I know I’m done with a book when I am DONE with a book — hate the characters, think the plot is full of holes, and other characters/plots keep intruding into my thoughts at the most inopportune times. Unfortunately, this often happens before I’m actually done with the book…right now I have 5.25 hours of work left incorporating redlines (about 0.5 hour per chapter) and I still have to write the synopsis and query letter for Nevermore.

This is the last full Monday of school…the kids will be OUT on Friday, and although they are thrilled, this stay-at-home Mom isn’t.

I’m not going to say much about Nevermore at this point…I don’t want to tempt the Blog fates to throw any delays in my direction.

I’m still frantically inputting changes into the story. This is the last polish…if I go through it once more, I’ll simply be changing everything back to the way it was and making backward instead of forward progress. So, to entertain you….I’ll leave you with this delightful video from a fellow author, Parnell Hall. He writes mystery, but I’m sure there are a lot of Romance authors who have stood in his shoes.

Click here and Enjoy!

I had a few extra minutes today so I thought I would throw a frantic Friday update at y’all.

I’m doing the mega-happy dance as I won, I won, I won. Remember the Brenda Novak auction for diabetes? There are various 1-day auctions throughout the month, and I won a read with Scott Eagan of Greyhaus Literary Agency. Woot! I won a critique from him several years ago – he’d requested a full but the book wasn’t quite ready, okay, it wasn’t even fully written and with my daughter’s upcoming surgery that year, it just didn’t happen. This time, I’m prepared. Nevermore is written, edited, and in the polishing process. So, Scott, be prepared. It’ll be on it’s way, soon!

By this time next week, school will be out. For two of my children, it’s a wondrous event. For Kinderboy#1, the stress of change is beginning to creep in. He likes his schedule…he doesn’t like change. His behavior has been ping-ponging back and forth between excitement and panic. Tantrums which he’d stopped throwing more than one a day, have crept back into the two or more incidents, usually over things he knows he can’t have and has forced you into say “No” just to give him the excuse to whine, cry, and lose privileges.

We’re keeping our fingers crossed that Drama Teen passes her two math courses. Prior to this year, a failure just meant summer school; however, with all the district cuts, summer school has been canceled. So, if she fails, she’ll have to work it into her regular schedule somehow. Bleh.

Kinderboy#2 is dreading summer camp — I’m not sure why, but I’m hoping that once he realizes what fun he’s having, he’ll change his mind.

Well, that’s it for me…I’m heading back to the painstaking process of polishing up my manuscript. I’m less than a third of the way through and only have 1 week to finish before the kids are home, sucking up all my creativity and energy.

Wish me luck!

Sorry for my lengthy absence, rumors of my abandonment of the blogging world have been highly exaggerated. Instead, I’ve been lost in another year, another century, in fact. 1849. I’m sure you’ve gathered by now that the historical romance I’m writing revolves around a pivotal event in September/October of that year. On September 27th, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe stepped off a boat in Baltimore Harbor. On October 3rd, he was discovered, ill, disheveled and disoriented, at Ryan’s Tavern by J.W. Walker of The Baltimore Sun. What happened over those fateful five days remains a mystery, even today. In Nevermore, my solution is sinister, horrific, and involves voodoo and a zombie or two…

The first two drafts of Nevermore have been completed. I’m thrilled with the way the story evolved and am doing the last bits of historical research and the really hard grunt work of tightening and editing…for example, just removing extraneous thats took 1.5 HOURS today. I then ran the document through Autocrit to grab all the repeated words and phrases as well as overused words. I’ll be using the printout to polish Nevermore to within an inch of it’s life and I have to be quick about it. I only have the rest of this week and half of next before school is out (groan).

Thank goodness I’ll have the kids home for only 1 full week before our park district begins Summer Day Camp. I’ve signed me the boys up for 5 weeks of freedom activities. Even better, I’ve convinced Drama Teen to apply for a volunteer position helping at said summer camp. Here’s hoping she gets a job (fingers crossed). Then I could be rid of ALL my children for many hours a day (insert evil laugh) and get lots of writing done ~ important as I have two erotic novellas to pound out in those five weeks and get started on the plot of another full-length novel, which may or may not be a follow-on to Nevermore.

I *hope* to regain my regular blogging schedule next week…

I shouldn’t take Tylenol PM. Yes, it makes me sleep at night, unfortunately, leaves me in a fog for most of the next day as well.

As my brain cannot come up with a topic for Too True Tuesday, I’m going to leave you with this entertaining little clip.

Enjoy!

All the kids toddled off to school today and Mr. Wonderful dashed off to the dentist early, leaving me and Tucker alone with the computer and my book. Contented sigh.

I’ll admit I totally goofed off all weekend. Heck, I didn’t even do laundry! Yeah, you heard me, goofed off. Saturday, we celebrated Mother’s Day early by going to lunch at Crab Monster (Red Lobster) and then stopped at Loewes for plants, plants, and more plants (my Mom’s Day gift). As I’m a stay at home mom, every day feels like “Mother’s Day” – “Mom, can I? Mom, Mom, Mom.” So, the best gift Mr. Wonderful gives me every year is a day without kids. So, for several blissful hours, I was without children (another big contented sigh).

The price I’m paying for all that leisure time is more work now. Mondays always fly by…today went even faster. But the good news is I’m down to the last 50 pages of inputting redlines…two scenes to write (one almost at the end and one at the very very end) and need to rewrite the first chapter. Then, starts the hard, grunt work of spell-checking, removing excess, unneeded words, tightening prose, and upping tension. I *hope* to be done by the end of May.

Conveniently, Harlequin Historical is having a pitch contest (deadline in early June). If I get my buns in gear, and get my prose tightened so I’m not over the word count, I hope to have something to submit! Wish me luck!

I survived nearly two weeks of minimum days at school with the kids home before noon. In revenge, I set off early Friday morning to our local community services district office and signed them up for Summer Camp. It’s my birthday gift to myself — 5 Weeks of Virtual Freedom! Woot!

Despite it being a short day, homework for Drama Teen continued in an avalanche. I simply do not remember having this much homework when I went to school. Even the Kinderboys have homework packages that are far more involved than Drama Teen’s were 10 years ago.

I’m playing around a bit with time management — working first, playing later. Yeah, I know…it should be intuitive, but I’m a procrastinator. Oh, I sit my butt in the chair, but find that I want to “ease into” my writing by reading e-mail, reading blogs, (muttered — playing games on Facebook), before I type the first word. I’ve thought that jumping straight into my document would be like bellyflopping into that really cold pool. To my surprise, it’s not. Once I get a few words typed, I’m hooked and back to walking the streets of 1849 Baltimore.

Unfortunately, with only a short 3 hours to write (and I’m a slow writer), lots of other duties (housework, critiquing, and those Facebook games) languished. So, I’m left with lots of pressing questions…Will all the kids go to school every day next week? Will I be able to finish the second draft of Nevermore? Why is it that my ideal Mother’s Day is a day without children? and most importantly, Will the laundry never end? LOL.

Stay tuned for any and all answers. In the meantime, Happy Mother’s Day!

Essie, over at The Accidental Mommy, has failed me by not throwing down the challenge this week. So, I’m on my own.

I love a good auction. About once a month, I cruise through E-bay and buy something. It’s usually something for the kids, or for an author giveaway. Once a year, Brenda Novak has a kick-butt auction and let me tell you, everything I bid on is ALL ABOUT ME! Yep.

The first year, I bet on a ton of stuff and won nothing. I’ve gotten better at gauging my bids and as items get stolen out from under me I get outbid, I put the money I budgeted for that item into the items I really, really, really want.

Needless to say, my hubby would probably blow a gasket if he knew what my auction budget was. Good thing I get outbid on a lot of things, or we’d probably be in debt for the next 10 years to pay for my auction addiction.

With that, I’m off to see what’s up for grabs on the one-day auction for today~! You can come along -

www.brendanovak.com

See you there!

Welcome!

I’m sooooo excited about my new website. I’ve been dreaming about it for years, right about the time I designed my first one and realized just how amateurish it looked. Isn’t this one sparkly and pretty?!? Thanks to Frauke at Croco Designs, I’ve now got a home on the web I’m happy to have people visit.

My goal was to finish the second draft of Nevermore on 1 May. Didn’t happen. I was 1 page short of reading/editing the hard copy. Finished that today and am now left with incorporating the redlines and writing two more scenes. That will complete the second draft. I’m hoping to finish by the end of this week. I’m going slower than usual because the school district (gotta love ‘em) decided to schedule three minimum days this week. So, I won’t have another full day of writing until Friday. Ugh.

The third draft will consist of rewriting the first chapter to reflect comments I received back from an agent I had pitched to in an online contest and one of my critique partners. Then, I’ll have to do all the polishing (you know, taking out about 100 thats, buts, ands, justs, etc.). I’m still suffering under the illusion that I’ll have Nevermore ready to start the submission process in June.

Oh, and did you know? The Brenda Novak Auction to raise money for diabetes research is well underway (it began on 1 May). I’ve donated a lovely basket of crossword related items to promote my latest release, Crisscross. There’s crossword puzzle books, a pen, a tote bag, a coffee mug, and a few other goodies. You can find my listing here.

So, come on, place a bid. You know you want to!