Thankfulness #68:No Drama

Today was a bleh day as far as getting things done. I worked on the book – I am at the end of Chapter 11, and at 60,000 words – but no one else in the house did very much. (Sorry, hubby, but it’s the truth.)

Anyway, I’m thankful for a drama-less day brought to you by deleting the Facebook app. wOOt! I did miss a live stream, though, because I turned all my notifications off, but I caught it later, and I made it to another one (I know, it was all Live Stream today) and still managed to stay completely away from the stream. Go me.

I’m also grateful for finally getting some coffee beans to grind in my birthday present grinder. It works well.

I have no photos to share, so here’s a random piece from the book:

They fell into silence, and Brandle ensured it would stay that way by turning the radio on. Though Des shot him an aggravated look, Katelina was grateful. She had enough to worry about without Des judging her. Hopefully Verchiel was right. Hopefully her mom and Brad had been somewhere safe – a concert in Columbus, maybe – anywhere but home.

Katelina settled into the seat and tried to relax, but it was impossible, and by the time they got into familiar territory she was ready to burst. She watched trees she’d known since childhood slip past, mingled with houses and barns that had once been better maintained. Finally the edge of town came into view, and she leaned forward, eyes wide. Red and blue lights flashed like fireflies all over the town. Smoke curled heavy and black into the sky, and a road block turned people away before they could even reach the Welcome sign.

Des rolled the vehicle to a stop and a uniformed officer came around to the driver’s side.

“Sorry, no one’s allowed through.”

Have a Live Stream kinda day!

Jo 🙂

P.S. same song still driving me crazy. 

Thankfulness #63: Terrible Turtle Hoodie

Today my Terrible Turtle Hoodie arrived! (Excuse the photo, it’s a screen cap from a live video I did on FB, and I am making a weird face because 1- I am talking and 2 – I make a lot of weird faces):

Sadly, unless we set up on Zazzle (which we might) these sweatshirts will never be available again. I have an account at Cafe Press, but it is so confusing trying to figure it out that I mat ditch it. They have videos to help you, except none of my Cafe Press dashboards look anything like the videos, so…I dunno.

In other news I got my outline mostly done. There are some holes I need to figure out. But that will be easy enough by simply saying, “Okay, what is this character’s motivation? What would they do next?” and keep going through each one until I hit one that moves things forward. Though I normally am anti-outlining, it had helped on this one because there’s so much to wrap up in a short time. I usually do the same sort of critical thinking on it and rearrange events, but usually it comes after it’s written. I’m running out of time, so I am going to just do it.

Tomorrow, or in the next few days, I am going to have to figure out what to do about the Anthology we were working on of Old Man Wickleberry stories. There’s been a… roadblock, or a potential roadblock, and I have been hesitant to bring it up to people. I don’t want to get into it, and I’m sure no one reading this cares. Anyway, I need to put on my big girl pants and handle it.

And that’s all from me. Have TTC hoodie kinda day!

Jo 🙂

 

Thankfulness #61:Facebook Nicknames

Okay, so not much has happened today. There was a massive ice storm forecast, but as of midnight we just had a little bit of ice. I’m waiting to see what tomorrow brings.

No one did anything. No work got done; the Christmas decorations did not get taken down to the basement. Hubby played his video game. The brother mostly slept. I did work on my book, but I only did  a little writing. The trouble is I am stuck. Like seriously, hugely stuck, and I can’t figure out how to get unstuck. So, I’m doing what any writer does when they’re stuck, and I’m rewriting. But I have so many weird things that need tied up. Characters need their payoffs, and they need things wrapped up, and so I need to incorporate all of those in there, and in order to do that I am going to have to make a horrible, terrible, outline.

I hate outlines because 1) I find them to be extra useless work (normally) that take time away from writing – I could be writing chapter one instead of outlining it and THEN writing it. 2) Once I have outlined it, the story is already done. there are no exciting AHA moments, no surprises, no creativity, just following a script. Bleh. But this mess is too tangled up, and so in this instance I NEED an outline of sorts. *sigh* SO i sat down, listed out each character, what they were doing, WHY they were doing it, and in what way their payoffs and wrap ups needed to happen. Now I need to just figure out how to get to each place with each one. I started on it by heavily changing the circumstances of a new character, which meant a bunch of rewrites, and I’m moving the last two chapters to a much later date, so… *sigh* but it has to be done.

And now for my gratefulness. Today I am thankful for Facebook nicknames – as odd as that seems. It’s been a crappy day, but getting to play with the facebook messenger improved it, and especially a conversation i am having with fellow Turtles creator Jonathan:

As you can see, I have changed our names to better reflect our true natures. I am good, and he is evil. Only an evil man would write a script where turtles explode, and pigs get turned into sausage. Just sayin’.

And now I leave you – oh, I did redo the book born blog’s graphics, too. But that was actually done last night, so it doesn’t count for today. Still, I think they’re cute.

Have a nickname kinda day!

Jo 😉

Thankfulness #59

Today I am thankful for finishing chapter nine and starting chapter ten. I still have no idea what I am going to do with the next 13 chapters, but at least that’s something.

Fido says hello

Have a writing kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Thankfulness #37: A Successful Takeover

vampire christmas

I had a takeover in the Book Born facebook group today. It lasted eight hours (wow!) and I am thankful to those who turned out to make it successful. We had some good participation, plenty of fun comments, and since I am leaving the games up for a day I know I will collect some more. Whether these facebook takeovers generate new readers or not is up for debate. I know that I have done some before that did – both the Vampire Authors’ Celebration I did in October and a couple I did previously in Book Born – but I have also done some that didn’t generate anything (not listing them, ha ha!) I did get some new contest entries, so that’s something, and even if I don’t get a single new download, I had fun, and that’s what matters.

I have to get to bed early tonight so I can go to the dentist tomorrow and they can steal my teeth. (They’ll hopefully be sending them off to get that broken one replaced). For reasons I don’t understand. My appointment is at like 9 a.m. Ugh.

So I shall go finish watching the news, then shower, give the cat her pill, and go to bed.

Have a happy takeover kinda day!

Jo 🙂

PS here are the cool character graphics I made – click them to make them bigger (and readable):

Thankfulness #36: Cheap Stock

I know I’m writing this late, but the net was not cooperating last night and I’ve been elbow deep in a Facebook takeover all day (which is still going on if you want to come play!)

Anyway, yesterday I was grateful for the cool promo Dreamstime had going on – five images for $.05. I used it to get some stock and  make some new book teasers (for said takeover today)

 

Pretty snazzy, huh?

All right, back to it. Have a cheap stock kinda night!

Jo 🙂

Thankfulness #30: Completion

Today I am thankful that it is the last day of November, which marks the end of both National Novel Writing Month and National Blog Posting month.

So how did I do?

I finished both, baby!

This is blog post number thirty, and two minutes ago I bypassed my 50,000 word goal.

I don’t know if there is a little winners badge for NaBloPoMo, or if I’d even get one. They had a very cool community going on over at Cheer Peppers, but I barely participated because I couldn’t blog, do NaNo, participate in real life AND read a bazillion blogs (in fact, I’m behind on my regularly subscribed blogs) and if I can’t read their blogs, I’m not going to ask them to read mine. But even if I don’t get a cool little badge, I have the satisfaction of knowing I did it, and that’s really what is supposed to matter, not cool little badges. Right?

Right?

And now I need to sleep for a day straight.

Have a winning kind of day (you can even be a rockstar from mars if you want to.)

Jo 🙂

Thankfulness #29: Words

Today I am thankful for words. To be specific,  10,853 words. That’s how many I managed to write today – wOOt! – which leaves just 7,859 to reach the 50,000 required by NaNoWriMo, and I have two days to do it in. This should be gravy.

I thought I was farther behind than I was. The last word count I remembered was 28,000, but apparently I got it up to 31,000 the other night (who knew). So I started 3,000 ahead today, which helped a lot.

As to the writing itself, sadly a lot of those 50,000 words will get deleted come December first, but I’m on chapter six, maybe chapter seven. I have a bit more of the plot, and then I have to figure out what to do. I know where they are going to go for the big climax, but I don’t have much planned to fill the middle. I think they need to run into the bad guys a couple times – I might go back and add that into one of the previous chapters in fact, so we can start “meeting” them. But I don’t know. As usual, it’s all up in the air.

I did promise Christmas decoration pics yesterday, so here they are.

First, the cute hat ornaments we made:

And now for decorations:

 

We’re mid scraping on the frontroom, so the tree had to go in the dining room this year. Because of the in flux nature of those rooms, we barely did anything else to them,  so the bathroom is crammed with lots of Christmas stuff, as is the kitchen. Someday I am going to have this house done and really do it up.

I tried to stick to a themed tree this year, as I’ve been discussing, but I didn’t make it. We ended up having to add several ornaments that are sentimental. I mean, what is Christmas without a zombie on your tree?

And I leave you with a squishy chicken in a santa hat!

 

Have a three-thousand-extra-words kinda day!

Jo 🙂

Thankfulness #22: Game Time

Today I was grateful for getting to play Final Fantasy XIII-2 with hubby for awhile. We finished Lake Bresha (the second area) and are ready to head to the third. So far this has been a lot of fun. It feels a lot more RP game than XIII did. There are more people to talk to, more side missions, more chocobos, and a moogle. That right there makes it a winner.

Past that I got the short story Road to Darkness formatted and made a cover for it:

I’d actually like to redo all the series covers to match this format BUT I think people would have a fit. They already refuse to commit to the “new” style covers over the hand drawn ones. imagine throwing a third cover out there. Hee-hee! Chaos!

Anyway, the short story is free – it goes with the new Patrick book brothers of darkness (though you can read it without reading Patrick), and was in the Blood Moon anthology. I;d call this one straight up horror.

While I am on Amaranthine news, I got some more entries today, including one who bought the brothers of darkness and so earned the six points. Boom! Happy dance time.

The brother and dad are gone overnight, so I had planned to really catch up on NaNoWriMo. Instead, because game time ran long, I finished formatting and doing the cover, and then Mom was in a chatty mood, so she caught me and… well, I did something like 2,000 words. Yeouch.

I did take a moment while things were slowly saving (the laptop needs restarted as everything is lagging badly) and took a look at my stats from other years of participating. there’s no data saved for the first time (2005), but the others…

2011

2013

2015

I think the plateaus show that i am pretty NOT constant about writing every day. Is it any wonder that this year’s looks like this:

 

I know it looks bleak, but I WILL catch up. i am not going to have a year that does not have that little winner badge on it, even if I have to skip sleep for the last week of the month. That’s the kind of competitive b**** I am.

In the meantime, I need to go to bed so i can get up and crack at this again tomorrow. I am going to dig my headphones up so I can write, even if dad is watching TV. That should help.

Have a moogle kinda day, Kupo!

Jo 🙂

A moogle, for the uninitiated. 

 

 

Thankfulness #17: Nice Weather

Yesterday I was thankful for nice weather. The brother and I got some good poekmoning in – to the tune of almost five miles walked, so that was nice. I actually quite enjoy walking around town after dark when the streets are empty:

The bro on Main Street

Though we went early enough that not everyone was asleep. In fact, lights were on in the church:

Of course no pokemon outing is complete without a visit to the Ax Murder house which is both a gym and spawn point:

 

 

Though despite it being distinctly autumn:

 

creepy leaf shadows

There are Christmas decorations popping up already:

And that’s all I got. I did a bit of writing yesterday and am over 19,000 but still short of where I should be.

Have a warm weather kinda day!

Jo 😉