At 12:59 p.m. today, I turned in the final (I hope), revised manuscript for Codex Born [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy].Some random stats about the book:
- It came in at 104,527 words.
- There are 39 books in the bibliography.
- In addition to English, there are snippets from at least six other languages. (I apologize in advance to whoever will be reading the audio book...)
- Smudge once again gets a pretty cool scene.
- While I doubt I'll ever write professional erotica, this book has what's probably the "spiciest" scene I've ever done.
- Yes, this book will address--at least to some extent--the question of e-books and libriomancy.
The release is still scheduled for August 6 of this year. I'll be posting the first chapter online as we get a bit closer to that date, once the book has been officially accepted.
This was a challenging one, but I'm proud of how it turned out, and I can't wait to share it with you all.
My Books
(August 2013)
Page Summary
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Comments
Bilbogeorgmi aloud, but what he thought inside was: "Why, there is a large typo in the hollow of Page 163 as bare as a snail out of its shell!"Can't wait to read it!
Great news! I am slightly less than halfway through Libriomancer - enjoying it very much - and now the new one will be out just in time for my birthday!
Thank you for sharing these books - and the snippets, and your progress - with us.
~ Neva
Edited at 2013-03-16 04:06 pm (UTC)
Edited at 2013-03-16 06:51 pm (UTC)
My favoritest writer (Sorry, it's not you, but I don't want to name names. Whole different genre.) realized that her plot was kinda FUBAR and they added on AN ENTIRE 'NOTHER YEAR to the third book in a trilogy - apparently her publisher has A Thing about publishing her books in summer, even though she doesn't think it'll take that long to re-write - I've been waiting on for AGES, so I was ready to cry. And my second favoritest writer (you're probably tied - depends on my mood and what I want to read - you're actually winning right now) isn't dazzling me at the moment.
I NEED BOOKS. My mom shattered her pelvis and damaged some other bones by slipping on ice on February 6th so we're just entering Week 7 of healing. (Well, I'm sure you know about Hidden Icy Spots of Doom. You're in Michigan, we're in Minnesota.) I am her ONLY caregiver - her and my little brother, who is also disabled, and I FEEL like about the least qualified person who could POSSIBLY be taking care of her. I'm agoraphobic and have a fear that borders on a phobia about doctors, for crying out loud! There are probably Sanguinarius Meyerii* better qualified at this than I am, and they SPARKLE! (To be fair, I've met a lot of doctors who are jerks.)
And since I'm "only 25", despite having a clearer picture and a better memory of EVERYTHING than anybody else (my mom was either delusional from pain or else, um, stoned off her ass for segments of this) doctors seem to think that I'm Not To Be Taken Seriously because I'm only a 25-year-old woman.
*Yes, that's from memory, but to be fair I checked the double-checked my spelling in the book. I was right the first time.
Sorry, wasn't trying for a pity party, it just kind of spills out at the oddest times. I'd like to say that I appreciate you for writing books, anyway, since this is looking like a REALLY long recovery period (with at least one possible surgery) and I need fantasy to keep me sane.
I'm very sorry to hear about your mother. I definitely sympathize with the hidden ice of doom. My wife hurt herself on the driveway a year or so back. How is your mother doing? And how are you holding up? That's an awful lot of pressure. I've been in the caretaker role for my wife after a number of surgeries, and while I love her dearly, it gets overwhelming sometimes.
Anyone who talks about literary escapism like it's a bad thing is, in my humble opinion, a damn fool.
We're going to find out on the 25th whether they want to do surgery on one of the bones she damaged or not. (I want to say it's where she hurt her right femur, but I can't swear to that because I was pretty much excluded from the conversation.) Something about seeing how its healing and if it's healing right.
I may very well commit violence next time we have to see This One Douchey Orthopedist Guy (who I swear looks like young enough that I should be babysitting him), but I had to keep reminding myself "Wait, that's very illegal and you're not in the kind of mental state to hide bodies effectively right now." (Hey, some people have their self-talk, I have mine.)
I'm . . . surviving. Sort of. Hanging in there, I guess? Bad days and good days. I'm trying to read or sew or do something for me, but then sometimes you're just too tense to even start to relax, you know?
Thank you just for listening, Jim. Love you SO MUCH and your books and can't wait to see more Lena. <3 <3 <3
And thank you just for asking about me. I could cry right now (in a good way) because NOBODY asks how the person doing the care-taking is doing. My mom knows that because she took care of her severely disabled parents, but she's the only one.
I have no good body-hiding advice, but when all else fails, I recommend writing the dude into a story and then putting him through a painful and possibly humiliating death.
On the book front, you'll definitely be seeing more of Lena in book two. It's still told from Isaac's PoV, but you get more of Lena's background and history.
Do you have anyone who can help out and give you a break? When we're doing the surgical recuperation game here, sometimes it helps an awful lot to just have an afternoon to myself. I love my wife dearly, and would do anythign for her, but it's still awfully draining for the caretaker, as you know.
Gotta love Lena! I may have mentioned I have a doll collection. I'd like a Lena doll but I think I'd have to make one - like a plush doll type thing? - because there is NOBODY who makes a doll with her kind of body shape. (Which is stupid, but not unexpected. Still, you'd think that some of the high-end fashiony types might see it as an interesting challenge.) Still, it might be a fun project one of these days if I can ALSO make her look pretty. But first I want to make a Jig with Smudge, and his nose is tricky.
Unfortunately, there's just not anybody. My mom's brother is a teacher and . . . well, him and my mom together for any period of time is a terrible, TERRIBLE idea. My little sister lives out in Connecticut and she hates me AND my mom for . . . well, it's complicated. She's sort of made up things that didn't actually happen? It's just plain weird and more than I need to get into here. Everyone else is dead and has been for a long time.
I got really scared the other night because my mom's pain medications weren't working well enough and she thought I was my grandma and was generally really disoriented. She got better after maybe an hour and a half. See, she's MORE lucid when she has enough pain medication to take the edge off, though it feels like I'm slamming my head against a brick wall to tell a doctor that.
I mean, I know I'm SUPPOSED TO take her to the hospital for that, but realistically they won't do much for her and it's not like I can force her into the car. (Well, I probably could - I'm built *ahem* like rather like Lena and my mom is about half of me - but I'm not GOING TO, I hate hospitals too, and I'd probably hurt her more if I tried.) So all I can really do is try to be there. And we made an agreement when she was actually lucid that "Yeah, no hospital just for THAT."
To be honest, I think my mother could get accustomed to decreased mobility if she doesn't make a full recovery from this. Her mom and her aunt both survived polio in the 1940s, but with a lot of paralysis, and her father had ALS and she grew up with that as being . . . normal, I guess is how I'd put it? (I seriously didn't know that not everyone's grandma was in a wheelchair until I was 7-8.) She has a bad hip that has caused problems a couple of times (though oddly it's fine this time - she fell on her OTHER side) and she's said to me before that she'll probably be in a wheelchair at some point because of her bad hips. What REALLY scares me is the idea of chronic pain. Or more than she already has with Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and "We really don't know WHAT you have, but it's some kind of auto-immune thingy. Sucks to be you, I guess?" (I went to the Fibromyalgia Pain Clinic with her. They gave her a disc on Soothing Tropical Imagery. I am not making this up, I swear. So I just mock it at every turn instead. I'm unclear on how they expected people with CHRONIC PAIN to sit for 8 hours straight two days in a row, anyway.)
Thank you for letting me vent a little, Jim. It was incredibly kind of you and it really helped me. I do see a therapist usually, but I am just so completely out of mental health spoons and agoraphobic spoons (or would that be anti-agoraphobic spoons?) that I'm taking a break for a little while because leaving the house even ONE extra time and going to ONE extra medical place just seems SO hard.
Some of what you're saying sounds spookily familiar. My wife and I both expect her to end up in a wheelchair eventually (chronic spinal trouble, arthritis since she was a teenager, fibro, eight knee surgeries and counting...) We've had doctors and therapists who were able to offer some relief, and others who just seemed completely disconnected with what she was dealing with, and were basically useless. Very hard not to go on a spork-stabbing rampage sometimes.
She's on a big old collection of medications and vitamins and supplements too, and I hate thinking about what will happen when and if things worsen. I mean, there's only so much you can do, right?
It's okay to give yourself a break too. Or as much of a break as you can manage, given everything else you're responsible for...