No deadlines

Aside from the ones I make, that is.

One of the best things about being a self-publishing author is that I can pick and choose my release dates, blog dates, etc. based upon my own schedule. Being sick these past two months made me realize that more so now than before.

There's always a catch, though. For me, a fair bit of my platform is automated. In this day and age, technology makes it easy for me to prep my posts in advance, and then I just set them up to post either weekly or monthly (depending on the material) while I work on my writing.

The problem, though, is that being knocked down by allergies, a stomach flu, and general illness for two months straight meant I didn't have the focus to sit down and script new posts so that there wouldn't be any interruptions. I've been grabbing things one at a time, getting them posted last minute (or, in the case of this past week on Facebook, posting it after the fact and just backdating it).

Even this blog post is behind from what I would normally post (noon), but at least I'm getting it out the same day, right?

All things considered, I'm getting back in the grove post-illness, so posts are getting scheduled now, and the manuscripts—gods, the manuscripts—are being worked on again. In fact, I've been on a binge this past week, and I've made it through twelve chapters of Comedy of Rain in my efforts to cut NaNoWriMo word vomit, as well as fill in the gaps for ideas that weren't as fleshed out as they should have been.

Here's hoping that I can keep up this progress through this long weekend.

Catch you all again soon!

Hello, Library Card, let's be friends!

I'm usually good about bringing a book to work with me, or at least bringing something with me to keep myself occupied for my full hour of lunch. Today, I messed up, though, and forgot to bring anything with me. In my quest to find something to read, my coworker recommended I log onto our library's website and read one of the many thousand ebooks that are available. In fact, she told me I could read the next book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series by borrowing it from the digital library.

Let me be honest -- the last time I used the public library was when I was still in high school, and this was eight years ago before ebooks got a foothold. I'd forgotten about the library, and I shouldn't've. The last time I used the library (when I first started Pratchett's books back in high school), was to check out Pratchett's books from a very limited selection -- i.e. Good Omens with Neil Gaiman, and Soul Music. My choices back then were very limited, very limited indeed.

But as I sat there listening to my coworker tell me that Pratchett's books were all in digital form, I realized the ol' days of waiting weeks for a book to be checked back in, to be shipped from one district to mine, were long gone.

I jumped on the library's page with every intent of downloading the next book, Interesting Times, to keep myself occupied, only to realize I'd forgotten my ID number. A brief search of the page advised me to call the library, so I did.

Sadly to discover that the library card I'd had since I was four years old was gone, deleted from their system. Apparently, and I didn't know this, but if you don't use your card within five years, it goes inactive. Well, geez, here I thought every time I checked out a book from my college library that it was counted since, hey, the two libraries were linked don'tcha know?

Except that wasn't the case, so I was forced to get a new card after I left work this evening. For all of the five minutes it took me, I came to realize how neglectful I'd been. I mean, that was my library card that I'd had since I was four years old, and now it was no more. My library card was my best friend growing up, and going off to college had separated us, and then job hunting had driven us apart even more. If only I'd checked out a book when I got back from college, I could've still had my card.

But now I've got a new friend -- he's kinda cute, kinda small, fits on a keychain if I like. I just gotta bit a responsible owner with him and make sure I feed him regularly, starting with the next book in the Discworld series.

Since I've got that part of my life sorted and made a new friend in the process, I think it's time to mention where I stand with Uncertain Heirs. Yes, after taking November to do NaNoWriMo and December to recover from NaNoWriMo, I'm finally back in the saddle and working on Chapter 8 of 12. I edited the first scene last night, and my intent is to finish editing the rest of the chapter tonight.

Okay, lemme be serious, I'll probably manage one scene tonight, and if that's the case, then I'm okay with that because progress is progress. A good book is like any piece of fine art. You can get the general shape on the first few passes, but you gotta take your time with the details or else it doesn't look right in the end. I have decided, though, that once I finish the third draft, I'm going back to chapters 1 and 2 and giving them the proper care they deserve. Once I have those fixed up, I'm going to do it -- I'm going to put together a letter and query me some agents.

It's a big step for me, and I can only hope that my letter can do the story enough justice to convince at least one agent to say, "Hello, Ash, let's be friends!" It'll be a win-win for the both of us, me hopes :)

Ringing in 2014

Well, Happy New Year, everyone! I trust you all are doing well.

I thought I would take this opportunity to point out that I, like many people, have set a resolution for myself. Fortunately, I started mine back in July of 2013, so I'm making pretty good headway with it. For those of you that remember, I had a moment back in July when I realized I had some unfinished books on my plate. While I didn't get to them all, I did complete a few. I even made a mid-year resolution to start reading at least 25 books a year, and for starting in July, I think I did pretty good for myself. Take a look:

Terry Pratchett:
1 Sourcery
2 Wyrd Sisters
3 Pyramids
4 Guards! Guards!
5 Eric
6 Moving Pictures
7 Reaper Man
8 Witches Abroad
9 Small Gods
10 Lords and Ladies
11 Men at Arms
12 Soul Music

Laurell K. Hamilton:
13 Affliction
14 Micah

Neil Gaiman:
15 Stardust

J. R. R. Tolkien:
16 The Hobbit

Richard Adams:
17 Watership Down

Seventeen books in five months -- especially when you remember I stopped in November to do NaNo -- is damn good if you ask me. I at least did well enough to keep myself motivated for the new year, and I'll be looking forward to seeing my progress for 2014.

How about you folks? Have any of you made pre-New Year's resolutions that you're following through with?

Forward progress

The edits for Chapter 6 are coming along smoothly. I've been busy with other projects this week, so I've been trying to balance the productivity of reading, editing, crafting, etc. I'm hoping to do a rotation of each today, so that I can finish editing Chapter 6 and move on.

Speaking of moving on, I've decided that I'll edit as much as I possibly can this month, and then take time off from UNCERTAIN HEIRS by starting a new project for this year's NaNoWriMo. This will be something different, set as its own story and apart from the Earth Dog world.

If anyone is interested in following my progress, you can check out my NaNo page here. This year's project is called . . . AND THE BEAST (ellipsis included), about a primordial godking sentenced to have his mind ripped from his body and hurled into space. His essence ends up on Earth, trapped in the mind of a three year old girl.

How many?

I'm making a new goal for myself to read at least 25-30 books a year, with no limit on short stories.

So far, I estimate I've read eleven books, and about 30 short stories (most of which are by H.P. Lovecraft) this year.

How about you? How many stories do you try to read at a time, or do you even have a monthly/yearly goal?

Unfinished reading

I went through my books this past weekend, and found a few that I started reading, but for one reason or another did not finish:

• The Hobbit, for instance. I've had a bookmark in that thing since 2005, and I only ever made it to the wine barrel scene. I never made it to Smaug!
• Then there's the Da Vinci Code, which I'm about four pages in. I think I started it back the same year the movie came out -- when was that? Cripes, 2006! I must've started the book at the beginning of 2007, then.
• Micah is a book by Laurell K. Hamilton that fits into her Anita Blake series -- I bought it, but I never read it because I didn't consider it part of the series (I thought it was only a stand alone). I found out a few years ago it is part of the series. Whoops.
• The complete short stories of H. P. Lovecraft -- love those. I read them before bed because they're nice and short. I'd been reading those in the order they were written, and I left off at The Outsider. Next on that list will be The Music of Erich Zann. That puts me close to halfway through his list of short stories. After that, it'll be the novels.
• I started Around the World in 80 Days two years ago while working for a utility company, but I only made it 6% through (according to my Kindle).
• Then there's Black Beauty, which I'm halfway through.

I like reading the classic works, such as The Hobbit, Black Beauty, etc., because I think everyone should read those to be well-versed in the English language. Seriously, how much easier would Shakespeare and Chaucer (the two of whom high school students complain most about reading because "Oh, you can't understand them!") be to read if children read classics from the 1800-1900s in primary and middle schools leading up to Shakespeare and Chaucer in high school?

Ranting aside -- how about you folks? Any unfinished reading you've been itching to complete? Is there a reason you want to finish reading those stories, or did you abandon them because of how bad/boring/whatever they were?

What have you read?

A friend of mine shared this list on facebook, so I'm not quite sure where the original came from -- it suggests the BBC released the list. Anyway, here's how this works:
BOLD: Books you have read.
UNDERLINE: Books you have started, but haven't finished.
ITALICIZE: Books in your queue.
Leave blank anything you haven't read.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series –
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I've completed 21/100 works listed here (tis more, total, because of series grouped together), and I have 7 in progress and 22 in my queue. Apparently, the average person has only read 6 of the works listed, so I think I'm doing well for myself.

How about you? What books have you read?