Survived another Monday at work, actually got some stuff done, received my first set of edits by the development team and now am busy correcting my misconceptions of how this system works and making new pictures to help me demonstrate my new-found knowledge.

There are times I wish I could just make the developers write some of this stuff and let me clean it up. They probably spend more time trying to explain stuff to me than they would just breaking down and typing up a few paragraphs.

I didn't get any work done on the book yesterday. wishweaver and I went out for a "short" trip to Tyson's Corner, VA. I had intended to get home around 6pm and get back to work. Instead we wound up meeting friends for dinner and I got home after 9pm. Had a great time, but really didn't have the time to spare. Still, it was nice to meet up with mollymorrison, sorerutenshi and April (my co-author on Shattered Mirror) and much good Japanese food was eaten by all.

Came home from work tonight ready to make up for lost time.

That was, until Chapter 11 reared its ugly head. I spent three hours tonight working on the one chapter. I wrote, re-wrote, added, shifted, deleted . . . In general, this chapter looks only vaguely like it did at the start. Officially, I've added 373 words to Shadows, but there was probably a couple of thousand words written tonight all told.

I'm hoping I get the corrections made on the document at work tomorrow early. I'll be taking in a few chapters with me to try and edit in any slack time I can get. Just need to ask Wish where she's hiding the "Red Pen of Doom" (pat. pend.)
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Words for Today (officially)

373 / 1000 words. 37%

Progress on SG-1: Shadows of the Heart

85570 / 80000 words. 107%

Progress on Shadows of the Heart's revisions

11 / 25 chapters. 44%

Words for 2009

77066 / 365000 words. 21%

Actually, it's going to be a very busy next few weeks. I have four documents at work I need to have finished by 06 April and then the first draft of Shadows of the Heart is due at Fandemonium on 12 April. So, I predict a LOT OF WRITING in my future over the next six weeks. I am anticipating my stress level going through the roof during this time, but hey, the tech writing pays the bills so I can afford to actually write for myself.

At least, I have a new vice to go along with the stress. There's a store at the mall called Teavanna, and I found a very nice tea mixture that they were giving away samples of. It's a mixture of Samurai Chai Mate and White Ayurvedic Chai. It's a white tea with 100% the caffeine equivalent of coffee. So, now I can supplement the coffee IV with this stuff. Whoo hoo!!!!

Just got back from the auto body shop. The insurance adjuster agreed with the estimate so, in a week or so, my car goes into the shop for a few days. Here's hoping they don't spot any more damage while they're in there.

Of course, I nearly got creamed again today. I was turning left at a different intersection, but still two lanes go left here also. I was in the outside lane and as I made my turn, I noticed the car next to me was swinging INTO MY LANE from the interior lane. Luckily, there was a small shoulder, so I was able to duck and brake to get away from them. I caught up to them at the next light and the (insert curse word of choice) person was talking on her cell phone, completely oblivious to the fact she damn near took the front end off of my car.

GAAAAAHHH!!!!!

When I have the car in the shop, I'm going to ask them to see if they can find the idiot magnets in it and get rid of them.

We had company parts of the holiday weekend, so I didn't get as much writing done as I had hoped. The majority came in a trek to B&N on Sunday and then tonight. Still, I'm happy with the 5492 words and since there are no more three-day weekends between now and then, I'm hoping we can keep the distractions down to a minimum. The operative word is "hoping".

Oh, and if I didn't need another time sink, I've finally gone to the dark side and picked up a Twitter account. We'll see how long that lasts or if it becomes too much of a distraction. Still, if you're vaguely interested, you can either search for me or @nightwolfwriter.
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Words for Today (2 day total)

5492 / 2000 words. 275%

Progress on SG-1: Shadows of the Heart

21078 / 100000 words. 21%

Words for 2009

13524 / 365000 words. 4%

No words tonight, but I knew there wouldn't be.

We had some friends of mine just return from a tour in Japan and we took them out to the Melting Pot for dinner tonight. Enjoyed a couple of nice bottles of wine, some great fondue and a lot of good conversation.

Chris and Jodi are fellow kendoka and over the conversation tonight, Chris and I decided once they get settled, we're going to start working out a couple nights a week so we can both get back into doing Kendo. Looking at how things have been lately, dropping a few pounds and getting a little exercise back into my routine might be just the thing to get me back to feeling like my old self.

Got home in time to listen to the end of the Central Missouri basketball game. The Mules pulled off another victory, raising their record to 18-3, and they're currently ranked 11th in the nation for Division II. Five games left to go until the conference tournament and hopefully, the NCAA playoffs. Let's hear it for March Madness - Div II style.

I mentioned web comics in the last post, so I thought since I didn't have any words to report, I'd list a few of my distractions *grin*. In no particular order, here are the comics I'm currently following:

Kevin and Kell
Sluggy Freelance
Dilbert
Luann
Namir Deiter
Girl Genius
Faux Pas
Fragile Gravity
Gunnerkrigg Court
Penny and Aggie
Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures
The Order of the Stick
The Unspeakable Vault of Doom
No Rest for the Wicked
Undertow
Fey Winds

Yeah, just about as eclectic as my music and other reading tastes.

So, do you have any web comics you follow?

(Typing the title just as a song from an anime soundtrack comes on . . . talk about serendipity.)

Some friends of ours recently returned from a tour in Japan with their company. Outside of being highly jealous because I'd kill for that opportunity . . . (OK, that might be a bit extreme. I might maim for that opportunity), I was pleased for them. Chris and Jodi were two of my kendoka friends, in fact, Chris is the one who introduced me to Kendo.

Just before they returned, Jodi contacted me regarding getting the daughter-unit a kimono to hang on her wall. The package just arrived and the kimono is absolutely gorgeous! I don't have any pictures of it yet, but as soon as we can get it hung on her wall, I'll be posting some. wishweaver received a cute little stuffed "lucky cat" and I received a neat sake set, which I hope to put to use sooner than later. *grin*

Chris did look into picking up a katana while he was over there, but the one he found that he really wanted . . . well, let's just say he could buy a house here in Maryland outright with what they were asking for it. *yikes!* I suspect we'll have a lot of stories to swap when we get time to get together after they settle in.

This all dovetails with my Stargate story, because I am using the Shavadai (from Emancipation (Season One)) for Shadows of the Heart. I've been busy going through the various "baby name" web sites looking for Mongolian names to adapt to become Shavadai names and comparing Mongol history and artifacts against what was on the show and trying to blend the two.

(And who said doing tie-in work wasn't educational?)

Speaking of Shadows, I added 1458 words tonight, coming close to the 1500 I'm shooting for a night. It was a fairly easy section to write. Once I got going, the conversations just seemed to occur naturally, rather than thinking about how X would respond. They just did and transcribing is a lot simpler than writing. I love it when that happens.

Besides jimhines's book, The Stepsister Scheme, I'm currently reading two other books. One is Charles de Lint's Little (grrl) Lost and the other is H.P. Lovecraft, Complete and Unabridged. Just reached The Call of Cthulhu and am about halfway through it. On the nightstand, I also have The Journeys of Marco Polo. As I said once, one story launched a thousand adventures, the other, a thousand nightmares. *grin*

Yeah, I have eclectic reading tastes.

And now, to bed, perchance not to dream of Software Requirement Documents . . .
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Words for Today

1458 / 1000 words. 146%

Progress on SG-1: Shadows of the Heart

11952 / 100000 words. 12%

Words for 2009

4398 / 365000 words. 1%

Ever have one of those evenings when you were going to get stuff done, kept getting interrupted and by the end of the day, you'd actually accomplished stuff anyway?

As I had mentioned, I'm doing a little writing on Harbinger at lunch. It's amazing how much fifteen minutes here, twenty minutes there adds up. I typed in all the stuff I'd put together at work today and discovered I'd added 2183 words and finished off the second chapter. I'm noticing the chapters I'm writing for new version of the story are longer than my normal 3-4,000 word chapters. This is good, I think. They're a little more meaty, but there's stuff going on that's setting up the rest of the book. As I may have mentioned before, my "throw-away" character from the old first chapter has now morphed into a major character and second only to the "main villain" in importance to the story. His thread in the original Harbinger was there to be a catalyst, but after rethinking what I had done in the story and how I wanted to change it, I think he's going to be the main sub-plot that will bedevil our young heroine as she negotiates the rest of the story.

(cue evil laughter and rubbing of hands here)

Still, as I started transcribing, I spotted someone I needed to speak to on Skype and buzzed them. It turns out they won't be able to go to Archon this year, which is too bad. I haven't seen Thyla since the time I shared the table with the Sluggy Freelance people at Dragon*Con and it would have been cool to get to visit again. I still have good memories of hanging out with them and I think I actually sold more Sluggy stuff at the table than joesunday, Pete and Thyla did combined. I know I sold more of their stuff than I did my own. *sigh*

It was a good talk, but that took almost an hour from my writing. I jumped back into the transcribing and then I got a phone call from a friend. Definitely needed to take this call and we visited for about a half-hour before she had to call someone else. So, I jumped back onto Harbinger one more time. Finished the transcription, saved it, opened the unnamed project and glanced at my clock. Aauugh. I had to think. I had met my quota already with what I'd typed, but that was stuff I'd written earlier and it wasn't the unnamed project which does have a rough deadline.

So, I grabbed my notebook, checked the chapter breakdowns and completed Chapter Two and got started on Chapter Three. Ran a quick word count and lo and behold, I had 1073 words on the Unnamed project done. Don't know where they came from, they just sort of flowed out of my fingers and they all made reasonably good sense. Sure, some may not survive the rewrite, but they're not full of the stink, so I'll take solace there.

Oh, and I completed one of the two big writing projects at work today also. So, I guess this should go down as a "good writing day". I need to see if I can find a Snoopy dancing near his typewriter pic so I can add that for a "good writing day" icon.

That's it for now. Time to finish my glass of water and hit the sack. Tomorrow, I get to wrestle with the monthly financials. My favorite pasttime . . . not.
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Words for Today

3256 / 1000 words. 326%

Progress on Harbinger of Darkness

9880 / 120000 words. 8%

Progress on Unnamed Project: SotH

4796 / 100000 words. 5%

Words for 2008

160508 / 366000 words. 44%

I now have 100 people who have friended this blog.

Yeah, I know there are blogs out there with 1000s of readers (heck, I think I'm friended to one or two authors here that have legions of fans), but I just wanted to say "Hi, and thanks!" to everyone who's friended me for whatever reason.

People say writers tend to be private individuals, but private, retiring and/or shy are adjectives that are not normally associated with me. So, to celebrate neadods becoming the 100th victim . . . I mean person to friend this blog, I'll blatantly steal one of kradical's ideas and open the floor to questions. Any questions you might have for me (within reason and not covered by the National Security Act of 1948 *grin*) I'll do my best to answer.

All right, folks, take your best shots.

(goes to put on the flame-proof underwear)

I didn't get a whole lot done at work today. Just couldn't seem to pull the trigger and get "going". I piddled around with some stuff and had another major assignment dropped in my lap (and I still haven't finished the sixteen tasks on my current list yet.

Anyway, I came home and started putzing around with Library Thing, adding in some of the books I have piled up in here while we're waiting for the library to be built downstairs. (I'm writing from the guest bedroom currently.) All of a sudden, I realize, someone's buzzing me on Skype. I glanced down at the clock as I'm scrambling for my headphones and realize it's time for my weekly call from April to discuss Shattered Mirror.

We reviewed the four pages I had done so far and she had some good suggestions on how I could improve one of the sections. Then we started just brainstorming . . . should this character be more upset with what's going on? When is this character going to step forward and show some leadership? How long will this specific scene last before we move to the next encounter they need to get to? Stuff like that, only the ideas kept flowing and we kept coming up with "the reasons why things were like they were".

It was like a bolt of lightning hit the computers. We're going to have to go back and re-write some stuff in the first couple of chapters (like that's a big surprise, right), but now we know what the bad guys are doing. OK, we knew what the bad guys were doing and what their ultimate goals are, but now we know what they're doing and why they're doing it the way they are. We've also added in a new scene and will be introducing a new supporting character who's taking on a great deal more importance than when we first envisioned this person four months ago.

At first, she was important (with a small "i") as she served to move a few plot points forward. Now, after our conversation tonight, she's IMPORTANT and not only does she move the plot forward, she's demanding more screen time.

This is where collaborating with the right person is fun. We started out just talking about a few scene fixes and now we've added another sub-plot to the story and we just built on each other's excitement as we kicked ideas around. The fun part about working with April is, even though sometimes our approaches to this story are almost diametrically opposed, we talk over all the ideas we get and we're not afraid to try "goofy stuff", because sometimes that leads to the best ideas. We've also been friends since 1988, so we're not afraid to be honest with each other either. Also, I'm noticing she's gotten a lot less defensive about her writing the longer we've worked on this project, which shows me how much she's growing as a writer (or else, I'm getting a lot better at knowing how to critique . . . nah).

Unlike work, NOW I'm energized to work on Shattered Mirror.

But, I promised myself I'd stick to my schedule, so Shattered Mirror will have to wait for Friday. I pulled out Childhood's Tears and knocked out 1164 words in about an hour. I'm enjoying where this story is going also. I'm not exactly following the original chapter layout, but I'm close and the rabbit trails have been leading back to the main path so I'm happy.

Now, a little more reading and then bed.
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Words for Today

1164 / 1000 words. 116%

Progress on Childhood's Tears

26990 / 90000 words. 30%

Words for 2008

83115 / 366000 words. 23%

I should have known yesterday was too good.

I went into work today and spent seven and a half of the eight hours I was there fighting those damn documents again. I finished the first go round with the huge document and sent it back to the person I got it from for comments. I know there were close to twenty comments left for him (I guess the Track Changes function is useful for something) and I'll be curious to get his response. I opened the other document and it's formatting was even worse. So, I said the hell with it and just created a brand new document with new formatting and then cut and pasted the information in. Luckily for me, it was only about 24 pages long, but it was still a pain in my . . . neck. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Got home and was reminded that we had to meet with the accountant tonight to do our taxes. I had to dig out all the receipts for 2007 for conventions I attended and bills for conventions I had to cancel out on. That killed the early evening. Yes, I know, I should have prepped ahead of time, but my public has come to count on my lack of preparation to amuse them. At least things went well there. We just have to drop off one piece of info tomorrow and he should be able to have our information ready to send to Uncle Sam and Uncle Martin here soon.

Got home and then got buzzed on-line by two friends I hadn't talked to in over a year, so I really felt like I should spend a little time with them. Well, keeping track of time has never been one of my strong suits and here we are at 0015 on the 4th with a whole 94 words written. Feh, I'll just save them and count them toward tomorrow's total.

What was it I said a while back about it's a good thing to have a cushion?

I have to echo several of my friends blogs when I wish Robbie Greenberger the best as he's preparing to deal with leukemia. I've lost a couple of friends to this, but from what I understand, this is treatable and the fact that he's young and has a great family supporting him give me a lot of hope. I've never met Robbie personally, but I know Bob, his wife and his daughter and I know they've got to be going crazy at this time.

Let's keep him in your thoughts, LJ.

Bob's Blog Entry

On a more personal level, I did make it back to work today. *bronx cheer inserted here* The good part was it was slow and I was able to get a lot of personal stuff done. The bad part was several hours of the day were spent reading through white papers and control documents. Not exactly exciting stuff. Tomorrow, I have several meetings set up to go over what the new job is going to expect of me, which should help me get focused so I can start contributing.

I also got some work done this evening on Childhood's Tears. I finished Chapter Four and started Chapter Five, adding a player in the game that even I don't know who they are or who's side they're on yet. I love outlining, but I also love it when things start happening that I have no clue where it's going.

*cue spooky music*
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Words for Today

1187 / 1000 words. 119%

Progress on Childhood's Tears

14046 / 90000 words. 16%

Words for 2008

27487 / 366000 words. 8%

I received a package in the mail today. It's a copy of my Gauntlet novel, sent to me by one of my friends back in Missouri, Brad Caudle. Brad is working as a teacher's assistant, primarily with learning-challenged kids.

Brad was having problems getting through to one of his students who was more of a discipline problem than a learning-disabled child. Brad has been challenging him to read more and found out he likes video games also. Brad told him that if he could avoid getting into trouble for a period of time and bring his first quarter grades up, he knew an author and would get him to sign a book to the kid.

Well, George met all the criteria this last quarter, so Brad called me up and asked if I would mind signing a book to George.

Insert Jim Mora playoffs clip here Mind? Are you kidding me? Mind? End Jim Mora clip

Needless to say, I was tickled pink over the compliment. Unfortunately, I didn't have any copies of the book left, so Brad offered to procure it and mail it to me. He wanted to pay for the return postage also, but I told him that I'd be happy to pick that up for him. I felt it was the least I could do in this situation.

So, the book arrived tonight and I'll be signing it and trying to get it dropped off at the post office as soon as I can.

That is, as soon as I can get this silly grin off of my face.

Between the last journal entry and the day I had at work on Friday, I decided a mental break from writing was probably the best thing I could do. Spent Friday evening visiting with wishweaver and mollymorrison and we watched Memoirs of a Geisha. It wasn't a "bad" movie, but it wasn't a "great" movie either. Very beautiful costuming and cinematography, but the story was disjointed at best. Personally, I think it would have been better if the story had been set in Japan of the 1860s rather than the 1930s/40s, but your mileage may vary.

Went to the bookstore this evening and picked up some good books. My find for the night was that Barnes and Noble had put Shelby Foote's, The Civil War on their discount racks. Picking up three books which normally cost $40+ for $14.99 each was a great steal. I also added some books on Japan and the samurai culture to my collection. I found Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai by Yamamoto Tsunetomo; The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi, translated by William Scott Wilson (who also translated Hagakure; The Sword adn the Mind, translated by Hiroaki Sato; and Myths and Legends of Japan, originally written by F. Hadland Davis in 1913.

Yes, as you may have guessed I'm considering doing a fantasy series set in Eastern culture rather than a pseudo-European setting . . . once I get Chronicles and Shattered Mirror out of the way, that is.

While we were at the bookstore, we got a call from mollymorrison to let us know that sorerutenshi had proposed to her. We got together for a celebration dinner and had a great time looking through a bridal catalog at wedding dresses. (Of course, wishweaver and I teased them unmercifully.)

After all that, I finally got a chance to sit down and do some writing and research. I bookmarked the list of Enterprise-D crew members and have been reading about some of the minor characters who wandered in and out of the show for my story. It's always good to have some supporting cast for a story. Plus, if you can use already identified characters, that's less names you have to make up. *grin*

Finished the next scene in the story and am about to move to one of fun scenes in Ten-Forward. Wesley Crusher is going to wish he hadn't decided to go there. *cue evil laughter*

Words for Today

1,095 / 1,000 (109.5%)

Progress on "Shadows"

4,594 / 10,000 (45.9%)

Words for the Year

16,755 / 365,000 (4.6%)

Was very busy this weekend and got a number of things accomplished. Not necessarily very consequential things, but things anyway.

wishweaver had been down with a cold most of the week, but started feeling better on Friday afternoon. (Good timing, eh wot?) We hung around the house and did a little visiting with our Writing Group on line, but it was more of a meet and greet session than actually critiquing anything new. Right now, most of us are busy revising things rather than working on new stuff, so there's less impetus to post. Hopefully, we'll have some new stuff for the next time.

Saturday was mainly a shopping and visiting day. Wish took me to one of the local yarn stores where we picked out some yarn for a scarf she wants to make for me. She thought since I was going to be wearing it, I probably should get a say in what colors went into it. The yarn we picked out has a lot of black, red and dark blues in it. I could have chosen some more colorful yarn, but I wanted something that would go with the majority of the jackets I wear to work in the winter. Hard to go wrong with darker colors.

After having lunch, we hit the infamous Costco. Unfortunately, (or maybe fortunately,) their selection of office supplies was dismal. However, I did find a WD 500GB external hard drive for a bit over $200. While it's possible I could beat that price on-line somewhere, it was nice to know the cost of external hard drives are coming down. I want to move all my music an pictures off of my laptop's HD. Sure, I know the laptop has a pretty big hard drive itself, but still, after the disaster of 2005 when my hard drive was corrupted, I don't want to take any chances. All my writing is backed-up on flash drives, but I'd be happier if all my music and pictures were backed up somewhere too.

That evening, Wish and I went to the mall to do a little preliminary Christmas shopping. We gave each other some ideas about what we'd be interested in and also spotted some really cool things for the daughter-unit. As we were going past the Bose store, we laughed remembering when they used to have a 36" flat screen TV that they sold for $15,000. Now, we could pick up a 35" flat screen at Costco for under $1000 and a 65" for less than $3,000. There are advantages to not being an early-adopter.

Today was pretty much a hang around the house day. Our roommate, mollymorrison and her boyfriend were around most of the weekend. Watched some football . . . sigh . . . and then spent the evening doing my homework for Tuesday night. I'll be working on my Fahrenheit 451 paper in class tomorrow night, so I didn't see a point in rushing through a draft tonight. I know pretty much what I want to talk about and will slam out the rough draft in class.

I have been working on Harbinger most of this weekend. I've thought about the last few chapters and am revising them once again while I wait to hear back from the agent I submitted my synopsis and three to a few weeks ago. I like the minor changes I've made to the story here and now just need to finish polishing it and get back to work on something new. I'll probably spend about an hour working on some edits before I call it a night.

All right, back to work.

Dragon*Con is 17 days away.

I'm still debating whether or not to try and find a roommate for the convention. I'm staying at the Amerisuites, about a block and a half away from the convention hotels. It's not like I can't afford to stay in the room by myself, but it might be nice to split the costs with someone else (more money for the dealer's room and the bar . . . "Priorities, man!"). Although, at this late date, I don't think there are many people going to the show who don't already have lodging identified. Oh well, either way, I wouldn't be chuffed.

Went through the big "dramatic" chapter tonight with a fine tooth comb. Even though the official record will show I trimmed 302 words from the chapter, that doesn't quite describe it. Sections were rewritten with reckless abandon, paragraphs trimmed out and others inserted in their place, weak phrases propped up or pruned away and in general, it was made into a much better chapter.

kradical posted the S.C.E./C.o.E. listing for 2007 on his journal. Congratulations to meharet and to terri_osborne for getting picked up! Great job you two.

Current Harbinger final draft status:

47,549 / 100,000 (47.5%)