Robert Priest's Blog: Blogging not logging, page 2

Changing my middle initials to R.R.

I'm thinking I should change my middle initials to R. R..
As in Robert R. R. Priest.

bummed

After 2 days of migraines, migraine medicine and attendant insomnia I'm having the usual low-level mood plunge. And of course this is when I find out that I didn't get nominated for the children's book center nonfiction award. But then I find out that the book wasn't sent in for it. As much my fault as anybody's in that I totally slipped up in rejoining the Canadian children's book center and thereby finding out about the prize. For my publisher, I'm their first children's author so… It's not that I'm a huge ego hog or that my faith in myself as a writer needs to be propped up on such arbitrary toothpicks but inevitably it seems that awards smooth out the way ahead for books. They get more notice, more reviews, more school readings not to mention the (in this case) $5000. I see that there are some worthy looking books that are nominated though including the pink triangle by fellow Scarberrian Ken Setterington. A book about what happened to gay people in Nazi Germany. A very worthy and necessary book to get out there. So good luck Ken.

Local faith in writing

I've done a good solid assembly of chapter 1 of missing piece. I'm leaving it a little loose because first chapters so often wind up having to be changed to accommodate certain details that come later unexpectedly. And now I'm about halfway through the same process for chapter 2. The worst part of all this I think is probably the part before the writing begins. the elastic of potential procrastination. One flops about in an open-ended limbo a little bit like a worm caught on the hook of the necessity of writing—given the time frame involved when the book is due. Squirm squirm. No offense actual worms on books. I don't want to trivialize your agony.

I am a secular person but there's a certain amount of very local faith involved in writing this novel. Faith that I can get through all of the challenges that arise and constantly seem poised to completely undo all the work that's been done so far. I like that faith. It's not extreme. It's reasonable. So in that sense you could say I'm a writer of faith.

Of course it's all afloat in great doubtfulness. Chiefly doubting that on any particular day the act of writing will actually begin. Whether one will face the enormous amount of work that has to be done and the fact that one can only do a little bit of it at a time Sheesh. Imagine how poor Homer must've felt.

And so, standing up
blogging not logging, leaving no stumps, no ruined environments, having procrastinated indefinitely on the whole ending of the world project, not to mention getting down to work on my novel, i bid thee adieu

Ergonomics of writing

I've been trying out a new writing ergonomic. On the speaker that sits atop a stool I have my laptop and I'm taking a cord out of its DVI port and into the HDMI port on my TV which sits atop about a 5 foot high fancy inherited cupboard kind of thing all carved out of wood. And I'm using Dragon speak to have my voice turned into text. I'm dictating while standing in front of the TV which is basically at eye height if I stand back about 4 feet. At this distance I'm able to read without my glasses. I'm doing all this in an attempt to thwart the headaches I've been getting. Since migraine medicine relieves them I figure they must actually be migraines especially since they are brought on so often by a change in pressure but I also think that overuse of certain muscle pathways related to sitting at the computer are key triggers. A lot of that is just about how the head sits atop the neck bones and what muscles get overused. I've brought consciousness to this and done my best just altering my habitual posture while writing but no surprise the act of composition is so all-consuming that there's not enough consciousness left to maintain the posture command. So now I'm right out of the chair standing up and my head simply has to sit differently to see the TV and the text. So far so good.

Nastiness in action

Maybe it's allergies. I woke up feeling nasty. What a day to try and establish my Amazon author account. And then find that some children who didn't finish my book did take the time to give it minimal stars. I guess that's legit but so many people have told me they liked the book so I can only encourage them to rate it.

Meanwhile I continue to have frustrating times with good reads. I can never find my blog from my author page. I always have to go to Google and Google it to get to it. Why is that? And there's 3 books by one of the other robert priests that are registered to me. They're really good books and I like his writing and he gets good stars so it's not a major complaint but I do feel a bit dishonest at leaving them there. But my attempts to have them removed have been frustrated. Maybe I should wait for another day when I wake up feeling happier.

Book 3 missing piece

Just finished the final edits for book 2 of the spell cross series, second kiss. Typically I love the editing process. It's easy for an author to get attached to particularly flowery formulations even when they are slightly over-the-top. A good editor can point these out and clear the way for a straight narrative line. There were one or 2 very musical phrases that were hard to let go like “still finding their places in the ancient algorithms of the thaumaturgy." but it's done now and the book is better for it. I particularly like the second book. I love the ending. Now having taken a few days off I'm back at book 3. I've got about 40,000 words of first draft and now I have to put the pieces together and see what else needs to be written. Plus do a lot of tidying up and editing and melding of text. But so far I am continuing to enjoy this, though those procrastinated hours that lead up to finally doing some writing are no fun at all. Well, except when my chosen means of diverting myself is to write a poem. It has also led to tidying my room, my house, exercising. You can find an entry about book 2, second kiss in the new Dundurn catalog https://bnccatalist.ca/ViewTitle.aspx...

Spell crossed book 1 out, book 2 finished book 3 taking shape

I couldn't find my blog last time I was here. But this time it was easy. Maybe the results of too much time on the computer not seeing the trees for the forest. The paper sword is now officially released in paperback and I love the look of the book. I've already read in one of the reviews here how someone purchased the book because they liked the cover. That's just what I wanted.

I've just sent in the edits round one to my editor at Dundurn. So I am about 2 thirds of the way through book 3 first draft, fielding edits for book 2, and promoting book 1. A good thing about it is that reviewing the earlier texts keeps me attuned to the the details of the story. Book 3 Takes Place 5 years after the other 2 books and it revolves around missing pieces—whether physical pieces that are missing from people's bodies or psychological pieces or magical pieces, pieces of a talisman or peace itself.

also my son Daniel just got married and we had a big wedding party yesterday. So life is full and joyous. I've seen the cover for book 2 and it's going to be just as good-looking as book 1.

an interview with me about the paper sword

http://www.dundurn.com/news/interview...

Post text?

Coming out of bar Mercurio after a pleasant meeting with the Journal of wild culture's Whitney Smith I encountered amidst the gently dropping snowflakes two strange eyes gazing out between scarf top and toque bottom. Didn't know at first who it was but a quick lift of the scarf revealed sweet guy and esteemed Canadian novelist Nino Ricci. It also revealed that he had twi fine looking audio plugs in his ears. After our greeting I asked him what he was listening to. A novel he said. An audio book. Me too I said. I listen to audio books all the time. What do you listen on he asked me. I pulled out my iPhone and showed it to him. Then we burbled about how much more literature absorbing we were able to do these days due to audio books. And how much nonfiction too. “I'm much smarter than I used to be,” I assured him. He told me he was beginning to suspect that we might be in the last days of text. That text was just an interim thing. I told him that I didn't even type much these days. because I use a voice to text device. This seemed to confirm our suspicions which were not necessarily dark. Post text? Is that possibly the age we're in?

Winter 2014

My trip to Paris, the UK and Ireland was a great success. Both personally and professionally. It rests in my memory as various kinds of touchstone shimmers that my heart shimmers along with whenever I remember. I met wonderful people was received generously and took in the landscapes with great delight and unfortunately brevity. I am usually glad to leave London but this time I only wanted more and more. Upon returning winter came fairly quickly and hard and hasn't let up ever since so I definitely had a difficult adjustment. Which continues. But winter is also the time of getting down to work. And that's what I'm doing. I am working on Second Kiss, book 2 of my Spell Crossed fantasy series. I have in the hand an advance copy of The Paper Sword book 1 of the series and it looks great. After almost a decade of work it's good to see this long time dream get reified. There's been some very good reviews on net galley of the PDF version of the novel and I'll have copies of the real thing on July 7 3 days before my birthday. The official release date is the end of July. The work is going well—which is to say consistently. I'm trying to keep to a reasonable word count on the novel and that was a good enough reason to cut two puffy diversionary chapters near the beginning all full of exposition and new character nuances. Instead I've replaced them with some pertinent dialogue that gets over all the same plot points in a much speedier fashion and with the friendly addition of some dramatic conflict. Meanwhile I'm trying to earn my living. The grant I thought I'd get I didn't get. I thought I was much thicker skinned than this but I confess that it smacked me down for a few days. Oh well, those are the hazards of a Canadian author's life. In the long view I'm glad to get any grants at all of course. I'm pleased with the excitement about the book so far and I am excited with the energy and imagination of the sequel. And perhaps particularly with my full sense of the characters and of how much that is what determines the action of the story. I'd like to get in here and blog a little more often than I have been. So if you get a chance—do encourage me. And maybe I'll post a few juicy sections for brief online hits of what's to come.—oh, and I almost forgot my collection of children's poems, Rosa Rose, got a Silver Moonbeam award in the US. And I did an interview recently with Shelagh Rogers. on the CBC. I'll let you know when they're going to play it. Also Jaymz Bee who works at the Jazz FM station in Toronto recited the poem Rosa Rose on Rosa Parks's birthday and a number of people called in to say they liked it and the station boss was also very pleased.