new review for "Comrades We"

My first review! Lady Licata of As I Live and Read has posted a review of Comrades We. The review is available here.

She liked it and it was great to read what someone else had to say about the book. I'm still waiting on some of the other reviewers to work through their backlogs to get to my book, but I'm looking forward to seeing what they have to say.

book titles, sewing, and knitting

Summer shorts for the tiny one

I keep reminding myself to write a blog post, and then I forget. Sorry. I also forget about Twitter most of the time, too. I've been spending more time reading than writing lately, and I need to flip that around for a bit. There's a short story I need to finish and submit by the end of the month, and the planned release date for book 2, now tentatively called Ley Lines, is October 31, 2015. A couple of book blogger reviews for Comrades We are on their way, but I have been told that they have backlogs to get through first, so I don`t yet have specifics as to when the reviews will be available. When they are, I will link them.

I've made some time for sewing lately, the result being the picture above. There's a pair of green ones in the same pattern that are mostly done (hemming and elastic and possible applique are the only bits left). The other in-progress sewing project is a backpack for E. from Made by Rae's pattern. There'll be a full post for that one when it's finished. After that, I have a t-shirt for me that needs to be cut out and sewn up.

And I have a shawl-in-progress that`s nearly finished. It`s very pretty, and I want to complete it so I can finally give it to its intended recipient. Also so I can take pictures. It doesn`t exactly look like much on the needles. Then it will be time to cast on some socks. The many pairs I knit a few years back are starting to wear out, so the sock drawer needs replenishing. The sock yarn stash needs to decrease, too, because it composes most of my stash right now. It might be nice to use some of it up.

So, that`s all for now. My next post will probably be about E.`s new backpack.

flying sounds like a good idea

My first rating on Goodreads sent me spiraling around the house, wishing I could take off like Annabel in No Flying in the House. There may also have been some profanity involved, of the excited disbelief variety. The first rating was 5 stars. No reviews yet, but now I'm less nervous about what reviewers have to say.

I ran into a guy who had been in one of the classes I TAed back in grad school on the weekend. It's been a few years, but I know his wife slightly because she and I both go to the same mum's group. Anyway, he asked me what I'd been up to, and, for the first time, I got to say, "I wrote a book," in response to the question of what I've been doing with myself. Weird yet exhilarating.

The week's been not too busy so far, but everything takes off on Thursday. I love Holy Week, but it's going to be just a wee bit exhausting. At least I have the lamb shoulder I bought today to look forward to, for our Easter dinner (I have not been a spectacular semi-vegetarian lately, but I'm sure that I'll snap back after our trip, and at least tomorrow's dinner will be vegan).

processing...

This has been a strange week. The kind of strange where I don't really know how to process things anymore.

The week has held big things, and little things. The little things aren't that bad on their own: our bathroom fan broke and our landlord is hunting down a replacement; E. has a cold, and alternates between wanting to wear nothing and wanting to wear seasonally unsuitable things (last night and this morning's pick is a sundress my in-laws bought her last year that now fits. She slept in it. It's raining today, so if she thinks she's wearing it outside...); Facebook pages are harder to navigate than I anticipated (though the book does now have a Facebook page); and I'm not sleeping well, again.

The big things, well, there's the book. I still can't believe I actually did it. Alea iacta est. I'm so paranoid about other people reading the serious things I've written, and I just went ahead and put it up there.

The other thing is at the other end of the spectrum. My grandmother died about a day and a half ago. As I am still at the stage where I am half-expecting my parents to call and say they were mistaken and she's still with us, I don't have a lot to say yet. I have cried, and I have felt numb (mostly that). Her memorial service isn't for a few weeks, so we don't have to pack up and drive the 6-7 hours south on short notice, and I have a sinking feeling that it won't become real until I see my grandfather and realize that my grandmother isn't with him like she always is.

That's about all I can say on the topic at the moment. I doubt I'll write a lengthy post on my grieving process at a later date unless it really feels like something I need to do. It'll work its way out in other writing (there are a few chapters in Book 2 that involve death and grieving; I'll probably find revising those helpful for working things out). In the meantime, I'm trying to keep going, even though pausing everything for a while would be pleasant.

And we still have Holy Week and Easter to get through.

Comrades We: The Launch

I actually did it. I finished tinkering with a book. You are now able to purchase it here on Amazon or here on Smashwords, or here on Google Play. I am currently trying out the world of online self-publishing, and we will see where it takes me. Please buy it if you are curious and let me know  what you think, good or bad!

Each of the sites it is available on have limited previews available, so you can check it out there. I'll be building it a Facebook page this week, and the page here on the blog for the book will have more stuff added as time goes on. I'm still waiting for Goodreads to hook up my author account, but I've made sure the book is up there as well in case people want to review it on that site.

Comrades We is the adventures of six friends as they grow up, encounter bad stuff, and try to fight their way out.

This is a fantasy novel. There is magic. There are swords. There are mysterious and cryptic gods. There are some really bad guys and there are good guys who are mostly ordinary and trying to do their best. There is knitting and spinning when characters are not practicing swordplay and archery. And if needed, there always tea. There is also more to come, as Comrades We is the first in a trilogy (cue me panicking and realizing that I need to finish writing the middle of the second bit).

Content warning: Some violence and mention of sexual assault. Made-up swear words. Best suited for teenagers and up, probably not for anyone under 12 (unless you happen to be super-mature and have parents who let you read absolutely anything no matter what).

formatting is tedious, and other woes

I feel a little cross-eyed right now, and the word "chapter" has ceased to hold meaning for the moment. Next book, I plan the formatting more carefully so there's less to fix at the end. Four different versions later, the book has been uploaded to several sites. One is still processing its two different versions, so tomorrow is when I plan to post the official "it's a book" post, assuming the site's finished processing things (if not, I'll post and add links to the site once they are available).

I mostly feel good about the whole thing, but there is definitely some "oh dang it, I just wrote a piece of rubbish and am now trying to sell it" mixed in there. I doubt my book is the best book ever (if such a thing could be calculated), but I don't think it's terrible, either. I've been working on it so long it's hard to tell. Now that I'm done with this one, it's time to start work on the second, which is mostly in pieces. I have a beginning bit, and an ending bit, and then scattered scenes for the middle. Ironically, the third book is more complete than the second one, but there are rather important plot points from book 2 that need to be established before I release book 3. I'd like to release book 2 this fall if I can make it happen. Book 2 will also probably be longer than book 1, which is a short novel (though it appears longer or shorter depending on which ebook version you're looking at).

The high of finally having completed this is tempered by some family stuff that's been happening. This has been something of a good distraction, but I doubt the high will last much more than a few days, since it looks like we'll be making an unscheduled trip to my hometown to visit my family within the next week or two. It's a strange place to be, with lots of conflicting emotions, and we can't afford to just drop everything to go now and say goodbye in person, since two trips down in short succession is too expensive for us at the moment. I'll probably write more about it later, but for now, this is enough. I didn't realize grieving so deeply would be part of the before stage, and I don't want to think about the after yet.

So in the meantime, I'm distracted by the book, but still waiting for the phone call that will signal a very large change in my family.

news

I've been posting sporadically on odd topics lately. I think the last one was about my state of mind, which wasn't exactly inspiring at the time. However, I have been writing, just not for the blog, and most of it has technically been editing.

Lo, these many years ago, I began writing a novel. I was twelve. Or maybe thirteen. I'd gotten through a poorly written, overly dramatic short story, borrowed a few characters from there, changed their names, made them minor characters, and embarked on a grand epic tale. I wrote and wrote and monopolized my parents' computer for typing to the point where my dad finally put one together for me out of spare parts. My grand epic, book one, finished around the 250 page mark. Single-spaced. It was big and messy and full of contradictions, and I moved on to book two. Book two was bizarre and otherworldly and definitely influenced by the fact that, I, as a high school student, was seeing my country plunge itself into a couple of wars that I felt were ill-advised, even if I was too young to understand all the implications (I still think they were ill-advised, but now I think most, if not all, war is ill-advised).

After I finished a draft of book two, I continued to write into book three, which was much less weird. Then I wrote other things, including bits and pieces of related stories in the same universe, and took a step back from tinkering with the main trilogy for a while. For years, really (there was university and marriage and grad school and then there was a baby. In the midst of all that, I did end up wandering back to the trilogy). When I went back to the first book, I looked at it, shook my head, and started to chop things out. I ended up scrapping book two almost entirely (just too weird and didn't work with the rest of the world), and dividing the first book in half. The second half, with much editing, became what will be book two of the trilogy. I've been working mostly on the first book lately.

I did investigate getting it published and after a rejection, some more research, my reluctance to deal with the hassle of trying to get an agent to notice me without much work behind me yet, and the advice of an acquaintance in publishing, I eventually decided to go the self-published e-book route for the moment. It feels like the right step for now, and I'm certainly willing to give traditional publishing a try sometime in the future.

Recently, when working through edits on the book, I realized that I was fairly happy about most of it and decided it was time to set a date. I looked at the calendar, looked at what I had left to do, including reformatting it so it would work as an e-book, and picked a day.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, my first novel, Comrades We, will be going up for sale online on March 17, 2015. It's a fantasy novel, and there will be more information available in about a week. Wish me luck! I may be crazy. Or not.

ravens and other thoughts

Our upstairs neighbours have something that taps rhythmically on the floor. Or possibly a wall. I don't know what it is, I just know that it drives me crazy and makes me think of ravens. I just had to say that. I'm pretty sure it would annoy me whether or not I was pregnant, so I'm not attributing the irritation to pregnancy. That has enough irritations of its own. The tapping's been happening so frequently that there have been mornings when I'm about ready to storm up there and demand what to know what is rapping at their chamber's floor.

 

It's been one of those weeks where I don't get much done and then feel worse about myself because I didn't get much done. The hot weather and constant sunshine just makes it all worse. No wonder my thoughts have been dwelling on Poe.

I'd managed to get my childbirth-related anxiety mostly under control, and then we went to a labour and delivery class last night. The bit on massage was nice. The bits about epidurals, C-sections, babies accidentally inhaling meconium, and the potential for being group B streptococcus positive were not. I nearly ran out of the room to throw up during the bit about meconium, and thought seriously about crying when I contemplated epidurals. Also, I spilled my water bottle on the floor.

Overall, the class was helpful, but I really hate being poked with needles and so want to avoid an IV unless it's necessary (I've had an IV in before and it was not pleasant--I'm not about to add to the level of discomfort in labour unless I have to), and the thought of letting someone stick a needle in my spine makes me want to have an anxiety attack. That's another "only if necessary" thing, like if I absolutely needed a C-section. Which is another thing I don't want. 

And I hate this. I hate being scared, even though I know that a good deal of this is reasonable fear. Childbirth is a painful, messy, and potentially dangerous process, and that shouldn't be ignored. I want a relatively easy, simple birth, but I know I might not get what I want. It's not like pregnancy has been how I wanted it to go.

I'm tired of this. We have about 5-8 more weeks to go, providing she doesn't decide arrive early (God forbid), and between the weather and my general exhaustion and numerous other things, I just want the pregnancy to stop and the birth to magically happen so we can move on to the next bit. Of course, that's not what I get. I get 5-8 more weeks of backaches, heartburn, blood sugar testing, exhaustion, and Braxton Hicks, followed by a labour that may or may not be what I'm hoping for. Should be interesting. Maybe if I focus on the interesting side, I'll forget about the anxiety.

In other news, I'm tinkering with a book cover for my novel. The one I was going with requires someone else to modify it for me, and the person who offered to help doesn't have time to finish it yet. So I'm trying for a different look. Once I have that and I make a few more revisions, I can stick it up online and start advertising it. I really should have gotten this done last fall, but procrastination and I are on very close terms.

dressing up

Last weekend, I got dressed up in an outfit that included boots, a tunic, a cloak, and a big sword. No. This was not for Halloween. Truth be told, I'm not much of a Halloween person. Something about a holiday celebrating scary stuff has never really clicked with me. Probably something to do with how I was afraid of everything as a kid--spiders, skeletons, zombies, end-of-the-world, clowns, you name it. So, we don't really do much for Halloween most years.

However, I am not opposed to costumes. Quite the contrary. Right now, we're working on the cover image for a book, and this pic is one of the many images from our first shoot.

On the rocks

Obviously, this isn't really the greatest picture. Most of them didn't really turn out to be close to what I was hoping for. J. was busy snapping photos, and I was busy trying not topple over onto the rocks when he insisted I crouch dramatically beside the river and put my weight on my bad knee. Plus we have to re-arrange the cloak. Most of the pictures look like a blue-green plaid blob with a bit of sword showing.

This is the result of being a writer who's decided to take a chance at online publishing on the advice of a friend in the publishing business. You end up nearly falling into a river early on a rainy Saturday morning wearing a wool cloak and trying to hold up a sword that was designed for a bigger person.

But the book's almost done with the editing process, and I need a cover image, and my friend Mika's letting me use her copy of Photoshop to mess around with a photo once we've got one. I have this image in my head, and I'm hoping we can get close to it. Next time, though, I'm insisting on the trail with lots of trees instead of the bit by the water. More stable, and closer to my mental picture.

The book's called Comrades We, and it topples into the high fantasy genre. What happens when you put a group of trainees with an interesting mix of talents together and then add a few high-stress situations? This book's got magic, villains, musicians, some meddling gods, a few games of Go, a couple mysterious pasts, and a legend come to life, together with half a dozen young people trying to figure out how to react to it all. More information to come, including when I'll have the blasted thing up on Amazon and Smashwords.