartment has not degraded into a messy mancave. In fact, I spent most of the first day doing some serious cleaning, and plan on continuing with that next weekend. And yes, I have been eating well! Or reasonably well. I've only ordered out once so far, and that was due to having forgotten to get something out of the freezer to thaw. The only thing I've been bad at is going to bed at a normal time, but that's due to my wanting to get some serious writing work done. I guess I'm at that age where becoming a slovenly slacker just doesn't have the appeal anymore.

Speaking of age...as of last Friday, I am now the same speed as a seven-inch single. And I am fine with that. No, really, I am! :p

...or in this case, the pantry. At least a dozen or so out-of-date foodstuffs tossed (most of them over a year or so old, including a forgotten tiny bottle of some kind of spread with a sell-by date before we even moved to our present location!!), things re-arranged, other things to be put away elsewhere. Realized we have an insane amount of jams and preserves, and an even more insane amount of tea. Our snack situation is positive, considering we made a run to World Market today and found various tasty things like Coffee Crisps, Tim-Tams and chocolate bars, and followed it up with an assortment box of Jo-Jo's from Trader Joe's. Oh! And not one but two assortment boxes of Samuel Smith beers (the three-bottle gift box that comes with a pint glass, so now we have a matching set of four glasses). And earlier this week I boxed up the books that I should bring down to the SF Library store at Fort Mason. I should probably go through my clothes this weekend as well, and bring it to the local Goodwill. Maybe next weekend. The apartment laundry facilities are still on the fritz, so I've been heading over to the laundromat up the street on Sundays. [Why yes, as a matter of fact I have been writing longhand while waiting for the cycles to end, why do you ask?]

So yes, things are looking spiffy round these parts!

In other news, the daily 750 Words exercise is once again going to be put aside for the time being, for the simple reason that Emm has now finished reading A Division of Souls and offered suggestions and comments, so now I can go through my galley copy and make the final fix. Once they are complete, then I can put the physical book up for sale on Amazon, get a few comp copies for various people, and update the e-book version as well.

As for The Persistence of Memories, I'm about a third of the way through the edit, so I'm hoping that I'll be finished by the end of the year. It looks like I should be on schedule to release it mid to late January, maybe even on my birthday. We shall see. I will most likely be doing the same thing with the physical copy--formatting it, getting a few galley copies made, editing it, and releasing that a slight bit later. I'll have a more solid date to announce as soon as it gets closer.

[On a side note...all this preparing for an official drop date has given me a bit of background on how it works when releasing a book or a record. This will definitely come in handy with a music-related fiction project I will be working on in the future.]

So all in all, things have been busy but creatively and positively so. Can't complain about that. :)

Oh, here's a shock. It's Wednesday and I'm listening to KSCU online playing The 80s Underground show, and now I've just gone and emptied out one of my mp3 players to throw a bunch of 80s albums on there. And it's not the first time I've done it, either...I did it a few times previously as part of my Walk in Silence playlist.

I'd put that project aside to put all my focus on releasing A Division of Souls, and I think it's high time to bring it back. Even if I only work on it on the weekends, I need to pick it back up and get a final draft done. Why? Because I'm aiming for a release of late April 2016.

Why a specific date, you ask? Well, it just so happens that the week of April vacation (do kids still have that nowadays?) in 1986 was the week I discovered college radio.

Yeah, that's right. I've been obsessing over the alternative rock genre for thirty years.

I think I'd better make a big party out of it, no?

[And yes, I'm well aware that I'm going to be releasing The Persistence of Memories somewhere around the same time. I'll try to keep it spread out.]

**

So anyway, what's with this rebel thing? Eh, just something that's been floating through my head lately. Over at Welcome to Bridgetown, I talked a bit about how far I wanted to take the whole DIY process in self-publishing. [And as I'd said there, I don't come to this as a way to make myself believe I don't need an editor or beta readers or what have you, or that I consider myself above such things. I just want to see how far I can take it completely on my own. If I fail miserably, I only have myself to blame, but I've also learned things as well.]

I'm half-jokingly thinking of it as a bit of personal rebellion, really. Not against anyone in particular, but a process that's been in place for decades. There's an understandable bit of frustration in the traditional publishing process -- writing, rewriting, revising, finishing, submission to an agent (repeat as necessary), submission to a publisher (repeat as necessary), finally get accepted, wait in line to be printed, wait for the release date -- particularly the time spent waiting, as well as the gamble that you may or may not even get a response.

Self-publishing has done a lot to minimize a lot of that frustration. Sure, there are a lot of questionable e-books out there, but there's also some pretty nifty ones as well. And on a product level, I'm finding that the novels may not contain Manhattan-level editing, but there's some equally fascinating story ideas. This is where my half-joking rebelling comes in: I'm the punk band that's just recorded an EP using their older brother's copy of SoundForge, done a spot of fine-tuning and mixing, and set it out on the world via Bandcamp. [Or if I really want to date myself, I borrowed time at my buddy's friend's uncle's tiny studio (which actually records PSAs and light entertainment music, and paid for after-hours time by doing their yardwork), made a cassette tape of a demo (and recycled the master reel afterwards) and sent copies of copies of copies of said tape (using a few bricks of Memorex tapes I bought at Radio Shack) out to various radio stations that I found listed in Maximum RnR.]

Come to think of it, I think this is actually a healthy way to look at it, at least personally. It gives me stable ground in which to base my methods of writing and publication, and it appeals to my own natural temptation to avoid doing something the way everyone else does. It clears my mind, and it clears my path, and that works for me.