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D.C. Williams's Blog, page 14

August 14, 2013

In the fullness of time

Which is hard to wait for sometimes.  I just signed a contract with a publisher for the novel I’d been working on.  Because I’m superstitious, I’m keeping the details to myself for now, but I’m really, really excited about this.


And I now have six fans on Goodreads.  If any of you read this, thank you.  You can’t imagine how much it means to me.  Everything that has happened this year has really made me feel like  a real writer especially since I was starting to reach an age when it seemed like that was something that was not going to happen for me, mostly because life gets in the way.



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Published on August 14, 2013 04:44

August 3, 2013

You never know what to expect from the past

For some strange reason, I was inspired to Google a very old boyfriend tonight.  I don’t know why.  I haven’t thought of this man in years, and it took me a couple of minutes to remember a) his given name and b) his surname.  Before you say, “Oh, she’s sublimating, why wouldn’t she remember it if it weren’t important?”, I should say, I remember everything.  I can tell you about lunches I had twenty years ago and more.  Not because they were emotionally relevant, because they were good.  Clothes that were cute, people who were interesting, books that I liked or almost read, random moments, etc.  I’m not quite a savant (there are things that blur) but I’m almost like that detective on TV.


So when thinking about it hard, I can pull up enough random details to Google the guy, and….


There he is.  Older, since I’l be 47 this year and he was almost exactly seven years older than me (can’t remember the exact date because I’m not that good, but I’m pretty sure we were both October babies, and just under the wire for the school year, since he was also seven years ahead of me in school, where the norm was more like five or six), but very recognizably himself.  Nice looking Link’d in photo, very professional, identifying him as being in marketing, which isn’t weird, since he was an ad guy when I knew him.  The weird thing is…


Not that he appears to be single, because a lot of guys that age are, and while I could see him marrying, I could also see that not working out for him.  Not the image he’s projecting, which is professional but street, because he was trying to carry that off at least a decade before anyone else was.  It’s um, that he’s Canadian.  Apparently he’s based in Montreal.  I didn’t care enough to delve into his profile to see if he’s a citizen (or married to one with four children and a spouse that he’s coy about because while he might be too principled to do anything about it if he’s in a committed relationship, he’s definitely not too principled to project like a player on the internet).


I am shocked, though.  I thought he was married to the City of New York.  Born and bred in the borough of Manhattan in a way few people were at the end of the twentieth century, and probably fewer in the twenty-first.  It was a major commonality for us, even though my parents and myself had hopped back and forth across the Hudson in the seventies and eighties.


He was in his late twenties when we almost got married, and I’m fairly sure he had only ever been in two states (New York and New Jersey).  It is a mark of how provincial some New Yorkers can be that some of his childhood friends regarded sojourns to Albany and Schenectady and Hackensack as evidence that he was cosmopolitan.  One man, a functioning adult, far from stupid, described a baffling trip to Philadelphia to me.


Typically for a certain kind of New Yorker, the idea of Europe was far more comfortable than Pennsylvania.  Or God forbid, Iowa.  But still, Canada?


And Montreal?  Does he speak French?  I’m assuming it’s better than mine.  I can flounder amusingly, and produce enough to get food, cab fares, ferry tickets, and whatever else I might immediately require (squelching the thought that the person who thinks I’m an English-speaking Canadian who is forced to be bilingual thinks that this is funny and is not revealing that their English is better than my French).  I’m still shocked.  I would have assumed L.A. long before Canada.


Does this mean that when we watched episodes of “Urban Angel” he had a sneaking desire to move to Canada?  Or is it just one of those funny coincidences life sends?


What really freaks me out is…I like Montreal.  I was there three years ago.  When I was wandering around the old city with my family, was I a couple of streets away from running into him?  Or feeding my voracious teenager on Rue St. Catherines at 10 pm?  Or was he entertaining clients in the lobby of La Reine Elizabeth while I am trying to explain to said voracious teenager that we are just not spending nineteen dollars CDN on breakfast, no matter how good the sign makes it look?


It really isn’t a biggie, but it’s strange.  The relationship was tumultuous, and it ended badly, both first and onlies for me.  I am very glad I did not marry that man, but there are regrets.



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Published on August 03, 2013 22:12

July 18, 2013

Nothing particularly exciting.

Except that my baby turns 18 today.  I’m in shock.  And annoyed with myself for having such a broke year that it’s cake from a mix and a couple of new video games.  It could be worse.  By God’s grace my husband is still with us after a heart attack and some scary surgery earlier in the year.  That is the best gift of all.  Still it’s frustrating.  Writing and sales are both vulnerable to ups and downs, it’s just part of the territory, and next year will likely be better.  My kid has been so good about it compared to what a whiny brat I was about that kind of thing at the same age, and I am blessed.  And it is a reminder of what your real gifts in life are.


Still, next year, God willing, it’s bakery cake and a trip to the beach and ice cream sodas all around.



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Published on July 18, 2013 07:46

July 9, 2013

Amd quite a bit more going on.

I have another short “When Nick Met Michael” out for Amazon.  It is free today, by the way.  http://www.amazon.com/When-Nick-Michael-Skylark-ebook/dp/B00DT544L4/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1373370459&sr=1-8


It is a prequel to Skylark, and if you want to read them in chronological order, they should be read When Nick Met Michael, Skylark, Unexpected Gifts, and Closure.  Book three (if you don’t count the short stories) just went back to the publisher after a revision, and Books Four, Five and Six are in my computer in various stages of not-completion.  They are loosely connected, and meant to be readable as stand-alones, so don’t worry about missing important stuff it you don’t like the sound of one and skip it.


By the way, I have the awesomest betas ever, without whom I would never have finished the revision.  Thanks Kiki, Chella, and Dylon.  And all of the other brave souls who’ve been willing to look at it.



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Published on July 09, 2013 04:54

July 4, 2013

June 26, 2013

More progress

Unexpected Gifts is up on Smashwords, although I’m still trying to get into the premium catalog.  I am still working on the next three works in the series (all at once-which is interesting) and I should soon have a historical short ready for Smashwords.  It will likely be free!  My revision of the third book, The Price of Everything, is essentially finished, and almost ready to be resubmitted.  



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Published on June 26, 2013 11:32

June 23, 2013

June 19, 2013

I’m up on Smashwords!

And waiting to be accepted into the premium catalog.  And working on some new stuff, like the revision for that publisher, a Smashwords edition of Skylark, and lots of new stories, including an early 19th century historical.  Here’s the link–

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/326969



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Published on June 19, 2013 08:13