Surviving The Ho, Ho, Hum –

Friday, December 16

17 Days Til Release of
BOUND AND DETERMINED







While the cat is a way, the mice will play...
Well, or work on non-work stuff. My boss took the day off, the push for my one big project was finished, and I completed preliminary work on the other. So... I'm in a waiting pattern. Odd, really. After all that running and hurrying and trying to get things finished on time. Now I'm just hanging out.

I catch up on a little reading. I love e-books for sheer portability. I look forward to the day when you can choose the format you want for every book released. But reading really steamy stuff when you're surrounded by your co-workers can seem really weird. And lest you wonder, no, I don't make a habit out of reading or writing at work. This is a really RARE thing.

Bound to Get Something Accomplished...
With this much time on my hands, it's going to be impossible coming up with new reasons why I can't work on my manuscript in progress. So, once I finish my spot of reading, I drag up my Word file and start typing. Or trying to type. Now I remember why I'd been avoiding working on this. Chapter 11 is a mess. There's something bugging me, and once I figure it out, I'll be much happier. But for now, ugh!

1 pm - Well, today is my last parent-teacher conference before the end of the year. I leave for home, pick up the hubby and head to the school. Lovely teacher! Sweet woman, who genuinely seems to care about the kids. She raves about my child. I'll put her on my "Nice" list.

3 pm - Head for home and try to get more accomplished on the book. I send a few more emails about BOUND AND DETERMINED. I STILL can't believe that we're only 2 or so weeks away from publication. One day, I turned in the book, lamenting that I had something like 13 months until the book was released. Then...I find out it's been moved from February 2006 to January--so I have less than a month to prepare. If Rod Serling never did a Twilight Zone episode on something like this, he missed out.

By the time, I finish obsessing about the fact this book is nearly on shelves and trying to send emails with this information to just about anyone who might remotely respond, I realize I haven't actually written much. But I still wonder... I went to a religion-based university. Do you think I should send them an announcement about my very steamy contemporary romance...? No, I don't, either. I'm scratching them off my list.

And apparently Determined to make a liar out of myself!
Back to the dreck that is chapter 11, but I still can't figure out what's bugging me. I IM with a writer friend who tells me that I just need to piss her off somehow. And if that doesn't work, I need to jump in and kick her ass. I ponder the practicalities and logistics of how this might work, but I make limited forward progress on the story.

Bed O Nails
Well, my sitting on pins and needles is over. My editor calls to tell me that Berkley is electing to keep the cover for STRIP SEARCH (July 2006) the same, with the exception of some verbiage changes. I still maintain that someone's grandma will have a heart attack when she buys this sweet-looking book and runs into my really built male stripper hero, along with a sex toy or two, but The Powers That Be see it differently. So, here we are. I do like the background and the fact the Vegas Strip is so vibrantly portrayed. But this isn't what my hero looks like. Think Viking sex god, not boy next door. And the heroine's expression... What is she thinking about? I don't think it's hot sex. *sigh* You win some, you lose some.

In the same conversation, I tell my editor that the heroine in my manuscript in progress is bothering me. We discuss reasons and strategies for giving her a personality transplant. My editor is kind to try to help me, but I think this is a one-person job. I’ve got the problem narrowed down, so I dive in to try to fix it once we end the call. Unfortunately, my solution entails going back to the beginning to tweak here and there. This is going to take awhile…

After a dinner out with the family where I resisted the urge to consume my weight in wine,
here's what I accomplished:

• Moving forward on promotion plan for BOUND AND DETERMINED - COMPLETE (A little, anyway)
• A day at the office - COMPLETE (I was there in body, if not spirit)
  
• Work on existing manuscript - COMPLETE (Even if I'm not happy with what I've written. Always easier to edit than create from scratch!)

12:30 am - I'm off to bed. A big day in front of the computer planned. Hopefully, I will accomplish something.