Thrihyrne

April 29th! Lookie, lookie: direct link to my book

This is so wild, and so weird in many ways. Most of the folks I've come into contact with via the Dreamspinner Yahoo group are authors full time, so sales are very important. I work full time already, so this for me has been more an experiment to see if I could get something out there that wasn't fanfic. I'm very grateful to be starting down this path, but this first Reggie/Kelp pales to some of my visceral, angsty fanfic that I remain particularly proud of. On the other hand, you've got to start somewhere.

As the only positive side-effect to the highly detrimental insomnia I've been experiencing due to a particularly wretched detox (2 hours total over the last 3 nights. I've had sleep-deprivation hallucinations before and I'm going to be sure to get something over the counter that will assure that I sleep tonight) is that last night I was musing over the Reggie/Kelp sequel and had so many thoughts about it that I got up to write them down. New characters. Scenes. In fact, the entire story arc is now done in my head, which is a bit surprising. That's not usually how I write, and it could be that the characters surprise me along the way, which is always fun. Given where I see it heading, I've already written about a third of it, and now that I'm excited about it again, I hope to begin writing on it regularly. It was difficult to do when I kept getting edits and then a proof and other things from the original to work on, but it's all out there now.

I'm on the cusp of going on my first actual holiday/vacation type thing in about a year. Evan and I are going to Rockaway Beach, Oregon, tomorrow, staying in a large beachhouse with his parents, sister Arwen & family, and brother Dana & wife & daughter & granddaughter. I'm really looking forward to spending time at the beach, and sleeping, and doing some social things, and having a lot - lot - of downtime. :) There will be internet and phone and such, but I'm determined not to check work email at all and to put that part of my life completely on pause while I'm gone. I suspect it will be easier said than done, but I'll try to make it happen.

I printed up my Wraeththu novellas to bring with me to re-read and edit, and it makes me feel a bit odd that I've committed to doing this. I've never revisited any completed work of mine for a serious edit like this before, and I'm uncertain as to how the process will go, if I'll be appalled or if I'll enjoy reading it, if I'll be overcome by memories of what my life was like when I wrote them, and of the initial major overhaul/edit/rewrite from 2009. Hard to say. Hopefully it won't be traumatic or demoralizing. I'm also bringing my notebook to work on my Charliefic which I haven't written on in a couple of weeks. I suspect I'll get a bunch done on that while on break. This will be a very different situation from Evan and me going away together… although now I realize Evan and I have not actually had a holiday together yet, just the two of us. The trips we've made since we've been a couple have all been with our families— and we like our families, but I've just made a verbal commitment that after this trip and the one in September to go to Wenatchee to spend the better part of a week with my dad and stepmom, we will take our next trips just the two of us. I'm pretty sure that our five days together with his family (absent one sibling and progeny) will be just fine. As he pointed out, they are a family of introverts. But I bring with me from my own family of origin (at least to do with my mother) a sense of dread about doing my own thing and being seen as asocial and trying to isolate myself. I believe that there will be a healthy balance of doing my own very-much-needed-downtime activities (reading, editing, writing, reading, knitting and dicking around on the internet, walking, jogging on the beach, sleeping) and group meals, some organic conversation, and working on puzzles. Some of my worries are because I've only spent short periods of time with these folks (2 days) except for his sister Arwen and family, who I know well from when Evan lived with them. I'm probably worrying unnecessarily, but I articulated all of this to Evan and he (unsurprisingly) was very understanding.

So I'll have my computer and will definitely still be online, and hopefully quite productive while also being a lazy, lazy person. :)

I woke up at 3:52 a.m. and at 4:20 gave up and got out of bed. I'd found myself thinking about my potential self-employment project and became newly excited/inspired/motivated and so I got out of bed to do some sketches and other things. Being awake and all, I figured I'd post about my thoughts on it. I had a radical one, which was rather than spending a lot of time job hunting for something 'conventional,' I could continue on that conventional path for the remainder of this month and then give myself two or three months to focus on this enterprise. If I could support myself working from home with this, it would be money well invested. Aside from rent, I don't have many expenses any more: rent, of course (though quite reasonable and includes utilities and internet), a monthly phone bill, hair color every 5 weeks or so, and purchases toward this project. Well, and some clothes from Goodwill. But I'm on food stamps so food is taken care of; I don't have a car (though I do have transportation costs); and I get my books and movies from the library. I'm frugal by nature, which helps, and neither evannichols nor I are innately inclined to go out a lot. So while cashing out my last and largest (still not that much) retirement fund isn't great, it could grant me over a year's time to focus on this, should I wish to. And I suppose if it all failed after four or five months, or I could establish it was never going to be enough to support us both (as I want to give evannichols the ability to spend time at home writing rather than doing what he does now; perhaps a pipe dream, but it's my goal), I could go back to job hunting and something would eventually come along.

It's all pretty exciting, though I would rather have had more than five hours' sleep. :P

It occurred to me that I have several folks on my flist who live in England and you might be interested in coming to hear one of the services or concerts I'll be singing in during the week-long tour. I'd love for you to come and also to introduce yourself to me!! I think everyone on my flist knows what I look like; if not, email me and I'll send a pic off-list. Here's the singing itinerary: Ooops. I just realized that while I have the dates and locations, I don't have the times of day. I'll get that from my choir director tonight and post it tomorrow. But here's the dates and locations:
Thursday, June 24th— Lunchtime Concert in Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral
Saturday, June 26th— Concert in Durham Cathedral – 2:00pm (okay; I have one time)
Monday, June 28th— Rehearsal and Evensong in York Minster
Tuesday, June 29th— Concert or service in Bradford Cathedral

( u.k. map pic )

( tarot stuff )