I remember believing, when I first thought in any real way about being a full time writer, that I would sit in a room, completely bare except for a computer. Big windows would face (more than likely) the ocean, and I would always be dressed in light cotton dresses.  My feet would be bare — but my toenails would be painted.  Ditto my fingernails.  Done professionally, of course.  My hair — perfect.  Jazz music would be floating in from somewhere (maybe even a real jazz quartet, just outside my window) and whenever I wanted it, herbal tea or a glass of really good red wine would materialize by my hand.

The room would never get messy, the dog would never eat the hand-edited manuscript (before I had a chance to put the corrections onto the master in the computer, that is) and I would NEVER have to drop everything to “run something” out to my husband. (Did I tell you he ALWAYS works in teeny towns and hamlets that are all monumentally hard to find, even with a map? Well, he does.) I would take a holiday, probably to the south of France, after every book is done. Oh, and every word I write is gold, so I hardly have to rewrite.

That was my dream.  Kinda nice, isn’t it?

Reality is a bit messier than that, but it’s my own fault.  I thought putting out a 10 book series in a year and a half sounded like fun.  I didn’t think about how many deadlines that actually is. (10.  It’s 10.)

My office doesn’t have windows (the outside is distracting), and it has a lot more than just a computer in it.  Right now it is a blizzard of paper (some of it chewed, and not all of it by the dog) from the final edits of the last book, plus half-read books I keep meaning to get back to when I have the time.  I usually don’t remember to take my coffee cup back to the kitchen, so there are three used cups crowding my desk, and I just push them up, a little closer to the edge, so the new one will fit.  When things slow down, I’ll clean my office. At least, that’s what I keep saying…

I haven’t been to have my nails professionally done in three years.  I just hack them off, and tell myself “next time.” I pull my hair back in a ponytail, and my work clothes are pajamas.  I wear big fluffy socks because I keep the place cold — meat locker cold — while I’m writing. I find it’s better for my brain.

I try to remember to eat.  Heck, I try to remember to brush my teeth, because the writing has become all consuming. If I get sick, I lie in bed, counting the minutes until I can haul myself back to my computer.  I don’t have time for sickness. You see, I have to write. I’ve got this deadline…

When I finish a first draft, it doesn’t sit in a drawer for a month.  It dashes off across the country to be savaged by a guy who takes great delight in telling me why my story isn’t working.  (With any luck, while he’s ripping and tearing, I have enough time to get a couple of loads of laundry done. Not usually, though.  Usually, I’m ripping and tearing at his  — or someone else’s — story.) Then I rewrite, and with any luck, turn it into something readable. Then I go over it again, for nits and logic and continuity. And then the grammar and spelling. And oh, did I realize every character in my story has a name that starts with A? It’s confusing. Change them. So I do.

And then, when it’s finally done, do I get my holiday in the south of France?  Nope.  That’s when we start the really hard work of putting everything together so we can get the book out. This goes on while we are discussing what will happen three books from now, and what, in detail, the next book will look like.  Oh, and I start my next story in here somewhere, hammering out an outline and a scene by scene so I can think about it while I’m driving out to Somewhere Distant Alberta to deliver a Something or Other to Husband dear.  (At least I have the opportunity to get dressed!)

This is the reality of full time writing at my house.  And I signed up for it!

So, I’ll keep cutting my own nails, and pushing the coffee cups to the side, and trying to remember when I say I’ll do something that has nothing to do with writing. But if I forget, please forgive me.

I have this deadline, you see…

I love September in Alberta. It’s like the gods of weather saying, “All right, enough dicking with you, weatherwise.  As your reward, we give you September, in all its glory!

OK, so maybe that’s a little over the top, but I do like this month.  It reminds me of working the fields with Dad when I was growing up.  September was always frantic but beautiful, with the huge screaming blue sky and the acres of crops and us scrambling to get everything done before time ran out and winter set in again. School was an afterthought, something we did until we could get home and work the fields.

Sigh.

The character I’m writing about right now has never been on a farm, much less worked one.  She had a crappy life – and is now being dealt a crappy (but eventful) death, thanks to yours truly.  I wish I could figure out how to give her one day out in the sun, working the fields.  She understands working hard to get what you want. (All right, so she’s a career criminal, but whatever. She does work hard at her craft. Trust me, I know!)  I think she might even like it!

She’s not going to get it, though.  I can just tell.

(Just so you know,  I’m working on a story for The 2nd Circle, the second edition of The 10th Circle Project, which will be out in November of 2011.  See you then!)

The champagne’s gone.  (And yes, it was actual French champagne and everything, thank you darling husband)  The house is still a wreck.  The dog has given up on me.  And….

We’re on to Round Two.  It’s like Billie Milholland said on Facebook this morning, “There is no rest for the wicked.”  Or for people who are putting out the next edition of The 10th Circle on November 1.

That’s right.  November 1st of 2011.  Two months.  We’ve got two months to finish stories, tie together story lines, figure out who lived and who died. (And how…) And more importantly, what will happen next in this wild world we’re making from scratch…

I was going to take 2 days off. Take a shower (I didn’t realize I should be penciling these in my daytimer!), clean my kitchen and maybe do some laundry.  Get my house and life back on track.  But when I mentioned this idea to Ryan late last night, there was a LONG pause, and then he said “I don’t think so.”

“One day?” I asked, ever hopeful.

“Nope.”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I sighed.

He was nice and waited until I got up this morning before he loaded me down with the “to do” list for today.  It’s a long one. (But I’m determined to have that shower!)

So now we’re back at it. After all, we’ve got stories to write and worlds to build for The 2nd Circle.

The cool thing?  I can hardly wait!

(If you want to know more about the project — and about where to buy “The 1st Circle,” (besides Amazon) please go to The 10th Circle website.)

The “to do” list is long and the time is increasingly short for the 10th Circle Project launch date, which is September 1, 2011.  I’m missing summer and my dog is out of control, because I simply don’t have the time to devote to him!  (Yeah.  Get a Border Collie puppy.  Should be fun.)

However, the Project is shaping up nicely. I’m excited, and I hope you will be, too.

Can I talk about any of it?  Well, kinda.  As those of you who were at the prelaunch celebration we put on at When Words Collide 2011, we are pulling out all the stops for this project.  It is a serialized shared world ebook experience — and I don’t think you’ll want to miss it!

Think “Chinatown” meets “X-Files”  in ten editions.  Sort of.  There will be science and there will be crime.  Lots and lots of crime.  Lots of deviousness and lots of back stabbing.  A bit of romance — because who can LIVE without romance, right? — and a bit of humour.  (Maybe not in the first one — after all, we have to blow some stuff up, first.) But mostly, you’ll be seeing crime.

The First Circle ebook comes out September 1st — and the schedule will be a new ebook out every two months.

Yes, you read that right.  Every two months a new ebook will be produced, and all of the stories will be based on what came before.

That, plus all the extras that are being developed for the website will make this a very interesting experiment.  Can we keep it up?  Can we make it exciting?  Can we keep from killing each other?

Who knows?  All I know is, the dog is running wild, I can’t remember the last time I cleaned my house, and I’m really glad I don’t live in either Hope or Glory.

Those two cities are going down!

10th Circle launch date:  September 1, 2011.  Come to the website for the grand opening.  But watch your back.

In a word — fantastically!  I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun/hard work at a con, but the hard work was definitely worth it — and the fun speaks for itself.

The hard work was a 2 day writing workshop, put on by IFWA (a HUGE speculative fiction writing group based in Calgary) and hosted by Walter Jon Williams, and then a launch and 3 panels at the con itself.

Reminder to self:  Don’t ever agree to 3 panels when I’m also involved in a launch.  My focus was definitely on the launch — and my exhaustion on Sunday made me less than useful in the panels. Luckily the other panelists carried the ball and the people who attended were given some very good information, so it worked out.  But still… Must remember this.

A bit about the When Words Collide 2011 con: This overview is pretty accurate, even though the reporter kept calling it a Sci Fi/Fantasy con.  It wasn’t.  It was aimed at all genres — which was the wonderful thing about it.  It was a chance for writers and readers of ALL genres to come together, learn a bit about the other genres, and have a good time.

As far as I can tell, everyone had a great time.  True, it was a little hot (ha! A little?) in the hotel, but other than that, it was extremely well organized and well run, which made it a dream for both writers and readers. Kudos to Randy McCharles and the rest of the committee.  You did a fantastic job!

I heard a wonderful story about two young women coming to the library on Thursday evening to hear Rachel Caine (one of the guests of honour) read — and getting so excited by what they heard at the reading (it wasn’t just Rachel Caine.  Robert J Sawyer, Jack Whyte, Walter Jon Williams and Erika Holt all read from their work) that they registered for the con and went both days, enjoying the panels and everything else immensely.  How wonderful is that?

The launch of our newest project, “The 10th Circle” went fantastically. (Actually, this was a prelaunch celebration — the actual launch is September 1st.) As promised, there was cake — and everybody who wanted it got a pin (an actual straight pin with a coloured bead at one end, isn’t that cute?) plus a pin number for a sneak peak at “The First Circle”, which will be the first ebook in a 10 ebook series.  They also got a sneak peek at the Hope and Glory newspapers.  (Hope and Glory are two city states in the shared world of the 10th Circle.)

If you’re intrigued, and want to know more — go to the 10th Circle website and sign up.  All will be revealed — on September 1st!  (Don’t you wish you went to When Words Collide now?  You’d already know!)

It was also wonderful to have the anthology “Evolve 2: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead” available at the Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing table — plus readings.  I have a story (“V-Link”) in it — and had the chance to feel like a bit of a celebrity while I was signing books and having my photo taken.  (I could almost get used to that!)

I wish I could report that I’ve been lazing around recovering since I got home — but  I haven’t.  What I HAVE been doing is fodder for another post — but wow, I can hear my bed calling me!  If only the to-do list wasn’t quite so long!  Maybe next week, I’ll rest.

Or in a year and a half, when the 10th Circle project is complete.

Or maybe not.  I’m tired, but I am having so much fun!

I was supposed to do a second post about Keycon — and I was supposed to post about Bloody Words.  These are the two conferences I have attended so far this year.  One was a sci fi fantasy con, where I spent most of my time surrounded by unbelievable costumes and all the writers I’ve befriended over the years. (That would be Keycon.)  It was great fun, and I learned a lot.

The learning was what I didn’t post about.  Sorry.

The second con (Bloody Words) was dedicated to mystery.  I’d decided to try a different genre, because I found out that the novels I was writing belong more in the mystery genre than they do in fantasy.  (Who knew?  Apparently just about everybody but me!)  So I went — on my own, no buddies, no wing man, just me, myself and I — and hung out with mystery writers.

What can I say? It was good.  Mystery writers were (generally speaking) very friendly, and I had the chance to hang around with a number of them.  However, I did run into one (who shall remain nameless) who couldn’t believe I’d written a novel on spec, that I didn’t have an agent yet, and that I was wasting my time writing short fiction.  I found out after that he was a naval officer who was also a nuclear physicist who wrote espionage thrillers… Gotcha. If I had your pedigree, I wouldn’t write a word until I had the advance in hand.  I don’t, though, so — it’s an expensive hobby until I really break in.  Many of the other writers understood completely.

My husband and I decided to turn the Bloody Words weekend into the beginning of a small holiday. So, after the con, we rented a Mustang convertible and tooled around Victoria Island for a couple of days.  It is beautiful — but wow, being raised on the prairies started to take its toll on our enjoyment.

The first two days we were all “ooh ooh isn’t this beautiful” and “ooh, look at all the trees,” and such.  By day three the claustrophobia kicked in, and the  comments ran closer to “Why doesn’t somebody clear cut this, so we can see where the hell we’re going?”

And no, it wasn’t necessarily my husband who said this!

Luckily, we were done by that time, so we came home. (Did I mention I LOVE the Alberta sky?  It’s frigging huge!  A person can breathe under a sky like that!)

And then — things got really busy.  An idea Ryan McFadden (a member of the Apocalyptic 4) and I had been working on suddenly hit the tipping point — and before either of us really knew what happened, we were full bore into a really exciting project, with a launch date and everything!  Most days I feel like I can’t lift my head, for fear of losing a minute’s writing and organizing time.

But — life marches on, now doesn’t it?  I had a birthday — and got a new puppy.  My mother, who has lived in the same house for 58 years, is moving.  (My dad built the house for her when they were first married, and I truly believe if she could figure out a way to take every board, she would.)  My husband picked up a few new contracts, and is suddenly busier than “a one legged man in an ass kicking contest.” (I think that’s what he says, anyhow.  Doesn’t seem quite right, does it?)

Did I mention that the dog has three legs?  What about my mother going on holidays two weeks before she has to move?  Have I talked about the rain? (Probably not.  Hardly had time to notice, to be honest.  Head down, keep writing…)  What about my daughter breaking two fingers in a softball game (first of a double header) — and then catching the second game?  THEN going to the hospital and finding out both fingers were broken — and she was out for the rest of the season?

Did I mention the puppy is a Border Collie — the smartest dogs on the planet, as far as I know — and that I’m going to have to run just to keep up with him? (Handicapped? Not so much.)

Yeah.  Just a little bit busy.

In the midst of writing, puppy training (more for me than for the dog, trust me) and packing boxes, I’ve also been getting ready for the next con on my list — When Words Collide, in Calgary, in mid August.  This is going to be a good one!  It is an all genre con, so mystery writers can rub shoulders with science fiction writers and romance writers and fantasy writers!  I love it!

OH!  Did I mention I signed up for a writing workshop that happens just before when Words Collide? So I’ve been critiquing 11 manuscripts…

It’s all great! (Well, most of it.) I’m having a blast! But…

The blog was forgotten.  And for that, I’m sorry.

Keycon, that wonderful Winnipeg sci fi fantasy and everything between convention, is over for another year.

We (meaning the Apocalyptic Four) were at this convention last year, because this was where the Auroras were held.  (You all remember the Auroras, right?  And my mom and aunt coming?  And all the fan boys LOVING my party-going aunt?)  It was the first Keycon for all of us, and since we had so much fun, we decided to come back this year.

Well, it worked out that only I was able to attend, and I was a bit nervous, to be honest.  I couldn’t remember much about the con (being honest again) past having tons of fun and running full tilt for the full three days.  Since I was not on any panels this year, I was going to just be an attendee.  I was hoping to get a different perspective on it, and I did, sort of.

But first, the name dropping:

My friend Barb Galler-Smith (who launched her new book Captives earlier this year) was the Editor Guest of Honour, and she worked from sun up to sunset (and beyond) the full three days.  I’m going to have to have coffee with her sometime soon so we can talk!

Robert J Sawyer was there, on another leg of his WWW round the world tour.  That man has more energy than any three of us, I’m sure.  Had a couple of breakfasts with him, and caught up.  That was nice.  Also caught a panel he was on — and that was massively informative. (I’ll talk about it later.)  He sure knows his stuff.

L.E. Modesitt Jr. Was the Author Guest of Honour, and I was lucky enough to talk to him many times over the weekend, plus have supper with both he and Barb on Saturday.  Yep, scored big that night!  Sharing a table with two of the three Guests of Honour! (I was actually surprised that either of them had the time to take a full meal.  I’d seen their schedules.  They worked HARD all weekend.)

Ann Marston and Diane Walton were there, selling On Spec and Pure Speculations (Edmonton’s sci fi fantasy festival).  When I go for coffee with Barb, I’ll be sure to invite Diane and Ann too!  Hardly had a chance to chat all weekend.

Got together with Karen Dudley (mystery writer turned fantasy writer) Chadwick Ginther (McNally Robinson plus fantasy writer — everybody seems to have two or three hats!), Derryl Murphy (his book Napier’s Bones is making waves everywhere) and Shen Braun (who looks like the devil, ha ha).  Over breakfast talked about the business of writing.  That and Facebook.  Found out Gerald Brandt actually tried the deep fried salad (I kid you not)! Missed Sherry Peters’ workshop”Silencing your inner sabateur” but did get to chat with her a couple of times.  And finally, got to meet Craig Russell, a Manitoba writer whose book “The Black Bottle Man” is up for an Aurora this year.  This man can sell like no-one I’ve ever met before!  He actually sold almost all of “Women of the Apocalypse” that MacNally had at their table!  I’m going to take lessons from him, I swear!  I bought his book (of course) and started to read it.  It is good!  When I’m finished, I’ll tell you about it.  But not now. Later.

That’s enough name dropping for now.  I still have to unpack my suitcase and get some words written today.  Tomorrow, I’ll talk about the lessons I learned….

Over the years I’ve developed a ton of ways to avoid writing.  Not so funny, but true.  Writing is something I feel compelled to do — but the getting it DONE (that last rewrite, finding publishers, or agents, and then actually mailing (or emailing) the package to same) can sometimes pull me down the rabbit hole of avoidance.

Laundry’s probably my favorite, if I was going to pick one.  Going from bad smells to good, with lots of mindless folding thrown in for good measure.  Sometimes I even figure out a nasty knot in my writing while I’m mindlessly folding, which is a bonus.  However, I’m not so good with putting it away. (The laundry, as well as the writing, ha ha.  Looks like a small problem with completion here!)

I grew up on a farm, with four siblings, so there was always plenty of laundry to do — and it was the one bit of “woman’s work” I didn’t mind.  The rest — you could keep it.  I much preferred being out in the fields or out in the barns. Out there, in the barns and the fields, creation was going on.  Inside the house?  Housework.  Wouldn’t everyone prefer creation to housework?

I used to call editing housework.  I saw it as a pain in the ass that would need to be done again and again. Something that would never be finished, because, well, people LIVE in the house, and they touch things and do things… You get the drift.

As far as I know, the writing’s never done.  Even when it’s out there, in a magazine or its own book somewhere, you can look at it, and see things that should be fixed, should be cleaned, buffed, dusted, tidied just one more time.

I had an editor tell me how much she liked a flash fiction story I’d written.  “If you’d sent it to us, we would have definitely published it!” she said.  “I loved that story!”

You want to know what I replied?  “I’d fix the first sentence,” I said.  “I’ve always hated that first sentence.”

The story is 91 words long.

Maybe I should think of editing as “doing the laundry” of the story.  Getting rid of the bad smells, like awkward clunky sentences, plotlines that go nowhere (or secondary plotlines that take the story over!) and characters who seem to have jumped right out of central casting.  Folding it all into a beautifully professional looking package, so that others can enjoy it.

Maybe that would work.

Oh, gotta go.  The dryer’s done.

I like watching TV.  All right, I know.  I’m not supposed to say that, being a writer and all, but I do.  It’s fun.  And man, can it kill an hour or two when the snow is blowing thick and fast and the temperature is dropping like the proverbial stone outside my door, and my brain is drained from a day of writing (or whatever else life throws at me).  All I want is mind candy, so I find it on TV.  So sue me.

Back in the day (when my husband and I were raising our children) we had a television.  One.  And we talked long and hard about not getting another one when it finally bit the dust.

Then my grandmother came to stay with us for a while.  (Two weeks, but it felt much much longer. When I phoned my sister to bitch (she’d helped Granny buy plane tickets) she said “She wanted to stay for a month, but I talked her out of it.”  I still owe Sue for that.)  That woman watched the news almost constantly.  And the beginning of the second week was when the television decided to die.

It took my husband and I about two seconds to change our minds about buyinh a television.  Saved our souls that week, and has been a source of entertainment since. (This is also when we decided NOT to censor what our kids watched, opting for using every instance as a teaching tool instead.  I’ll talk about that another time.)

We now have a home theatre plus four other televisions in our house.  There are two of us living here.  Yep, we are TV people — and since we put in the home theatre, we have been freaks for marathons.

We started with Homicide, Life on the Streets.  I bought the first season for my husband, for Christmas one year.  I wanted to see if it was as good as I remembered it being on television.  The first season was — so then we dove in, found the rest of the seasons and watched them all. We watched that program go from something amazing to something considerably less so, by (we assume) the network wanting something it could not produce.

That was how we got hooked.

We have watched The Wire, Deadwood, Sopranos (this was more for my husband, because I had real trouble getting into this boy soap), Dead Like Me, The Riches, Red Dwarf (you’ll note this is the only sci fi thing on this list.  This is also why we have more than one television in the house.  He hates sci fi — and I do not.), Carnivale, The Shield, Breaking Bad, Rescue Me, Da Vinci’s Inquest and Dexter. All in marathon format.

Over the winters, we slide down into our escape from the snow and the ice and the crap that is winter in Alberta, and we watched episode after episode of a single TV show, often until 2 or 3 in the morning.  (That’s the good part about owning your own business. You can pretend you’ll just sleep in the next morning.  It hardly ever worked that way, but…) And we discussed the hell out of what we’d watched.

Now THAT’S the way to do a marathon.  Talk about catching the long story arcs!  Talk about watching characters change and develop over time!  Talk about catching planning screw ups, and attempted saves.  It’s all right there on the screen.  And how cool is that?

My favorite?  The Wire.  Hands down.

I only mentioned the marathon thing because there was a “marathon” of that cute little comedy about the science boys looking for love (The Big Bang Theory) on one of our cable stations this weekend, so we tried watching it.  I swear!   Those TV people have no idea how to run a marathon!  Looked to me like like 7 or 8 episodes, out of order, repeated ad nauseum.  Probably economical for the station, but absolutely no good for a marathoner like myself.

Long story arc, boys!  Even in a show like this, let us see the long story arc!

I had one of those weeks.  Every day in the agenda covered with places to be and people to meet.  The true test of my writing mettle — and I failed, miserably.

IN THE FAILURE, WHAT I LEARNED

I DID learn some stuff, no doubt about it.  On Wednesday I went to a Workshop called “Best Blogging Tips for Editors” at the Stanley Milner Library in downtown Edmonton.  It was put on by the Alberta Magazine Editor’s Association, and facilitated by Hilary Henegar, the editor of Granville Online.  This woman has won many awards for her work, so I was really happy to sit and listen to her (even though I’m not a magazine editor!)

The stuff that jumped out?  Digital is about relationships. Developing online relationships.  And it’s about karma.  Instead of thinking about “how to find customers” she said we must empower people to find us. She said we shouldn’t think of the other guys as competition. There are strength in numbers, and it is working out how to work together to help each other. Quite a different way to think about that.

She said that an editorial mandate must be set for the blog.  With this in place, it is easy to know what to say yes to — and when to say no!

Oh, the other thing that really hit me?  How a blog entry should look!  I’m doing it all wrong. (What a surprise!)  Lots of photos, short, concise paragraphs, and it must be linky.  Newsy and linky.  Heh.  I like that!

The reason for this?  Readers skim — making a decision while they do so whether they will take any more time on your blog.  You want to entice them to do that. To keep them clicking into the website, even though everybody knows that being online is a huge time suck. She called it convincing them to go “down the rabbit hole.”

Of course, this was focussed for online magazine editors, but there was much there for us, too.  Because we all want that, right? We want people to come back, again and again, just to find out what’s going on in our lives and careers.  Right?

Here’s some magazines she suggested checking out.  You might be able to get some ideas for your own blog from the way magazines set theirs up.  The cool thing is, we can take bits and pieces, and make it work to our benefit.  And I like that, a lot!

BC Business Magazine

Uppercase Magazine

New Yorker

New York Magazine

Yes Magazine

WHAT ELSE I LEARNED

I learned that going out for lunch with Mom means a whole day now.  (All right, it WAS her birthday!)  I learned that being on a board sometimes means saying “I’m sorry.”  Yep, story there. Nope, not going to tell it!  And I learned that glasses are not created equally. (Thank goodness!)

But what I really learned was that I have to pace myself, or I will not get my writing done.  And that — that is a sin.

Have a good Friday.