I’ve had a sinus infection for 3 weeks, and interpersonal junk has been super stressful (also/because of?) so I’ve been playing a lot of World of Warcraft and have been writing (probably) useless stuff in the prequel to The Dark that I’ll never legitimately publish. I’m almost done with The Haven edit, but the sinus infection just kicked my butt – and I can’t stop doing my day job even though I’m sick, so corners have to be cut somewhere. Plus, I want to know that my edit is good. I’m hoping the amoxicillin killed this infection for good, because I’m tired of it! It’d also be nice to have a voice again – but having two small kids is making recovering my voice very hard.
My birthday was this past weekend, and all I’d asked for was some time alone to rest and make myself a plush. Life happened, and the plush is not finished, but we opted out of our usual social engagements for some company that we hadn’t seen for a while.
I had one of my early readers and best friends over for the weekend, and we worked on crafts, chatted, played with my daughters, and hung out with some other friends – my husband, of course, one of our mutual college friends, another was his long-time girlfriend, and a friend from my IBM days that recently stayed with us while he started a new job here in the DSM area. He now lives a short way away, so we get to see him quite a bit. My Philly-born husband made us all delicious chicken cheesesteaks, we had cupcakes, and drank some booze. I got to go shopping today for geeky things, and finished off the night with crafting and book talk before my reader friend headed back home.
So, after a great weekend full of rest, gaming, good company, geeky shopping, crafting, and book discussion, I am back and ready to write! I have a handful of things I’m going to fix, rewrite, or delete in The Haven, and then have a large chunk of The Hunt to delete and rewrite! I’m also considering completely reworking some of the relationships that are supposed to develop later in the series because I want to avoid having a ‘Ron and Hermione’. It’s all thanks to three of my early readers. ^_^ They’re awesome and I couldn’t do this without them.
My husband has been telling me that he can tell when he’s reading my older stuff, because it is not as good as my new stuff – so that makes me pretty pumped. I’m glad I’m actually improving as a writer and it’s not just that I’m bored of the old stuff that I don’t like reading it. I’m excited to delete that part of the book and just redo it. It’ll be that much better when I’m done!
I just want you to know I absolutely LOVED The Dark. I devoured that book like you would not believe. I read it almost every waking moment. I read until my eyes felt like they were going to bleed from being so tired. I am so eagerly awaiting the next book, I will probably have to reread the first so I’m refreshed on the story.
I’m so glad you enjoyed The Dark! Thank you for this incredibly sweet comment, it revitalized my desire to wrap up The Haven – the very last scene has been giving me some trouble. You also reminded me my website needed some love, so I went through and updated the majority of it with new pictures and content. I hope it provides some sustenance until you can read the next book!