Stuff

1 - My in-laws are here for the time being - my MIL until Tuesday, my FIL possibly longer, depending on whether the great ripping apart our kitchen and putting in cabinets thing is done by the time he's supposed to leave. The renos done last time did not as it happens involve getting new cupboards, we got those free later from a coworker of Colin's who was getting rid of them. And they've been sitting in the new part of the kitchen taking up space (If conveniently also blocking some of the window view, since we are also still short on curtains) because Colin alone can't exactly do the work with only weekends and occasional evenings to work on it.
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2 - One of my friends sold a book! My feelings on this are slightly mixed, but not for any of the first reasons you might think. It goes like this:

- She sold a book to a small press. Yay!
(Paranoid pause with visions of various nightmare scam stories we all know. But some extremely easy research and ...)
- She sold her book to a legit small press! YAY!
- She sold it very fast! This is a really good start.
(Consider)
- This is because she likely didn't submit it to many not-small presses first.
- It IS gay SF/romance (And that's romance as in full genre convention not romance as in someone in the plot happens to get together with someone else). In her own words, " a science-fiction romance novel, based on the Pied Piper, and heavily influenced by Jem and the Holograms and the Alien series". Which sounds intriguing if confusing to me, but this might not be the most mainstream SF work out there. So maybe a small press is the right way to go.
- But nobody big had a chance to see it. What if it could have sold bigger?
- But if she'd gone that route, she could be waiting years to get any response even if it is good. Um. I wouldn't know about that...
- Of course, if it does well enough where it is, she can use the credit to sell other things, or even resell this one to a bigger distributor.
- Yay! She's been accepted for publishing!
- It comes back to that. Questioning which of the many different paths that takes is kind of like asking how long is a piece of string. It's all about marketing, temperament and preference. Starting small and fast is not only valid, there are circumstances in which it makes more sense.
- And I should get more agent queries out.
- Which in some cases means I should get more printer paper.
- and actually write.

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3 - Yeah. Writing. Or not. :P

- I got stuck on the Serpent Prince edit, because I paused just before this one conversation that needed a rewrite. In bed that night, i figured out how the conversation would best go, and promptly forgot it all by morning. Truth be told, i was also kind of worn on doing one more rewrite, even though I think the story is better with the gender change and I can't exactly stop that edit halfway through.
- Someone is supposed to have handed me back a critique of the first few chapters. It hasn't happened yet. NB, I don't consider it to be "late", crits often take longer than anticipated, (I say as someone who always runs late on them...) just that I haven't heard from her in a bit. (Which might be concerning on other levels, though sometimes it just means she has waaay too much work, in the way freelancers can go from dry patch to flood regularly.)
- I also am briefly stuck on a piece of non-fiction I was poking at, based on getting halfway through heading towards one point and then wondering if I wasn't intending to make another one entirely.
- the Dana is not picking up files from the computer (Though the reverse happened), so my more portable "I could write a handful of words here and there even when JoJo is playing downstairs" option still isn't. And the weekend I intended to pressure Colin into figuring it out was the weekend his boss's computer crashed at 3:30 on Friday and he spent most of his computer time over those days trying to solve that. (I've gone as far on my own in trying to figure it out as I seem to be able to, including figuring out that one program he set up for it is in fact useless to our particular single-dana/single-computer relationship)
- So for about 2 weeks, I was writing at greatest length in Facebook political arguments which... well, how many times can you say pointless?
- Finally I decided I needed to get my heinie in gear. Tried Labyrinth, and did at least get a better opening paragraph for the second point of view, but that kind of flopped.
- And ended up looking at the Serpent Prince books. But not to press on with the rewrite. To charge into book 3 (tentatively titled The Poisoned Tongue.)
- Aided and abetted by being stuck for an hour with only a notebook and a pen in a government office (trying to get JoJo's social security number resolved. They told me a 20 minute wait. it... wasn't.) I worked out some of the plot muddiness caused by the fact that the whole ending of book 2 changed. Of course it meant the two paragraphs on the dana were definitely to be thrown out, and the first attempt on the computer may not be the right point of view.
- This could be fun. not sarcasm.
- At some point I have to finish the edit, but I think it can wait, if trying to plunge ahead on the rough draft gets me going. It's not, sadly, like I'm getting agencies asking to see it (I switched to sending out Bird of Dusk pending the rewrite of Serpent Prince. I can switch back even with only the first few chapters done, but that waits on the crit.)

4 - Lent! Following my year long resolution to not buy books (Which has already been tested, though worst with books for JoJo, not myself. I didn't include an exception for other people.), I also added a lenten promise to stay off Facebook. (Someone explain to me why after I post a comment directly saying so, two people have already tried to send me links to my timeline?) Trying to get real writing done and stop wasting time breaking my skull against the most pointless of political arguments.

5 - Other general near future plans:
- I picked up the first of the paints I'd need for JoJo's mural, a set of brushes from a friend, and a few more images for research.
- Colin and I did nothing for Valentine's directly but will probably be doing dinner Sunday. My brother and I are making vague get-together in some nebulous future date plans.
- Joseph is growing apace, and healthy.
- Colin has been sick a bit but seems better the last couple of days.
- I doubt anyone will bother reading all of this, but I hope I said something thinky or amusing for those who persisted.