Holiday Season Chaos

It’s 10 days before Christmas – The world is chaos and crazy.  What is on my mind?

1.  Still Seren, my little broken dancer.  Did my wish from last week come true and she is miraculously all-better?  Ha!  No!  She is worse.  While sitting on the floor stretching out her legs, her foot went to sleep and refused to wake back up.  We spent the afternoon and half the night at Children’s hospital and God knows how much money, for them to tell us…they had no idea what was wrong.  We were referred to a specialist…again.  On Tuesday we saw said specialist who advised us, that somehow, someway, my little dancer has pinched/abused/bruised a nerve in her leg/ankle/foot.  They immobilized her foot in a boot from HELL and told her no dancing for about 2 weeks.  I have had one distraught sad little chicka to content with.  When I again asked what caused this, why did it happen, what do you think they told me?  Ready for it…that she is growing.  What the holy hell?!  I do not want to believe that growing is causing all this to her little body.  I’m so frustrated, partly because my girl is so upset and partly because what their action plan is additional physical therapy, that’s it.  Can you hear me sigh from your end of the computer, because it’s heavy over here.  Yes, I know…deep breath mama.  I’m trying.  I’m trying. 

2.  Christmas – Yes, I finally decorated, both the inside and outside of the house.  The tree is cute.  We have so many personalized ornaments at this point that we don’t have to use really any non-personal ones at all to fill the tree.  I guess 22 years of buying and adding to the collection has paid off.  The outside is a zoo of animals and lights.  If I only had the knack to add music to the lights it would be awesome, and yet, I am not sure I could do that to my neighbors, few that they are. 

3.  Still plugging away at Howl 2.  With all the hip/foot/leg drama of Seren last week, I didn’t have a lot of time to work on it.  However, I did add in another 5,000 words so, I made some headway.  I am almost done.  I really am.  I need a big block of time to sit and finish without any interruptions.  Not thinking I will get that anytime soon though. 

That’s really it for me this week.  Hope you are all enjoying the holiday season.  I’m getting there.  Yay.

End of the Year - What's new?

Since everything is a bit crazy for me this month, I thought I would do a quick update on several things going on.

1.  Howl 2 – Still don’t have a title worked out for this book.  I am open to suggestions, just saying.  I did not quite get the first draft completed last week.  I plan on trying to give it a finish this week if at all possible.  Then the “real” fun begins with editing.  If you have followed me for any length of time, you know that this is not fun for me.  I hate editing and trying to make sure I have all the grammar correct and set up.  If I ever make enough money writing, the first thing I will do, is hire myself a personal editor so that I don’t have to fight with it anymore. 

2.  Author Event - Last weekends author fair at the Orange Library went very well for me.  I met several fun authors, and got a few good books to read over the holidays.  Yes, I also sold quite the handful of books too.  Yay!  It was a good day all in all.  I will have to make sure to look for that one again next year.

3.  Seren’s Hip – She is going to therapy for her hip twice a week and she has been doing special exercises every single day.  So how is her hip?  About the same actually. I am not noticing any real improvement.  Plus I’m aggravated in that I feel like my concerns with the PT people are shoved under the rug a bit and excused off with “these things take time”.  However, it’s been a month and there isn’t any improvement?  Shouldn’t she be seeing something?  She had issues walking distances now, too.  I mean like a trip around the mall.  We have to take breaks and let her sit or stretch before continuing.  She limps a bit more lately, and her legs seem to be more sore and achy on a daily basis.  Questions to the PT people are answered with:  “Well, we are working her muscles so we expect soreness and aches”.  This gets under my skin too, as Seren is not out of shape. She is in awesome and better shape than I ever was, and she works her muscles daily.  Why would she suddenly not be in shape and be sore?  I’m not counting out the PT.  I simply wish they would be more open to discussion.  They have another 2-4 weeks to go.  Let’s hope that like magic her hip and tendons and muscles suddenly and inexplicably just get better. 

4.  Christmas – I’m set with the picking out and the shopping.  I am only waiting on the deliveries at this point.  I am holding two packages that need to go out for a shipment that should have come by now.  I mean seriously?  I ordered on November 19^th.  What is taking so long?  Otherwise, aside from finding a day to sit down and wrap, I think I’m pretty well set.  What about the rest of you?  Are you ready?

That all the time I have for now.  I’ll catch you next Monday.  Have a great week everyone.  

End of Nanowritmo - 2014

I am happy to announce that I was able to complete my nano novel in time.  I validated at 50,060 words, around noon on November 30, 2014.  Woo Hoo.  It was a crazy month of finding time to write, but I persevered and was able to write almost every single day, with a few exceptions for the holiday.  Slow and steady is me. 

However, the book is not done.  I still have about 10,000 – 15,000 more words to write before I get to the end of the first draft.  It got exciting and action packed and took a few weird turns. Even after all that, at this moment I feel like I am writing a pretty good story.  Oh, don’t get me wrong, it is a very rough draft, but it definitely has great potential.  I will be working on it daily even though Nano is over for the year.  I’m excited about it, ad want to finish it.  I can’t wait for my readers to get it. 

I would love to put out an excerpt, but I don’t know where the book will end and I don’t want to give anything away.  What I can tell you is that it is a sequel to my previously published book, A Howl in the Night.  I still don’t have a title for it.  I am thinking along the lines of Dawn Breaks or The Morning Comes.  I don’t know.  It’s a work in progress.  I’m sure I will figure something out.

Just a quick plug – I will be at the Orange Library in Lewis Center, this Sunday, December 7, 2014 from 2:00 – 5:00 to meet the people and talk about writing.  I will also have books should you need one and I am always happy to autograph. 

Library Author Event Information

Have a great week.