B.E. Sanderson's Blog, page 5

What NOT to Do

Last night, I sat down to watch the remake of the original movie for the series The Waltons.  I do love me some Waltons, doncha know.  I've seen every episode of the series multiple times.  And with the way entertainment is these days, I wasn't so sure I wanted to watch this remake.  But there was nothing else on, so I waded in.

It was bad.  So bad.  I mean, we watched it all (Hubs joined me about halfway through), but it was not good.  The acting was bad.  Most of the time, it was like they were reading the lines instead of acting the characters.  But this blog isn't about acting.  It's about writing.

And the writing was bad.  The dialogue was bad.  Good god, people.  Did you even think about how people talk to one another?  Especially how people talked to each other in 1933?  Some of the slang for today would not have been slang then.  I wish I could remember some of the instances, but I don't.  Trust me, they were there.  Glaring.  Spotlight right to the eyes.  

And it wasn't like writing the script would've been hard.  The movie followed the original plot for the most part.  They could've used the original script for petesakes.  Geez.

And whoever researched the historical period should be slapped.  1933... Virginia.  A black police officer?  Come on.  Really? And considering, it was post-Depression, so why the hell was everyone dressed so nicely?  Oh, sure, they put Mary Ellen in overalls, but they were nice overalls, like they'd been bought recently for her instead of the hand-me-down ones she would've been wearing.  And all the other children were so nicely dressed they looked like they were sporting their go-to-church clothes instead of the cheap, raggedy play clothes the children of a poor mountain family would've been wearing.  Everything should've looked well-worn, like they'd been passing the clothes down for years and making everything else by hand.  Hell, even when the dad was laying in bed in his long-johns, the damn things looked like he bought them online last week.

Did they even bother to watch the original movie???  They could've made it all so much better if they had simply followed the formula that worked so well it spawned a hit TV series that lasted for NINE YEARS.  (Okay, so maybe they should've stopped after Richard Thomas left, but that's just my opinion.)

Anyway, if you're writing a period piece or anything else, pay attention to how people talk to each other.  Pay attention to the period you're writing.  Otherwise, you'll leave your readers like that movie left this viewer... irritated and wanting to write a scathing one-star review.  

Making 'The Decision'

To write or not to write, that is The Decision.  Whether it is nobler to suffer the vagaries of banging away at the keys or to make it, and all the stuff that comes with it, stop

This morning a writer friend of mine made the announcement that she's taking a hiatus from writing.  It's totally understandable, but it gives me a sad.  

I'm sad because it means more of her books won't be dropping onto my Kindle any time soon.  But I'm also sad because I know how hard it was for her to make this decision.  Lord knows, I feel like I'm never too far from facing the decision myself.

And I don't even have the health problems she's faced over the past few years.  Sure, it's harder physically to sit here and write for long stretches.  The wrists, doncha know.  And the hips.  And the eyes aren't what they used to be.  I'm getting older and the body has been through some trials in the past 51 years.  

For me, it's mainly the heart that keeps me wondering whether I should just chuck it all and take up throwing tires at the warehouse down the highway.  Not heart as in the thumping, pumping muscle.  That sucker is fine. No. HEART as in the will, the gumption, the driving force.  As in, some days I just don't have the heart.

Of course, it's also the other part of the brain that thinks all of these words suck.  Yeah, I know you don't think they suck.  You can't convince that pissy part of my brain it's wrong.  I've tried.  It's a futile battle.

Right now, I know of two other friends who stopped writing altogether.  (You know who you are.)  I had another acquaintance who stopped writing her own books and went ghost writer, so I'll never again know what books she's written.  Who knows how many others simply disappeared from the blog roll and the shelves?

Many of us make the decision during the whole 'finding an agent' phase.  It's hard to keep going when all you're doing is reading rejection letters.  Man, don't I know it.  If you make it through that intact, then you've got the 'sales suck' phase.  Also known as the 'why the hell am I doing this' phase.

I spend a lot of time in that last phase.  'Sales suck' morphs into 'everything I write sucks' which inevitably leads to 'I suck'.  Ever seen an ant lion trap?  The ant lion is a bug that makes a sort of funnel in soft sand or dirt and sits at the bottom of it under the surface.  When a bug wanders into the funnel, it starts to slide downward toward the waiting predator.  If it tries to get out, the ant lion spits more loose dirt at it until it ends up at the bottom and in the crushing mandibles of the ant lion.  The writing life is sort of like that.  For me, anyway.

Honestly, there's no shame in making The Decision.  At least there shouldn't be.  But there is.  Oh, I don't think other people cast shame on these writers.  I think the shame is all internal.  Each person who's made The Decision probably feels like they've given up.  They've let their dreams down.  They've let the pissy part win.  

Some days, it's the only thing that keeps me going.  Fear of the shame.  :shrug:  I won't let this bastard win.  Dammit.  

Most days I try not to think about it.  Soldier on and all that, doncha know.  

If you need to stop, stop.  Take a break.  Take a hiatus.  Regroup and re-evaluate.  Down the road a piece, you might be ready to forge in again.  Or you may find it freeing and never come back to this masochistic way of life.  But you may also rediscover your love of writing and jot little stories for yourself again, like you did when you were younger and full of hope.  No one can know what the future holds.

For me, I'm still at it.  I may take little unannounced hiatuses here and there, but not for too awfully long.  I'm not ready to make The Decision yet.  

A MODEL CURSE is Wide

As of this morning, all the A Model Curse books are at the bigger outlets available - B&N, Apple, Kobo, etc.  Plus, they're still at Amazon, of course.  And I have universal links for them all.  

Sleeping Ugly: https://books2read.com/sleeping-ugly
Ugly and the Beast: https://books2read.com/ugly-and-the-beast
Cinder Ugly: https://books2read.com/cinder-ugly

Draft 2 Digital starts the whole universal link process, but you can add to it to a certain extent, so even though I didn't use D2D to upload to Amazon (because my books are already there), I was able to give Books2Read the links so all potential readers could buy at Amazon, too.  (Ebook and paperback.)  It's a wonderful thing.

Now, when D2D does the universal links, it ends up being some number in the link, but they give you the ability to customize the link, so you'll note that each of the above links shows the title of the book in the link.  Yay.

I think I already told you that Blink of an I is out and wide, but there's the link, just in case you missed it.

The only other book I have at this time that is out of the Kindle Unlimited program is Accidental Death.  I'll take that wide when its sequel, Natural Causes, drops out of KU next month.  

I'll miss the Page Reads, but they've been so piddlin' lately I couldn't do much worse without them.  

So, yeah, if you're looking for something to read and you've been sort of anti-Amazon all along, now is your chance to pick up these fine books at a retailer you prefer.  Unless you want a paperback, then yeah, you'll still have to go through the 'Zon.  

Enjoy!

Embracing the Old Stuff

 Every Wednesday, my most awesome and wonderful friend, Silver, posts a thing called Wednesday Words, wherein she takes a prompt and posts a snippet with that particular word in it.  And asks others to post their own snippet.  Today's word was 'telescope'.  And it made me trot out my first book.  (Because I don't think any other book I've ever written has that word and I can't seem to write to spec.)  You can read my snippet over there.  Warning: It's pretty bad.

And that's what I want to talk about today.  

Early writing can be awful.  Actually Fear Itself can't have been that bad.  It helped Hubs fall in love with me, after all.  But it's not where I am right now.  And looking back at it makes me want to cringe.  

That snippet alone... ugh.  I used 'breathed' as a dialogue tag for pitysakes.  

It's nearly 18 years since I started writing that book, though, and I've grown a lot.  Thank goodness for that.  Eighteen years.  I don't know how many books I've written in those years, but 16 of them are now published.  One would hope after all that, I'd learned some things.  I don't use 'breathed' as a dialogue tag anymore, that's for damn sure.  LOL

I think every writer should go back and read the early stuff they've written, though.  It helps to see where you've been.  And then you can celebrate how far you've come.  

Even better, go back and try to fix your early stuff.  It helps stretch the editing muscles.  I still love that book, flaws and all, and I have tried, from time to time, to fix the writing.  I may do it yet.  I'm stubborn that way.

One thing you should never do is shitcan your old stuff.  You need it.  Even if you never look at it again, it's part of your journey.  It's your history.  It's like an old movie of you learning to walk.  You'd never destroy that because you walk perfectly now, would you?  No, you embrace it.  

Embrace your early writings.  They may suck.  They may make you cringe.  You may never want to ever show any of it to the world, because, frankly, it can be a little embarrassing.  But they're part of who you are now as a writer.  Don't cringe.  Smile.  The same way you'd smile at uncovered art from Kindergarten.  You've grown, sure, but that burgeoning writer is a part of you.  Embrace her.

The D2D Adventure Begins. Again.

 Yesterday began the not-hard but totally tedious and slightly irritating process of listing my books with Draft2Digital.  I started out with what I figured would be easiest - a single title novel rather than a series.  

Most of the process is pretty simple.  But I knew that from the last time I went with D2D.  Unfortunately, they changed something.  Now, they make you pick one of their pre-set formats.  Which is probably awesome for people who haven't already formatted their books and don't have an idea of how to do it.  For me?  Well, let's just say things didn't go exactly as they'd gone before.  

Oh, the manuscript itself seems fine.  It's the front and back matter that gave me a headache today.  Their theme thingies were giving me weird spacing.  Like the pre-formatted list on my Other Books page suddenly had a BIG LETTER at the beginning of the list and was hard left-aligned while the other books were normal and tabbed over.  You know, like you want for the story part.  And I couldn't find a way to force it to recognize those first and last chunks as NOT BOOK.

Although, now that I think about it, maybe a section break would work.  I'll try that with the next book.

Anyway, I went with the simplest theme I could, unchecked some thingies, and ended up with everything looking pretty much like I want it to look.  And since this is Blink of an I, I don't think anyone's really going to get themselves in a tizzy over the slight differences.  :shrug:  I could be wrong.  Time will tell.

Anyway, it's a learning process I'm happy to get through.  It's just tedious.  And if tedious bothered me, I wouldn't have made it this far in the self-publishing thing. 

Since it's a learning process, I made a spreadsheet.  Shocking, I know.  But this way, I'll be able to keep track of where I'm at in the process with the 15 other books, as they drop.  I have a page with all my books and where they're at in the process, then another page with which outlets they'relisted and when go live.  And of course, a page showing what they're listed at and how much I'll make from each.  And what sold where.  And probably a tab each with links to the outlets themselves.  It's all very tabiful.  Do you hate me yet?  You know me and spreadsheets.  (Or if you're new here, you don't, but you'll learn.)

Someone mentioned that I might be able to get Amazon to let my books free sooner than the end of their contracts, but I'm happy to let them ride along and fall out naturally.  It'll give me time to work with the books as they come out without having all 16 dropped on my head at once.  And I can still utilize the free days and countdown deals until that happens.  Can't hurt, eh?

Okay, so Blink is out to a variety of outlets.  Six of them are already showing published.  Two of them are foreign, so unless you read in German (the link's not ready yet) or French, they're not for you.  Two of them are for borrowing from libraries, so I can't post the links because I don't have the apps for that.  But it's also now at B&N and Kobo, which I can actually see.  I'm waiting on Apple, two services I've never heard of, and Hoopla (another library service).  Hoopla is supposed to take a while, so don't jump right over there.

Today, barring acts of payjob and any minor apocalypses, I'll begin work on getting the A Model Curse series loaded and ready for bear.  SU doesn't drop out of Amazon until Wednesday, so I've got some time to work on the formatting for those.  I'd like them to publish together, if at all possible.  Fingers crossed.

And I'll be adding Universal Links to the Pages here once I get those finalized.  You know, because D2D provides universal links and junk.  Here's the one for Blink, btw, All sorts of interesting things D2D didn't have back in 2016.  Weeee.

Unfortunately, dealing with all this now is distracting me from editing.  Derp.  I'll pull me head out soon.  Promise. What I can't promise is when this next book will be ready for people to read.  :shrug:  If I could split myself into three people, that would help.  Busy busy busy.  Which reminds me I need to do something for the payjob before I forget.

On that note, I'll let you go.  Stay tuned.

So, A Thing Happened

So, a thing happened.  I can't remember if I talked about it here or over at The Writing Spectacle, but this is the gist of it...  Earlier this month, I got a letter from Amazon.  It talked about illegitimate page reads and how they weren't paying for those or some such nonsense. I read it, thought it was a general letter to authors in the KU program, and filed it in the Archives.  Then I dilly-dallied checking out my September numbers until a few days ago.  Imagine my surprise, when the report showed a big fat zero in the place where it should've shown money for my page reads.

Then I remembered the letter.

I went into the Archives and pulled the letter out.  I guess it wasn't for everyone after all.  At the bottom, it said if I had any questions to reply to the letter, so I did.  I got an auto-gram stating it could take up to 5 days to research my case.  This morning, I got a new letter telling me basically nothing.  It did assure me that my account is still in good standing, but reaffirming the fact that illegitimate page reads were not going to get paid for.  But not actually saying my page reads were illegitimate or what have you.

Basically what I took from the reply was that those page reads I had in September are gone and I have no recourse to get my big whopping $3.79 from Amazon.  Sort of a 'so sorry, Charlie, but you're screwed.  Thanks for playing and we appreciate your business.' kind of thing.

Except now I don't feel like I can trust Amazon to give me a definite accounting of what I'm getting paid.  I mean, it's always been a case of trust.  Authors have to trust all of their sales outlets to give them the right numbers and then to put the right amounts into their bank accounts.  We have to trust the booksellers to not screw us royally.  And I can do that.  I have done it for over 6 years now.  Except now I can't.

Amazon wants me to continue to trust them, but they don't trust that my sales are real sales.  As if I somehow got someone to make up page reads somehow and risked my account in order to bilk the big 'Zon out of less than $4.  I'm the chick who found a pricey cell phone at the lake and then did my damndest to find the owner, including waiting around at a safe location for someone to come pick up the thing.  I'm the gal at the Walmart who stops the dude whose dollar just fell out of his pocket.  I couldn't have been in on it.  And since I wasn't in on it, they have got to be somehow thinking there's a Robin Hood character randomly faking page reads so the little guys like me can have pennies out of the big KU pool.  I can't parse it any other way.  

And they want me to remain exclusive with them throughout all this.  Except if I can't trust them to report the right page reads to me, how can I trust them to report actual sales?  How can I trust that tomorrow they won't tell me my book sales are illegitimate and they aren't paying for those either?  =o\

I've been a good little author.  I was on the frontlines defending Amazon when anyone would say anything negative about them.  And they thumbed their nose at me.  

Now, taking my books off Amazon would be stupid.  They're still the biggest fish in town and cancelling my books on there would be like cutting off nose because I ran afoul of a skunk.  Still need my nose, even if sometimes it encounters something that stinks.  But I am taking my books out of KU.  I can't see any other way around the lack of trust there. 

Unfortunately, a whole bunch of my books just re-upped for a 90 day stint.  If you're a subscriber, and you still want to read my books through KU, you'd better get cracking.

I managed to get Ugly and the Beast out just as it was renewing.  And Cinder Ugly a day before it went.  Sleeping Ugly should be out on the 1st.  That's one series.  As for the rest of them, they fall out eventually.  

I had hoped to do some kind of sale thing, but right now, I'm too meh.  I need to start thinking about going wide with all of these, which means changing back matter, etc.

It sucks.  Truly.  And you might think 'All this over $3.79???', but what if it was $379?  Or $3790?  Put it another way... What if it was $4 from me and $4 from you and $4 from every author in the KU program?  Why are we even in this thing if they can do this to any of us with no reason, no explanation, or anything?

They kicked me, who's no bigger than a guppy in the grand scheme of publishing.  I wonder how many other guppies they kicked this month.  

So, I'm out of it.  As soon as I can be out of it.  It was good while it lasted.  Time to dust off my Draft to Digital account and see if I can't pick my sales up off the floor.  A MODEL CURSE will be the first series to launch there.  I'll let you know about that and about the other series and singles as they become available widely.

By the way, don't look for me to do NaNoWriMo this year.  Maybe it'll be a NaNoEdMo if I can get my head out of my as... armpit long enough to get back to work on Untitled Fantasy, but there will be no new words.  

Not a Real Writer

I've heard said time and again that if you don't show up and treat this writing thing like a job every day, you're not a real writer.  :shrug:  I guess that means I'm not a 'real' writer.  

Oh, the first year of publishing, I treated it like a job.  I was crankin' and spankin' on some writerly thing every day.  If I wasn't writing, I was editing.  Or marketing.  Or formatting.  Or doing cover stuff.  Or schmoozing.  I published 4 books that year.  For all that work, I sold 1017 copies.  Of course, during that year I spent just under $5000.  

The next year, I was still treating it like a job but treating it like a job was getting harder.  I published three books that year.  I sold 693 copies and spent a little over $2000.

Year three, the 'treat it like a job' thing fell apart.  I published 2 books and the numbers were 262 sold and $1500 spent.

I'd go on, but I think you can see where I'm going with this.  Maybe.  

When you look at the numbers, you might think: the more work I put into it, the better I did.  Or you can look at it the other way: the worse I did, the less likely I was to want to put the work into it.  It's the latter.  

Oh, I do see an uptick in sales when I'm putting more effort (and more money, by the way) into it, but it's rarely enough of an uptick to make it seem worthwhile.  I'm sitting here shelling out funds I don't really have to make sales that don't even come close to covering what I spent.  The reality of that is that I can no longer justify the outgo.  In money or in time spent.

I realize that last part there might make it seem like I'm prepping y'all for an announcement that I'm quitting.  I'm not.  I'm still writing.  I'm still editing.  It's just slower now and I'm more likely now to put time toward other pursuits that might actually give me something to show for my efforts.  If that makes me not a 'real writer' in others' eyes, I guess I'll have to live with that.  :shrug:

But when you get here and see that I still haven't progress toward the publication of another book, you might understand a little better where I'm at.  The last three books I published sold 30 copies.  Not thirty each... thirty combined.  The one book I published this year has sold just over 11 copies.  Numbers like that don't make me jazzed about putting in a full day at the job of writer.  

Add in the other, non-writing stuff that gets me in a bad place, and you can understand a little more.  

Of course, even to me, that all sounds like excuses.  If this was a regular job, I would've been fired years ago.  I'm not putting in the hours and I'm not making any money for the company I work for.  Thankfully, the CFO likes me.  And he sees all the non-writing things I do for the company as a whole.  And he appreciates the writing stuff I do do even if it's not making money, so I'm not in danger of being fired by him.

The CEO isn't so sure.  I may fire myself yet.  But not today.  

So, I'm not a real writer.  Not at the moment anyway.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe next year.  Until then, I'll be plodding along and hoping.

Industry News and Stuff

 A UK publisher of nature guides, etc. is talking about paper shortages over there in Europe.  I tried getting alternate sources for this, but was unable to find anything.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was true, but without additional sources, I can't trust the info.  Wait, I just found an article... which sounds more like a marketing ploy than actual news of a paper shortage.  A 'buy books now in case there's a paper shortage' sort of thing.  

In other writerly news, I saw a thread talking about the price of paperbacks in a mostly UK crime fiction FB group I belong to.  The general consensus was that people weren't willing to pay 15 pounds for a paperback.  Couldn't even conceive of why anyone would price their paperback at more than 15 pounds.  I didn't chime in.  I have at least one above that price point.  I had to or I wouldn't have made any money on that book.  As it is, I make about $1-2 per paperback, which is about 10% of any given book's price.  Considering I make 70% on an ebook, I don't think getting 10% on a paperback is too much to ask.

Oh, hey... Did anyone else get a super fun letter from Amazon earlier in the month about illegitimate ebook page reads?  I archived it because I didn't think it pertained to me.  Ummm... When I went to look at my previous month's sales to resolve the per page price for my spreadsheet, I noted that I'm not getting paid for ANY page reads in September.  Zero.  Zilch.  Nada.  Since I did, in fact, have page reads in September, I un-archived the letter and contacted Amazon.  They're looking into it.  My page reads only amounted to 842 pages, which works out to less than $4, but it's the principle of the thing.  Someone out there in America read books 2-4 in the genie series.  1 person does not a scammer make.  And imagine if they cut $4 from every author in the KU.  Gah.  So, if you got the letter, check your sales for September before that option goes away on 11/1.  Otherwise, you'll probably be screwed.

If you're not keeping track of this stuff, you probably should be.  I know it's a pain in the ass, but better a pain in the ass than in the pocketbook.  And these days, every $4 counts.  That's like 2 loaves of bread and a half gallon of milk here.  Or a tub of Edy's ice cream (minus the tax) at Dollar General.  Two tubs of Great Value ice cream at Wallyworld.  (Heh, maybe I should measure everything in ice cream.)  Or, here in SW MO, a gallon and a quarter of gasoline.  

Anyway, that's the news I've got for you this morning.  Got any news for me?  

Ideas are Everywhere

 A question writers often get asked is "Where did you come up with your ideas?"

For me, the general answer is 'everywhere'.  If the question starts with a 'how', the answer changes to 'no clue, they're just there'.  Where?  Everywhere.

Orson Scott Card* is attributed with saying: "Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any."  I don't necessarily ascribe to that.  I think I'm a good writer, but I don't get five or six ideas EVERY DAY.  I think I'd go nuts if I did.  I'd be like a puppy with a dozen different toys all thrown at him at once... GAH!

I do get ideas a lot.  The really good ones... the ones that won't leave me alone... they go into a Word file.  Most of the ideas never make it there.  

News stories often make for good ideas.  Especially for crime fiction.  Natural Causes got its kernel from a crime story that made headlines.  Of course, the book totally diverges from the real story, but the kernel is there.  

Sometimes, the ideas just come from my brain noodling through things.  Like with Early Grave.  I started with the idea that I wanted to do another SCIU novel and then I got to thinking about how I could write a suspense novel with a serial killer that's premise hadn't been done to death.  (pardon the pun)  I came up with the idea that someone was killing old people in nursing homes and making it look like the deaths were natural.  But I didn't want to do an Angel of Death thing.  This killer actually hates old people and wants them dead.  Then I remembered I'd sent Ned Washington to Toledo at the beginning of Fertile Ground.  Voila!  Plot, MC, Setting and we're off to the races.

Sometimes something that happens to you will give you ideas.  Accidental Death was an assortment of experiences, people, and events over the course of my life that rolled themselves into a novel.  

Of course, AD actually started with the basic question 'What if...'  The 'What if' is often a valuable source for ideas.  In the case of AD, the question was 'What if a death that they ruled was accidental wasn't?'  And it sort of snowballed from there.  

Every rare once in a while, I'll get a story idea from a dream.  That's where Untitled Fantasy came from.  Of course, the end product isn't much like the dream.  Hell, I can't even really remember what the dream was about.  I know I got out of bed afterwards and wrote down the crux of it and then when I got up, I transferred it into my Ideas file.  And then I started writing the book.  (Which took me a huge amount of time to finish.)  Like I said, for me, the dream ideas are rare.  Mostly because my dreams are too weird to translate into a story people would want to read.

So, really, ideas are everywhere.  If you can't see that, you're probably going to have a hard time as a writer.  Oh, you could still write.  Some writers only ever have one good idea and one good book in them.  Look at Margaret Mitchell.  She only ever wrote one book (even if some of her other scribblings have now been published) and it was BIG.  If that's your course, if you find yourself NEEDING to write that one book, do it.

Me?  I'll be over here fending off new ideas so I can focus on writing and editing the ideas I already have in the works.  Which, right now, means getting off my dead ass and working on this crazy fantasy idea I dreamed up.  

What about you?  If you're not a writer (yet), what ideas do you have that could be made into a story?  If you're already a writer, where do your ideas come from?

*If you're not familiar with Card, he wrote ENDER'S GAME.  Yes, the one they made into a movie.  He wrote a bunch of other stuff, too.  Definitely not a dude who was short of ideas.

Updates and Decisions I'm Not Ready to Make

Well, I finally finished the edit notes for Untitled Fantasy.  And I counted them, finally.  30 pages of notes - college rule, single side - for roughly 97000 words.  Or 1 page of notes per approximately 3200 words worth of story.  

As always, some are as simple as noting that a comma needs to be inserted or removed.  But I really try not to hit the simple stuff on the first draft.  Most of it is bigger stuff - rewriting a line, etc.  Some of it is huge, like rewriting an entire scene.  

All in all, though, this is a solid book.  Nothing that makes me want to scrap a whole chapter or anything.  

Okay, so maybe I'm unsure about whether to leave a large chunk of the end to the next book.  I'll either figure it out myself or let my readers tell me what they think.  But that's down the road a ways.  

I'm also playing with the idea of adding to the beginning because right now, it just sort of throws the reader into the thick of things without a whole lot of set-up.  (Not the main thick, but sort of the beginning thick.)

I had hoped to have this phase finished by the end of October, but somehow it reached the friggin' 18th of the month and finishing this phase in the remaining 13 days seems problematic.  We'll see how it goes.

And I need a title.  I had a list of potential titles, but I just looked at it and they all suck.  I'm not sure what in my head thought 'Time of the Twins' would've been a good idea... There's a Dragonlance book with that title already.  Nope nope nope.  Not riffin' off that series and don't even want a hint it's anything like those books.  Derp.  It's bad enough I've already got my name lending the impression I'm nursing at the Brandon Sanderson teats.  

Speaking of which, I might publish this under my maiden name.  B.E. Meissner worked for me when I was a maiden, so why not now?  

And I'm playing with the idea of trying to get this published through Baen or something.  Gah, the idea of querying makes me want to hurl.  But they have resources I don't have, so going with them would get me a better cover than I can afford.  It would definitely get me better exposure.  The question is whether they'd want an old self-pubber like me.  :shrug:

Decisions, decisions.  On the upside, I have a lot of work to do before I have to make a decision of any kind.  Yay for turtle speed.