Jordan Castillo Price's Blog, page 62

Lightning!

I've had an interesting morning. Apparently the universe heard me talking to people about writing distractions and decided it would help me get some work done if it knocked out my internet connection with a bolt of lightning! The first couple hours I just figured I'd let things take their course, because the last time the Internet went out, it was out for my whole village because a transformer got hit. So I wrote 1000 words and worked on my newsletter awhile, and then around 10 I decided I'd really like to be able to plan my day, so I called the internet provider to see what was what.

Turned out it was not my whole village without internet. Just me.

I ran my modem over there and decided to bum around nearby since they said it would only take about an hour. I went shopping. Bought another bathing suit. Ran into my occasional assistant who was walking down the sidewalk reading a big book (you gotta love him) so we chatted for a while, then I ate at Subway, then I finally decided to stop back by and see if my modem was done yet.

They weren't sure what happened, but they updated the software and that seemed to do the trick, because I'm on now. Yay! I feel like my morning was shot. But I got to see my pal, I guess it's not a total loss.

Not-so-massive Action Day

Writing coach Jurgen Wolff is doing another Massive Action Day today! It's still going on for a few more hours--I don't know where he gets his stamina. Even though I'm supposed to be resting and recovering from my Lasik, I couldn't resist joining in. I got a novelette planned and started, but holy hell, I'm exhausted now! Also, my computer went all wonky and booted me out of the chat before I could win a prize (because you know I always win a prize everywhere I go. People shower me with prizes just for being me). ETA: WOOT, I won the thing!*

I thought for sure it was my video card crapping out, which I've been waiting to happen since the beginning of the year, but then I ran a utility, found a disk error, got that cleared up and now it seems fine.

I had hoped to write 2k today but it looks like I will need to be happy with 1.6k. I'm seriously too pooped to keep going.

One thing that surprised me was that I used up an inordinate amount of time naming characters. Important, yes. Could I have given them placeholder names instead and reached my 2k? Yeah, probably so. And I'm really disappointed I didn't do that.

Are there any ways that you waste time when you want to be writing? Are there any ways you've found to circumvent those sneaky time-wasting ways?

*Here is what I won, YAY!


YET ANOTHER EDIT: I revisited the piece and got to 2025 words. Go, me!

Zero Hour...it's finally time!

Yay, it's finally time for Zero Hour! I've pulled out all the stops and done some things I wouldn't be able to do if I hadn't published it myself.

1. PL Nunn cover - I have ALWAYS wanted one.
2. Illustrations - even if I had offered to provide illustrations, it wouldn't have been possible. Too finicky to format.
3. Free version - I am leaving the first draft up for free. Most publishers won't touch something that's available simultaneously for free.

The story: 
Ernest just turned thirty. It's time for retirement, freedom from the tedious drudgery of his job as a data clerk. Time to explore parts of the city he's never seen before, and hopefully meet some people other than his Deacon or his health monitor. And at the end of the month? Time to die.

Will runs the counter at the historic coffee shop, and when he talks, he sounds just like an old-time data feed. He's nothing like anyone Ernest has ever met—which isn't saying much—but still, something about him simply doesn't parse.

___
Is there a difference between the free and paid versions? Yes, the illustrations go with the paid version, and the middle of the story got a lot of tweaking. I think certain cause-and-effect relationships became clear to me only after the whole story was written, and I was able to go in and really tighten those up.

Right now Mobi, Lit, ePub and PDF are available at JCP Books.
Kindle is in the process of publishing and may be up by the time you read this, Nook will be up soon, and the paperback should be along in a couple of weeks.

ebook Q&A

This Thursday, I plan to roll out a novel that's dear to my heart and years in the making, Zero Hour!

Because I intend to leave the original draft online to read for free, I wanted to make the paid version significantly different. A whole lot of editing went into it to weave the story together more tightly and give several of the events a more logical cause and effect flow, but I wanted more than just a revamp of the text. And I decided the story had a Wizard of Oz/Alice in Wonderland type of quality to it that was just crying out for illustrations.

With the book's formatting, getting the six illustrations to function the way I want them to across multiple platforms and devices has not been fun. I'm thinking I want to put a little extra information about "Which format should you buy?" so that readers can pick the format that best suits the way they see themselves using the file.

What types of things would you still wonder if I told you the following:

The mobi is optimized for Kindle viewing, and recommended if you will be reading on a Kindle, and can also be read on a desktop app such as Kindle for PC
The epub is optimized for Sony and Nook, and can also be read on iPad/iPhone or a desktop app such as Adobe Digital Editions
The PDF has higher resolution images best suited for reading on a computer, netbook or iPad

Writer's Block: Toy box travesties

What childhood toy did you desperately want that your parents refused to give you? Do you still think about getting one?

Submitted By retropopbear

View 421 Answers

I wanted a Big Wheel and never got one! I don't think I'd fit on it these days. Or...maybe I would.

To-dos

I update the website for a neighboring township, and while I need another job like I need a hole in the head, this one is a big win-win because I save them a lot of aggravation and they pay me fairly and heap lots of praise on me, plus it only takes me about an hour a month. As I was updating some local events listings today, I thought, "Dude, I really need to start going to this stuff." There's a hike led by a naturalist every Saturday and Sunday morning at 10am just up the street. I need to at least go to that.

As I scanned my to-do list this morning to see what needs to happen today in the world of JCP, I came across this weekly list.

TO BE SCHEDULED
[X] Call handyman (if he doesn't call back, call again next week after Mac is delivered. MY GOD IT'S DONE
[ ] Edit/produce Zero Hour

Ha ha, am I relieved or what! I crack myself up. A plumbing repair that was hanging over my head for a year is finally done, after I called FOUR different people to try to get it handled. My next door neighbor recommended a guy and it was just no big deal for him to do it. No phone tag. No cryptic emails. His office* took my call, and then he just came over and did the job. WHEW.

*and "his office" is probably just his wife, but she's obviously doing a great job of scheduling him.

Which reminds me of this, because it's another husband/wife business... I just found out the dentist I love got offered a big prestigious job heading up some kind of cancer-jaw program in Tennessee. I'm happy for him but sad for myself. It took me forever to find a good dentist. When I was a kid, my dentist drilled all my teeth without Novocaine and told me not to be a baby about it. (Sounds like I grew up in Soviet era Poland or something.) He is handing off his practice to a colleague he's been grooming for the spot. Hopefully she is as good as he is.

Deadlines

One would think I could be all loosey-goosey about deadlines working for myself...but one would be wrong! Of course the big deadline that's shaping my summer is my upcoming lasic surgery that I wrote about in my last newsletter. I want to have my big, partially-done projects put to bed before I go under the laser. And I won't lie, having a few sales under my belt wouldn't hurt either!

So I've been all about getting Zero Hour ready for publication, in ebook and in paperback, and I've been running into complications left and right. (The epub that looks perfect on the iPod looks like shit on the Nook. La la la. At least the mobi works.) I will prevail. For today I focused on the print version, since printing, mailing and proof copies are involved and so it will lag after the e-release anyway, but hopefully will come very close. I had a mini-meltdown when the font I chose after much testing was not showing ellipses...oh god the cute design professor who told me about this font said it was robust, where the hell are the ellipses???...but then I ditched it from my computer and downloaded it from a different source, and lo, the ellipses existed. That was probably two hours. Of wanting to weep.

Periodically I think back to my days of working for someone else. I remember banging my head on the wall about things like this often. I had a very temperamental large-format printer. I hear my replacement opts to just not use it. But no, not me. I KNEW I could finesse it into doing what I wanted if I just agonized enough.

And the other deadline that's not really in my control is the research for Magic Mansion, (also spoken of in the newsletter above) which I've been putting off and putting off. I had Circus World on my calendar for a few weeks now and I blew myself off. But there's a magic show I need to see in the Dells that's only offering matinees at certain times, so I gots to get my butt in gear and go there. That'd be Monday--and if I've paid for something, I'm damn well showing up :D I have paid and I'm going.

I think by Circus World being there all the time, it's made itself blow-offable. Its performance schedule is only during the summer months, but still. Seriously, I wrote it down for May 23 and I never did it. Maybe I could do both in one day. Hm. That seems like a shame, like I'd absorb more if I made two trips.

PsyCop prequel Inside Out in ebook

In case you missed the Quick Link newsletter, here's a link to my online bookstore where you can find Inside Out, my most recent PsyCop short, at a very, very nice price ;-)

I experimented with the book's aspect ratio and margin size in the PDF version. If you grab a PDF, I'd love it if you let me know what you think of those design decisions, as well as what device or method you're using to read it!

Sticker Shock

Fairly random crabbiness about the grocery store. First of all, grocery shopping in WI is far more pleasant than grocery shopping in Chicago, which is what I picture grocery shopping in a 3rd world country experiencing an apocalypse might be like. But the local store always seems to be stocking their damn shelves. It's probably a Monday morning thing.

I was trying to make sense of the chicken...I needed skinless chicken thighs for a recipe and weighing the decision of going with boneless skinless breasts versus getting regular chicken thighs and skinning them myself, and this GUY kneeling in front of the chicken cooler was all FLING-FLING-FLING flinging styrofoam trays of chicken all over, and I couldn't friggin think. It was like he was training for a chicken flinging Olympic event. Then he turns to me and says, "Can I help you find something, ma'am ?"

If you want to get on my last nerve, just call me ma'am.

Anyhow, yes, it's humbling to think there are people in the world with actual problems and I just wasted how much time being annoyed over this. I'm now done.

But another thing that was weird was the price of Italian Dressing mix. Holy hell, $1.79 for a tiny packet of spices? I bought it for a new recipe I'm trying out, but I then came home and looked it up online. I'll just make my own from now on, I have everything but the parsley. I don't buy dried parsley because a parsley bush (that gets tree-sized by midsummer) pops up in my yard every year...though I think the bunnies have it well-pruned this year. I'd credit the recipe but the same one appears at multiple sites, including food.com and allrecipes.com.

And my other trick that I do with all my new recipes is to cut/paste it to my Evernote account and pull it up on my iPod touch when I'm ready to make it in the kitchen. That way I don't have to print it out.

Italian Dressing Mix

1 tbsp garlic salt
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp white sugar
2 tbsps dried oregano
1 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried basil
1 tbsp dried parsley
1/4 tsp celery salt
2 tbsps salt

In a small bowl, mix all ingredients together. Store in a container.

If you want to make Italian dressing with it, whisk together 1/4 cup white vinegar, 2/3 cup canola oil, 2 tbsps water and 2 tbsps dry mix.

(Most of the people on allrecipes recommended cutting the salt in half or less, and said that the water is unnecessary if you're making dressing, but to dissolve it in the vinegar first.)

Yay! Puffy is home!

I'm too lazy to haul out the camera so here's an older photo of the Puff Man modeling with my Himalayan Salt Lamp which was new at the time.

He had four teeth extracted, and he looked pretty woozy when he got home. He made it through the anesthesia just fine and there was no infection in the bad teeth. He's been home about three hours and he looks a lot more like himself now, which makes me happy.

Often when a cat comes home from the vet, the other cats in the house are like, "Who are you? You smell weird. I'm hissing now." But Frankie did his usual, "Oh, yay, you're home! La-la-la!" happy greeting. He's such a sweetheart. I'm so lucky.