Kim Harrison's Blog, page 38

Last day for -personalized- WWNN for Christmas

You know how irritating it is to order something for Christmas, and then it doesn’t show in time? Yep. I do it all the time. Which is exactly why the cut off for a personalized, first-edition hard cover of THE WITCH WITH NO NAME is today.  After that, all that will be available through Nicola’s is the generically signed copies.

Be sure to tell Nicola’s when you order who you want the book personalized to and if you want my usual note or Merry Christmas :-) International is okay, but email for a shipping quote before you order. nicolasbooks@tds.net . 

Also, voting at Goodreads for the Readers Choice awards are finishing up. This is the third and final round of voting, cutting the field of ten down to one. THE WITCH WITH NO NAME is in Fantasy. Goodreads Reader’s Choice Awards I think they announce the winners in December.

As for me, I’m just now putting the white accents on my monarch butterfly and ready to call it good. It’s taken about a month, but I’ve got both upper and lower wings figured out and should have it finished this weekend, so look for a picture of it on Monday. I’m really pleased with how it turned out, and I only had to make like six of them to get the pattern just the way I want. :-)

Winter came hard and fast

No, I’m not complaining, though my dogs are not too happy with the cold. But after a couple of weeks of catch-up in the yard, both Tim and I were more or less ready for it. We just didn’t think it would get this cold this fast. Wow.

I’m so glad I had the feeders ready. So is this guy. He looks like this year’s crop of red bellied woodpeckers. (Page 190 of your Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds.) The feeder makes him look small, but he’s bigger than a blue jay, fairly shy, and acrobatic. We don’t see them much at our “city” house unless they are cold or feeding young.

Manic Monday–totes and swag

Totes are gone! Thank you everyone who took part in this. Guy is going to process the first 40, and refund anyone who slipped in after they were gone. Thanks again!

What do you do with leftover swag? You give it away! So today, from noon EST to probably twelve O’ one, Guy and I will be giving away forty THE WITCH WITH NO NAME totes and accompanying swag to U.S. addresses. (Bunny pin, blue butterfly charm, bus token, etc) We only ask that you pay for shipping to get them to you, so you need to be on PayPal to take advantage of this. Don’t have PayPal? Ask your brother, sister, uncle, or BFF.

To get one of the 40 book totes, at noon, (not 11: 55)  paypal Guy your address and 5$  to cover the postage and handling to coldtoastwritingsllc@comcast.net (check for typos. PayPal won’t tell you if it goes to the wrong place) and if you are among the first 40, we’ll send you a book tote with all the goodies. We think this will take about one minute, and I’ll edit my post here and at FB when the books are gone. We’ll of course refund any paypal monies that slipped through in the meantime.

The totes will go out first class postage, and because the swag includes “jewelry” we’re limiting this to U.S. only. The cost is 5.00 to cover shipping and Guy’s time.

We also ask that you put your current address in at the “notes to seller space” when you arrange this. **** No address in the notes to seller space, and your money will be refunded.**** We are not sending invoices, just hit the “send money to” button.

We’ve done these in the past with good results, as many of you already know!

In the meantime, we’ve got the voting at Goodreads going on. This is the third and final round of voting, cutting the field of ten down to one. THE WITCH WITH NO NAME is in Fantasy. Goodreads Reader’s Choice Awards I’ll have the winner for you next week, I think.

A-a-a-and, for you early Christmas shoppers, Nicola’s is letting me come in one more time to do a batch of personalized, first-edition, blue butterfly copies of THE WITCH WITH NO NAME. After the 21st, I will not be personalizing any more through the mail, so if you want one, just follow the link to order one. And be sure to tell Nicola’s when you order who you want the note personalized to! :-) International is okay, but email for a shipping quote before you order. nicolasbooks@tds.net .

If you’re trying for one of the totes, Good luck!

The Garden Sleeps

The garden sleeps,

And so do I.

When winter comes,

and snow is nigh.

I think I like winter because there’s a firm stop of motion out in the garden. It’s a gentle reminder to my motion-and-growth oriented personality that yes, I am allowed a graceful rest, that as nature does, so should I.

And so today, while I’m not taking a sick day, I am relaxed, moving at a slower pace so I can enjoy the sedate snow-globe world outside my window.

Since I’m talking about rest, my monarch wings are coming along really well, and as soon as I get a body for the beast, I’ll share. It’s my hope that someday all this work can be tied to a children’s picture book with patterns of the main characters in the back. So far, I’ve got Harrison Original Patterns (HOP) for a giraffe, pony, seated and reclining dragon, and now a monarch butterfly. I need to make up a chrysalis, I do believe, and perhaps a blue butterfly.

But again, that is another story for another time.

What do you do in the stacks, Kim?

Nicola’s Books arranged to have a videographer circulating during the last Hollows event blow-out, and his video is up! He did a great job capturing the peaceful silence that grew into the event, catching my boys and even my parents in the background from time to time. We’ve got shots of the costume contest, the script readers, and even one of the Q&A answers about Trent and Rachel. And of course, me signing books. I had no idea my hand is in a fist when I sign. It saves my hand and wrist, though, if I don’t have to move them and just move my arm.

Or check it out over at YouTube

Nicola’s is still excited about having hosted the event, and so they have extended the chance for you to get a signed and personalized note of The Witch With No Name. This is for the Christmas crowd, but we’re cutting it off before Thanksgiving due to shipping and such, so you have to act before the 21 of NOVEMBER!! That’s like ten days, people, and then there will be no more personalized notes, just plain old signatures. :-) 

Click to go to vote

Goodreads has entered the second phase of voting now with the top five write-in candidates. The slates have been cleared, so we’re back to square one. This week narrows the field to the top ten, so even if you voted last week, you can vote again! The Witch With No Name is in Fantasy. Competition is fierce! You could almost close your eyes and pick and not go wrong. There will be one more round of voting next week to find the top in each catagory.

I like the Goodreads awards because it’s you guys who vote, not “editors,” or buyers, or reviewers. But you.

One of my favorite insects

Guy found a mantis last week, dead from the cold, and I brought it in hoping she dries without rotting. It’s not a sure thing because she has such a large abdomen, but it’s been a week and so far, so good. I’m pretty sure it’s a female because she still has her head. (snerk)

She’s resting on my “tree” begonia, which is nothing more than a regular begonia trimmed to look like a tree, sort of a fake bonsai, but hey, my air is too dry to support most bonsai, and I got tired of killing pines. I can see her from my desk, and I like her there, even if she’s dead. (Morbid maybe, but it helps me connect to something larger than my small circle of needs.)

With some luck, she’ll be there for a long time yet. I’ve got a soft spot for the little carnivores all the way from finding their half an inch long babies in the spring to the six-inch adults in the summer and fall. The way they cock their head and don’t take any crap from you when you threaten to poke at them or get too close while trying to take a picture has endeared me to them. That one summered in my garden and left her eggs makes me feel pretty good. Long ago, the dreamer in me gave them a race memory passed down from mother to young . . .

But that is another story.

 

Kim’s writing tip for the day

I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year since I’m halfway into the rough draft of book two, but I am in rough draft, and for those of you working to get down their thoughts as well, I want you to know I’m still learning even now.

This morning, for example, I walked into my office, puttered around for a while trying to get going on the next chapter. I knew what I had to write, but it felt like a transitional chapter. I don’t like transitional. I want my chapters to do double duty. It needed to be pivotal since we don’t get to see this character very  much.  I knew it–which was why nothing was getting put on paper.

So I stopped, and actually looked at it, realizing that, oh! this chapter was boring, which was why I was having so much trouble writing it. It wasn’t Tom. Tom is a great character. It wasn’t the plot, which is actually moving forward. But it was still boring. Then I asked myself, what makes Tom like everyone else? Answer? His boss wants to fire him. And that fast, the chapter went from boring to intriguing ’cause Tom is a bad boy and he’s not going to let that happen.

And now the words flow.

So if you are stuck, it might be because you need something new, something that everyone can relate to. Get your character reacting to more than one thing. She still has to save the world, but what if she has to plan her friend’s wedding, make a late payment, or get her car fixed as well?

Ahhh, my day is now going to be fun, not sucky. Go Tom!

Bulbs in the ground-mostly

Wonder of wonders, I did get into the yard yesterday for a few hours before the sun went down and it got cold. No rain! And it was sort of sunny. The side yard is now cleared out–again–and my fall bulbs are in the ground. Mostly. I need one more nice day to get my windflower bulbs in before the ground freezes, and it shouldn’t be a problem since they are so small you just kind of shove them in with a finger. I still have to do a sweep of the back yard and my office garden one more time, and then put the frost guards in around the sensitive bushes, (again, before the ground freezes) but I’m seeing the end of the tunnel.

If it rains tonight, I’ve got a few things inside yet to do to button up, but overall, it looks good.

Work yesterday did not go anything like I thought it would. I sat down at my desk, and got to looking at the pacing overall, and realized that doing an entire chapter to hit the points I wanted would really slow things down. So I trimmed the previous chapter and added what I wanted to the end of it instead. Did some dialog for the next chapter, and called it good.

Today should be a easy day with the dialog already down, but you never know until you get into it. :-) I’m finally starting to figure out what the guts of this story is, and it’s good to have a direction.

 

Hump da-a-a-ay!

My windows were cleaned yesterday, and I think I’m getting substantially more light in my office. I might be able to see the birds all day now. (snerk) I put up a sock feeder last week, and the Goldfinches found it really fast. Makes me happy. Even better, the robins were in the junipers earlier this week, eating the berries now that we’ve had a hard frost to sweeten them up–which is one of the reasons I planted junipers instead of arborvitae. No bluebirds this year, but they might come through later.

The goal today is to write from LB’s POV and see how that goes. I sketched out the chapter yesterday and put down some dialog, but it was from Peri’s POV, and I spent all night mulling if I might be able to show how deep in the crapper she is better through an unfamiliar pair of eyes. LB’s a cool character, but I may be in danger of making him too safe. Getting into his head could really backfire on me there, so I’ll have to be careful.

Either way, I have to get it down. If it’s not right, I can change it later.

And that’s what I’m doing today.

Super sonic putt-putt

Today, I’m feeling like a super sonic putt-putt, zooming to wonderful places at breakneck crawl.  It wouldn’t be so bad, but this putt-putt pace is hitting not just the book work (which is normal) but the yard work and the knitting work.

I took a break from my monarch butterfly project to try to figure out an interlocking crochet technique that I tried last year and gave up because I couldn’t figure out the instructions. This time wasn’t any different, but I gave up following the instructions, –which I swear were wrong or written in a different language and translated badly–and just experimented for a while. I got a trivet, finally, but the pattern accidentally switched about a third of the way through, and I managed to figure out how to switch it back again, so it actually looks like I meant to do that. So I’ve got that going for me if this writing thing doesn’t work out.

The yard work is going slow but sure, thanks to Thing Two’s Herculean efforts last week where he got the bulk of the leaves to the curb. I’m still tidying and cutting back, but we got our first really hard frost and everything is dead or dormant now, which makes it easier. Tim and I are on the second circle of the house, and it’s looking much better. I’ve been taking two hours our of my workday to try to button the yard down, but it’s predictably slow, and the weather is closing in fast. Scary fast.

And then there’s Peri. Writing is always a super sonic putt-putt, but with the tour cutting the rough draft in half, it’s been more slow than usual–harder to find my groove and the voice is suffering. I managed to get dialog down yesterday, and then went on to turn most of it into text. It feels like I’m back on a good pattern with her, so if I have a few weeks without going out of my office, that putt-putt pace should begin to show some good results.

Super sonic putt-putt gets you there.

Goodreads is holding their annual Goodreads Choice Awards, and The Witch With No Name has been nominated in the Fantasy category! If you’re a Goodreads member, buzz on over and vote for your faves. If you’re not, hop on over and take a quick look. There’s a way to join and vote without giving up your personal info, at least there was the last time I looked. I like Goodreads, I’ve been a member for a few years, and they don’t bombard you with stuff you don’t want.

So to vote, slide on over. Goodreads Choice Awards