I can't get any further from figure skating this month. I still have a pair of unmounted boots. I am still way over-weight. Now I'm all wet. See, I've lived about 4 blocks from the Midtown Community Center, which has a BIG pool, for about 2 years. Finally, I got down there and joined. Thanks to grandma for the cash, because God knows, I still seem to owe in every direction and that never ends!
At any rate, I have been going with GG (my oldest) to swim and take water aerobics every morning. At least we did last week. The end of this week, they had a swim meet that went the whole freaking weekend. No swimming or water aerobics for us.
Water aerobics?!
Yeah, you know, I like the same things about it as I like about skating. You stay cool while doing it. I HATE to sweat and I hate feeling as heavy as I am. The water bouys me up and makes me not feel so heavy... I mean, even whales can swim, right?
Unfortunately, my record for lap swim is 2. No, not 2 miles... 2. Laps. That's up from the beginning of the week when I swam 1.5 laps and then quit from exhaustion. The fact that it takes me 20 minutes to swim those 2 laps.... Don't laugh, at least I'm out there. It's not so much swimming as controlled drowning.
Yeah, that's it, controlled drowning.
As of last issue (I have delusions of magazinehood), I was wondering what I should do about this tech book deal on wifi. The original author dropped to 20%. Then he dropped out altogether. It was a few days before I heard back from my agent, and only because I asked, that the project had been canceled altogether. What a GREAT vote of confidence from the publisher! Ye ha!
Well, it's not so bad as all that. There's another orphaned book that wants to be written and I've tentatively signed on to it. For any of you familiar with Macs, there's a new feature in Tiger (Mac OS 10.4) called the Dashboard. It's basically a layer that holds little one purpose programs... desk accessories. Anyway, thse little buggers are simple to make conflagurations of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Yes, I realize I just started speaking g(r)eek.
Anyway, they are looking for someone to write this book on how to program these little things and I am thinking about taking it on.
Somebody shoot me now.
He does not so have to shoot me now.
He can wait til he gets home.
So the next installment in the saga of On the Edge. I called my agent after the 4th like he asked. I left a messsage. No response. So I waited a week and called again and left another message. No response. I waited another week and left a rather terse and kind of unhappy message with the new assistant that this was my THIRD call, and there has been no response to the other two.
And he claimed to be reading my book. He said that as a new assistant, he got to read a LOT of slush pile tripe&mdahs;please don't stone me if your masterpiece is languishing in a slush pile somewhere, been there, done that, got the freaking t-shirt. Anyway, they wanted him to get a chance to read something that came in the door that DID make it through. It was a tiny boost to my ego to be the one who made it... at least to be shown to assistants to say, "Now, THIS is what we're looking for."
The kid—he DID sound like early 20's—said he was about half way through the MS and really enjoying it. I didn't test him to see if he was actually reading it. I was too flattered. I suppose, that if he was leading me on, that he did a darn good job of appealing to my vanity.
Not that writers are ego-pigs. OH NO.
So this is a good thing, right? At least someone is reading OTE. Maybe it means I am not completely dead in the water yet. I would like to think I wasn't. I really, really, REALLY would. At any rate, the boy himself called me back and said that the Man Himself was out of town and would call me Himself towards the end of next week.
We'll see. I'm not planning any victory parties.
Am I the only person just slightly depressed about the release of Harry Potter IV. Oh, of course, I am slavering to read it with the other 10.6 million US fans. As an author, it depresses me....
Not that writers NEED a reason to feel depressed. OH NO.
We used to say, "There's only one Stephen King," by way of saying that most of us were never freaking going to make it anyway, so not to get crushed by having high expectations dashed against the hard ground of the book business. Well, old JKR has indeed raised the bar, don't you think? Having become richer than the Queen of England on her books. It should be inspiring... but there is only one JKR. And I don't see it being me any time soon.
Did I just depress you? Awwwww, poor baby. I try not to think about it too.
Exactly. I'll go buy my copy sometime next month. I have deadlines on top of my deadlines and can't afford to take the two solid days to read The Tome without sleeping. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to the new Rug Rats All Grown Up movie about herded ostriches.
Okay, so I'm trying to think of some more self-deprecating and snarky things to write today and can't quite come up with any. It's not that things are going so bad, it's that i feel so freaking awful.
A good part of that is strictly physical. In VA, July is high season for Crepe Myrtle. Supposedly, these showy bloomers grow as far north as Massachusetts, but I've never seen one north of Maryland. And damn, I'm glad! I am so allergic to these things, I spend the better part of June, July and August as a basket case with sinus headaches that get so bad I wanna puke. I spend the majority of the summer alternatley pushing myself to work and wishing I was somewhere else. Ie yi yi, I hate being so sick every year.
The good news is that we really only need to live here for another 6 years or so. Then Dh will retire from the Navy and we get to leave and go live where WE want to live. Of course, where we want to live is Tennessee... which has worse allergies and makes me sicker than ever despite not having crepe myrtle.
I think I'll just make myself a plastic bubble and live in it.
Well, I guess it is time to go get supper out of the pressure cooker. Hope y'all feel better than I do.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Now, we watch and wait...
This has been a crazy couple of months. When last I blogged, my youngest daughter had just had an MRI to pinpoint where a muscle biopsy should be done and to see if there was any indication of inflammation (which would have lead to a firm diagnosis as dermatomyocitis of polymyocitis). The day that I was supposed to call the doctor to schedule a follow up, the paternal grandmother of my husband died.
So in 24 hours, I packed up the 5 of us to make a 4000 mile road trip to New Mexico and back. We took 3 weeks, visited a lot of family, drove like maniacs, had our little dog get mauled by a 60 lb chow-mix, and got home in one piece though considerably poorer in wallet and ruffled in spirit. Three days later, dear husband's other grand mother passed. We didn't go to this funeral though.
The next couple weeks were concerned with getting school finished for the year and bidding adieu to my spouse who deployed with the Navy for a couple months. With all the stress, my middle and littlest began wetting their pants like 4 and 5 times a day. Being away for three weeks pretty much trashed my oldest daughter's report card, but she finished out the year. My middlest, the drama empress, graduated from pre-K with flying colors and an award for "Most Creative." My littlest... well, it was just weird to notice how strong she was, how she could climb, and didn't waddle when she ran, how she didnt fall so much. I went to pick her up from daycare one day in May and she just stood up off the floor without using her hands. I nearly cried.
So then in June, we go away to my mother's shore house where I normally work my ass off and get very little in the way of appreciation. This year was not much different, except that I could tell mom was at least trying to be appreciative. I wallpapered the bedroom, made new curtains for the living room, a new bedspread, and pillow covers for the day bed, fixed a miriad of small things etc and so on.
We get back and FINALLY I take my littlest to the neurologist to follow up her MRI. She shows almost no sign of ever having a muscular disorder. I can still tell she's a little weak, but she runs without a waddle, and you can lift her without her slipping. She has reflexes. She climbs stairs. She pops off the floor without a hint of Gower's Maneuver. And the neuro's eyes just keep getting bigger and bigger and he keeps smiling wider and wider. The poor man doesn't know what to think. "She's better!" he tells me. Well, I can see this already.
The neuro says there's no hint of inflammation on the MRI, so that rules out the 2 -myocitises. And seeing as she is doing so well, he doesn't want to do a muscle biopsy either. As far as he says, there really aren't any forms of muscular dystrophy that have points where a child will improve this much over this long a period of time.
So, the bad news is, we still don't know what it was that made her sick. It could have been a virus of some sort--one that had a LOOOOOOONNNNNGGGG recovery arc. There is an unknowable possibility that the weakness might return. I try not to think about this. The good news is that she is very nearly well, and is catching up with her age peers as far as physical ability. For now, the neuro says watch and wait. If she stays well or improves, he wants to see her in October. If she gets worse, back she goes.
Let's hope this is the first rays of the dawning and not just a bright flash before the storm.
So, last entry, a tech book contract just fell into my lap. This entry, that too is on thin ice. The co-author completely dropped out, even of just doing 20% of the book. He did this right before the holiday weekend, so I am not sure what kind of effect it's going to have on the project. On the one hand, it's a book deal. On the other hand, I've seen better money... only $3200 advance and 9.5% royalty. I still have to give up 15% to the agent, which pays me a bit over $2700 to write a 250 page book... like $12/page. Now, I'm not greed—ok, I am—but that seems like a lot of work for not much moula. Did I also mention I'm kind of lazy? I'm also not the subject expert for this book. That was the other guy.
If the book retails for $25 (not unusual for a tech book), then they'd have to sell like 1350 to earn out the advance and make me any royalties. A best-selling tech book might sell 10K copies, a moderate seller might sell 2K-5K. So at best, I don't expect there to be a lot more money coming in from this. It's the advance or naught.
Now, for what my editor at NewsForge told me. His name's Robin (he's a guy Robin not a girl Robin) and he's a real mercenary sort of fellow, having come to journalism from a background in... limosine driving. He says, "you don't write books for the money, you write them for your career." So I am left pondering. There really isn't a lot of money in this. There might not even be enough to make up for the income i'm going to lose working on it. But I wonder, is it time to do something "for my career?"
This year, I've been able to put two things on my resume I didn't have before "contributing editor" and "senior writer." It seems that those things get a little bit of attention. My buddy and former colleague at About This Particular Macintosh writes for MacWorld (the #1), while I write for MacAddict (the #2). I've watched him publish 3 books in the eighteen months since I wimped out of my first book deal.
Truth was, I was spooked... scared. I didn't pursue the books deals because I was afraid that I couldn't write a whole book--despite having written 4 novels and a 240 chapter serial. It was too big, too intimidating. When publisher #1 strung me along for 6 months and then dumped the book with a lame excuse, I didn't pursue the second publisher.
So maybe it's time. Is it time?
Oh, and incidentally, I finished Fall from Grace, book 5 of the On the Edge series. I finally found an ending, or really, the ending found me. That does seem to be how the muse works. She comes in her own time and pours magic into my hands.
Anyway, while I was in RI, I tried to figure out which of my works-in-progress was going to get the nod. As usual, after poring over the saleable, the light, the amusing and the profitable, I chose the one that will be hardest to sell and won't make me a dime if I do. There were a few I was scared of, a couple that didn't really interest me, one I still don't feel equal to, and then this one, which makes my muse sing.
The working title is The Barunian Incident and it's a socio-political space opera sci-fi—okay, "speculative fiction" if we MUST. As per my usual, there is a triangle of doomed lovers and lots of angst. As per not my usual, there is also political intrigue, social upheaval, sword fighting and explosions. I get to create whole civilizations... it's kind of fun. I'm enjoying it, except that since I came back from RI and got buried under work and other administrivia of being a mom and a jouralist, I haven't had a single fictional thought at all. Too much stress makes me very dull and DULL is what I am right now.
So we'll see. It took 3 years to write Unison and Counterpoint. It took 16 months, on and off, to write Fall from Grace. With OTE essentially dead in the water, I promised myself that I would write something different when I finished FFG. So now I am. If I got any more different, I'd be writing horror.Tune in next week for the upshot of my discussion with my agent about the future—or lack of the same—of the OTE series.
So in 24 hours, I packed up the 5 of us to make a 4000 mile road trip to New Mexico and back. We took 3 weeks, visited a lot of family, drove like maniacs, had our little dog get mauled by a 60 lb chow-mix, and got home in one piece though considerably poorer in wallet and ruffled in spirit. Three days later, dear husband's other grand mother passed. We didn't go to this funeral though.
The next couple weeks were concerned with getting school finished for the year and bidding adieu to my spouse who deployed with the Navy for a couple months. With all the stress, my middle and littlest began wetting their pants like 4 and 5 times a day. Being away for three weeks pretty much trashed my oldest daughter's report card, but she finished out the year. My middlest, the drama empress, graduated from pre-K with flying colors and an award for "Most Creative." My littlest... well, it was just weird to notice how strong she was, how she could climb, and didn't waddle when she ran, how she didnt fall so much. I went to pick her up from daycare one day in May and she just stood up off the floor without using her hands. I nearly cried.
So then in June, we go away to my mother's shore house where I normally work my ass off and get very little in the way of appreciation. This year was not much different, except that I could tell mom was at least trying to be appreciative. I wallpapered the bedroom, made new curtains for the living room, a new bedspread, and pillow covers for the day bed, fixed a miriad of small things etc and so on.
We get back and FINALLY I take my littlest to the neurologist to follow up her MRI. She shows almost no sign of ever having a muscular disorder. I can still tell she's a little weak, but she runs without a waddle, and you can lift her without her slipping. She has reflexes. She climbs stairs. She pops off the floor without a hint of Gower's Maneuver. And the neuro's eyes just keep getting bigger and bigger and he keeps smiling wider and wider. The poor man doesn't know what to think. "She's better!" he tells me. Well, I can see this already.
The neuro says there's no hint of inflammation on the MRI, so that rules out the 2 -myocitises. And seeing as she is doing so well, he doesn't want to do a muscle biopsy either. As far as he says, there really aren't any forms of muscular dystrophy that have points where a child will improve this much over this long a period of time.
So, the bad news is, we still don't know what it was that made her sick. It could have been a virus of some sort--one that had a LOOOOOOONNNNNGGGG recovery arc. There is an unknowable possibility that the weakness might return. I try not to think about this. The good news is that she is very nearly well, and is catching up with her age peers as far as physical ability. For now, the neuro says watch and wait. If she stays well or improves, he wants to see her in October. If she gets worse, back she goes.
Let's hope this is the first rays of the dawning and not just a bright flash before the storm.
So, last entry, a tech book contract just fell into my lap. This entry, that too is on thin ice. The co-author completely dropped out, even of just doing 20% of the book. He did this right before the holiday weekend, so I am not sure what kind of effect it's going to have on the project. On the one hand, it's a book deal. On the other hand, I've seen better money... only $3200 advance and 9.5% royalty. I still have to give up 15% to the agent, which pays me a bit over $2700 to write a 250 page book... like $12/page. Now, I'm not greed—ok, I am—but that seems like a lot of work for not much moula. Did I also mention I'm kind of lazy? I'm also not the subject expert for this book. That was the other guy.
If the book retails for $25 (not unusual for a tech book), then they'd have to sell like 1350 to earn out the advance and make me any royalties. A best-selling tech book might sell 10K copies, a moderate seller might sell 2K-5K. So at best, I don't expect there to be a lot more money coming in from this. It's the advance or naught.
Now, for what my editor at NewsForge told me. His name's Robin (he's a guy Robin not a girl Robin) and he's a real mercenary sort of fellow, having come to journalism from a background in... limosine driving. He says, "you don't write books for the money, you write them for your career." So I am left pondering. There really isn't a lot of money in this. There might not even be enough to make up for the income i'm going to lose working on it. But I wonder, is it time to do something "for my career?"
This year, I've been able to put two things on my resume I didn't have before "contributing editor" and "senior writer." It seems that those things get a little bit of attention. My buddy and former colleague at About This Particular Macintosh writes for MacWorld (the #1), while I write for MacAddict (the #2). I've watched him publish 3 books in the eighteen months since I wimped out of my first book deal.
Truth was, I was spooked... scared. I didn't pursue the books deals because I was afraid that I couldn't write a whole book--despite having written 4 novels and a 240 chapter serial. It was too big, too intimidating. When publisher #1 strung me along for 6 months and then dumped the book with a lame excuse, I didn't pursue the second publisher.
So maybe it's time. Is it time?
Oh, and incidentally, I finished Fall from Grace, book 5 of the On the Edge series. I finally found an ending, or really, the ending found me. That does seem to be how the muse works. She comes in her own time and pours magic into my hands.
Anyway, while I was in RI, I tried to figure out which of my works-in-progress was going to get the nod. As usual, after poring over the saleable, the light, the amusing and the profitable, I chose the one that will be hardest to sell and won't make me a dime if I do. There were a few I was scared of, a couple that didn't really interest me, one I still don't feel equal to, and then this one, which makes my muse sing.
The working title is The Barunian Incident and it's a socio-political space opera sci-fi—okay, "speculative fiction" if we MUST. As per my usual, there is a triangle of doomed lovers and lots of angst. As per not my usual, there is also political intrigue, social upheaval, sword fighting and explosions. I get to create whole civilizations... it's kind of fun. I'm enjoying it, except that since I came back from RI and got buried under work and other administrivia of being a mom and a jouralist, I haven't had a single fictional thought at all. Too much stress makes me very dull and DULL is what I am right now.
So we'll see. It took 3 years to write Unison and Counterpoint. It took 16 months, on and off, to write Fall from Grace. With OTE essentially dead in the water, I promised myself that I would write something different when I finished FFG. So now I am. If I got any more different, I'd be writing horror.Tune in next week for the upshot of my discussion with my agent about the future—or lack of the same—of the OTE series.
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