Cherie Priest's Blog: It's awards season, so here comes the shameless self-promotion, page 92

Good Excuses

No word metrics today, folks. I'm using the weekend (including today) to try and bang Hellbent into a worthy draft, so that my editor might not push me off a cliff when she receives it. I'm actually pretty confident that this Draft Zero is largely intact, and does not break hideously in any major fashion; but I won't know that for sure – and it won't be worth reading – until I spend a few days holed up with it.

Hellbent is due on Anne's desk on Monday.
After that, it'll be all Ganymede, all...

August 5, 2010

Here's today's progress on my Hunley version 4.0 submarine book about Andan Cly and his crew having a damp misadventure in a Texian-occupied New Orleans, plus Bonus! guerrilla warfare, other assorted historic pirates, and an octoroon madam who moonlights as a Union spy.

Project: Ganymede

Deadline: November 1, 2010

New words written: 3905 (a 2-day total, merely respectable)

Present total word count: 11,026 words

Things accomplished in fiction: Finished first chapter; began second chapter–which ...

August 4, 2010

No metrics today, due to a combination of day-job work, unexpected writer-job work, other assorted work, and a whole lot of revision on my (now completed) first chapter of Ganymede. The final tally for the day is fewer than a thousand words. I'd post it anyway, except that I don't wanna.

Anyway! Immediately on the heels of last night's event at the University Book Store – wherein Kat Richardson put on a mighty reading/signing – tonight I'll be heading out to Third Place Books [Ravenna...

August 3, 2010

Before I start gussying up to go catch Kat's event tonight … here's today's progress on my Hunley version 4.0 submarine book about Andan Cly and his crew having a damp misadventure in a Texian-occupied New Orleans, plus Bonus! guerrilla warfare, other assorted historic pirates, and an octoroon madam who moonlights as a Union spy.

Project: Ganymede

Deadline: November 1, 2010

New words written: 3871 (that's more like it!)

Present total word count: 7121 words

Things accomplished in fiction: Am...

August 2, 2010 – Word Metrics

Here's today's progress on my Hunley version 4.0 submarine book about Andan Cly and his crew having a damp misadventure in a Texian-occupied New Orleans, plus Bonus! guerrilla warfare, other assorted historic pirates, and an octoroon madam who moonlights as a Union spy.

Project: Ganymede

Deadline: November 1, 2010

New words written: 1542 (better, but not great)

Present total word count: 3250 words

Things accomplished in fiction: Got halfway through the first chapter (give or take). Would've g...

August 2, 2010

I swear to high heaven I'm not avoiding writing – I'm just distracted by other duties at the moment. Today, the duties have included signing contracts and hitting up the postal shop, and then meeting up with a couple of very nice guys for a short writer-talk video (which will serve as online bonus material for a magazine article appearing next month – details to come). Anyway, combine these things with a morning full of day-job work, and voila! No writing.

But the day is young. Ish.
And I'll ...

July 31, 2010

It sounds like Clementine is starting to arrive in people's mailboxes, and for that, I do a little happydance. Many thanks to those of you who ordered it; I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. However – apparently this bears repeating – the book is effectively sold out. Due to this sell-out, you aren't seeing it in bookstores.

But going forward, please don't order it from Amazon.com.

Amazon will take orders for the book beyond what it can fill. The publisher...

July 30, 2010

Thanks so much to everyone for the birthday wishes! Let the record reflect, I have some of the most awesome readers/friends/cohorts/loonies in the world.

I slept in this morning and declared a "personal day," which is not to say that I won't be working – just that I woke up so late that I must skip my day-job work at this time. (Though I will probably feel guilty enough to catch up on it over the weekend, because that's how I roll.) I don't really have any plans today, other than "clean...

I'm Doing Science

I realize it's been a couple of days since I've posted, so this is just to say that I didn't stop the planet and get off or anything. My mornings have been occupied by day-job work (as per usual), but yesterday afternoon I jaunted down to the Emerson Salon to get my hair done; and today I moseyed over to the Science Fiction Museum (its offices, rather) for an interview with a marvelous woman from a marvelous magazine.

(I'm not sure if I'm supposed to talk about it yet, though, so in...

July 27, 2010

Metrics! They're back – and they're back because today I officially began Draft Zero of the fourth Clockwork Century book, presently titled Ganymede. [:: throws confetti ::] [:: does a little dance ::] [:: begins the usual descent into insecurity and terror ::]

Today's stats are not particularly impressive, I'll be the first to grant you; but in my defense, the blank page is a soul-killer – so my first jab at a new project is almost always a smallish chunk. In fact, my first few days of...