O sweet blue coffee cups and sweet brown tea
A storm is brewing up over the sea
Thirty-three poems chronicle stories of myth, wonder, relationships, and love. From the dancer of binary to the queen of heaven, these are songs born from dust, ash, and the ending—and beginning—of worlds.
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
Rachelle Winslow was once known as the Database, one of the most powerful special human operatives in the military, able to read and process genetic material on contact. Now she has her own problems and trying to stay out of the business tops the list.
Then a professional informant vanishes from his city apartment, leaving shattered windows, blood on the carpet, and a frantic message that he knows who's coming after him-a special. It's just one more case, even if it could end up killing her.
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
All my proofs are in the mail to me. Now I must be patient and wait.
Worked on the collaborative short with thecatisacritic, mostly percolating, but 364 new words were in that.
Did research for my Couples Big Bang and the attached, related other crossover fic I'm not supposed to write. Yeah. That'll work. :rolls eyes at self: 208 words there.
Planned out how to do my next collection. Kingdoms and Thorn. It's my current playground apparently.
Thought I'd get some time to. Didn't.
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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
So I've got three proofs going back and forth with Createspace: a gift book for family members, Songs from the Dust, and the mass market edition of Dowse and Bleed, which is still gorgeous by the way. I got two ordered, one submitted, and the Kindle edition of Dowse and Bleed finally published. I also have some more editing of Songs from the Dust despite having a print copy on the way because I want to change something on the cover and forgot to add author info in the back. Wow, scribbler. Really batting a thousand.
Creating an anthology isn't as hard as I thought if I have my arms around what I want from the collection. It seems a lot like writing fiction: once I have that handle on the overall arc, I can fly through the story. Same thing happened with creating Songs from the Dust. I knew what I wanted and it just came together with ease.
Today, I work on "Justice." I have an idea of what I want and there's the matter of theme. I've hit on the need for theme and I think thecatisacritic gave it to me buried in with the rest. Let's see what can happen.
I spent some time cleaning out my inbox because it needed to be done. I didn't really deal with much, but I deleted a couple hundred emails and finally moved a few thousand into their folders to end up with 9. Yahoo has corrected the most egregious of their errors and so I could actually find my email again. Though the search is still wonky.
Started on "Justice," then got poetically side-tracked with a poem I want off that 'unfinished' list. Getting back on track. (No, it's not finished.)
Wrote 232 words. Hashed out ideas with thecatisacritic. Have bunny. And got it to 553 words.
Again, will edit this post if I get any more done.
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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
Was chatting via email with lithiumlaughter and this morning, the conversations turned into a 1397 word fic. Whoops. It wasn't good enough though, not quite enough. I'm changing my Couples Big Bang pairing.
Started putting together a poetry collection for lithiumlaughter, since poetry was actually happening (research and fic were frying my brain) and wrote a poem to go with the fanfic.
I almost forgot. I wrote a ton of fodder on this day, probably a few thousand words of poetry that will never see the light of day, thus the name "fodder." I'm not counting it.
Focused on rereading “Justice” and reminding myself of where I want to steer it. Unfortunately realized that I need to check in for the Couples Big Bang tomorrow, so also need to work on that. Finished out what I started on the 29th of getting gift books ready for publication. Will need to continue wrapping that up on the 1st.
So I owe you all an end of March post and would like to check back in to my publication/release schedule issues as well. I’m not really happy with that bit.
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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
I've been doing an admirable imitation of lost, so here's where I've been. Sort of. I'm not really listing what kept me so busy just that I have been.
So not a very productive weekend, due to being very busy on the non-writing fronts, but I got 376 words on the collaboration and 3 on an invisible treat. (3! Just 3!) So there you have it.
Sabbath and Sunday were a wash. Oh! Not quite! Two of my beta/readers reported receiving their copies of Dowse and Bleed, which is very exciting, and I got a few words on the collaboration: 115 words.
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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
So I started off by getting back to my betas for the Invisible Ficathon, then wrote 118 words of the mass market blog posts.
It was a type, delete day on the collaboration, then I diverted into fandom because...
I got a fandom gift for my very belated birthday (thank you, lithiumlaughter!) and it inspired 893 words of fanfic reply and a poem:
Written under, the wires crossed
The symphony begins to swell
One, two, three and red on my bones
Everything’s blood and all is well
Waltz with war and tango death
Fate is but the archer’s eye
The reverie begins to play
Everything’s blood; let arrows fly
I breathe your blood, I bleed my name
We’re lost within a sea of red
Your name is written in my bones
Everything’s blood where angels fled
Fired until we cannot break
Mark the clock for time will tell
The music clicks beneath the gun
Everything’s blood and all is well
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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
So collaboration and Invisible fics. Let's get cracking.
I think we can best sum up the 25th as an exercise in type, delete, repeat.
I added the snippet of my collaborator's to the song "Dust to Dust" by The Civil Wars and finally got somewhere, 819 words, with writing this collaboration. Yay.
Been researching for my Ficathon pieces and located a beta for my not-sure-if-I-like-it treat I did, which I edited and added 60 words to yesterday on the 25th.
Out sick. Wrote 213 words in "Remembrance" when I realized what it is I was missing in this Vardin story due to a post by P. C. Wrede.
Ordered the copies of Dowse and Bleed for my betas/readers, though I did nothing else toward launching the book. I sent off a couple long collaboration emails, slept a lot, dreaded making dinner for the family (my night), and watched The Civil Wars videos. Note: "The One That Got Away" is my new Rachelle/Justus theme song. She's the most asexual character I've ever written. She really, really IS a take it or leave it person.
Speak of the girl, she just handed me 198 words of Lovemark the Seasons and an approach to the story that I can live with. I'm going to start writing like a fangirl when it serves me. Sometimes, I forget I have a literary bent and what that means. As I've been digging into metafic and invisible fandoms and all the sort of possibilities of fiction, including a deep look at experimental and Nabakov's poem and reference novel, I realized that I am not limited by a pre-existing format or structure, unless I choose to be. As long as the final story works, go for it. I'm going to play with Lovemark. I knew when I started it that the work was experimental, so I'm going to finally really let go of my safety net and let it be experimental.
Speaking of which, I realized I haven't been trusting the process of collaboration either. I've been something of a control freak. Go figure. Not my usual thing except as it relates to something that's mine, but this is mine, just it's also someone else's. I needed to take a long look at my own strengths as a writer and my own weaknesses and cede controlling interest on the parts where I am weak. I hate writing those parts anyway, so it was past time to focus again on the parts I love and let my collaborator really shine where she's strong.
Spent five minutes setting up a Kingdoms and Thorn tumblr. Will fill in some stuff soon, but I realized it'll be a good dumping ground for stuff that's not just series bible stuff and also a great way to handle questions.
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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
I just reread A Ring of Endless Light, foregoing dozens of books I've been wanting to read for months, proving once and for all that mood figures in more than I'd like when it comes to my reading choices.
Also confirmed why I'm having a hard time reading my collaborator's other works right now. It screws with my ability to write the collaboration. Guess which I'm giving priority? That's right. Writing.
Discovered the new home on the web of one o' my internet besties and adored so many posts I wanted to reblog almost the entire first 12 pages of the tumblr. Go figure. She's one of many awesome people I know. Speaking of which, lithiumlaughter, I just reread A Ring of Endless Light, so we talked about talking about Zachary Grey. :hint, hint:
On publishing, I got my updated covers into review for both trade and mass market on Createspace. If they check out as covers, I order a proof for the mass and okay the trade so I can order copies for my betas/readers. Can I just say I'm HUGELY excited about this?
Tied up a bunch of social/personal loose ends. I know I'm supposed to write first, do other things later, but I've been needing to get some of this stuff done for months. I regret nothing.
So I was supposed to go and write today after all this and just ran out of umph and had a pain in my throat. I declared it a health afternoon and gave up.
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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
Started off with cover specs from Createspace. Been busy with real life really.
So there went 499 words on the collaboration in an edit, re-layer.
Brain is fried. Doing more percolating than writing because brain fried due to unholy lack of sleep.
Now obviously Sabbath isn't a day I go in gung-ho for writing. Kind of against my faith and all that, so not much here because before I got to the evening I was already dreaming longing of bed. Started two poems I didn't finish and got in my trade paperback proof for Dowse and Bleed, which I love but needs just a little lighter background behind the LI of the author name. Procured the right info to ship copies to my delightful betas/readers.
Also, got hooked on The Civil Wars. I've wondered at times what happened to Joy Williams. I'm kinda sad to see that her beautiful faith in a song from her solo album, "Do They See Jesus in Me," has gone by way of "Barton Hollow," musically anyway, but I like a lot of her new work, so no surprise I fell in love with parts before I had a clue it was her.
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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
So that's a fancy way of saying I'm really happy with the things I got done/discovered even if it didn't result in a lot of new words yet.
Most importantly, I got my website issues resolved yesterday. I still don't know what went wrong and the solution was anything but simple and easy, but there's this handy Webspace Recovery option on 1and1, and I was able to recover my missing files.
Last night, I discovered how to do hardcover editions without going through Lightning Source and when to do casewrap vs. dust jacket. It got most of the mass market reformatted yesterday. There were some serious margin issues, which is a pity because now I have to do the justification all over again and hope the page count stays the same or close to it and possibly retrim the cover.
I did a huge amount of percolation/brainstorming with my collaborator and prepped Seven Days to finally to get written properly.
I wrote poetry of all things, one poem of which I've been trying to write for over a year. It just started playing in my ear this morning and I stopped, dropped, and wrote. I knew I wanted to write something about the fact that my great-grandmother dressed my grandmother as an Indian princess because of her actual lineage and that my mother learned English off the television and that I'm not the sum of my parts and am the product of legal immigration on both sides—from Mexico. So yeah. I wrote something. It means something to me.
Updated and resubmitted the mass market interior. That did affect the spine width and I'll have to update the cover. Again. :le sigh:
Compiled my data on an invisible fandom. I'm working out what the canon is in my head so I can write what my recipient wants.
Today is really a gathering things up in prep day. I was hoping for more of a throwing words down day, but oh, well. Both steps are more than necessary.
And there went the mass market submitted for review. The cover is tweaked and hopefully correct at last.
Lumping in yesterday's blog counts.
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
I have a knack for being inspired on the days my sister decides to be clingy, which puts a real crimp in the getting things done, because I don't share any of my Liana work with her, so no writing while she's hovering. Hmph.
I did get a snippet written and shipped on the collaboration and ordered my updated proof of the trade edition of Dowse and Bleed. The mass market awaits more precise details on what I did wrong on the cover with the live elements. As there's no template, I followed their rules and apparently was still off somehow. When I'm done getting it right, I'm going to make my own template and make it available for anyone else who likes the size and wants to do one.
Going to count a blog post I drafted the day before as well.
Today, I'll try and be a good girl and get the stuff written that I percolated on yesterday. Wish me luck!
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
When Amazon reports that self-published books make up 25% of the top 100 list, the reaction from many is that these are merely the outliers. We hear that authors stand no chance if they self-publish and that most won’t sell more than a dozen copies in their lifetime if they do. (The same people rarely point out that all bestsellers are outliers and that the vast majority of those who go the traditional route are never published at all.)
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
So I’ve been collaborating and publishing these last few days, and my fingers are itching to get back to my cover art to get it corrected for Createspace. I’m ready to order my proofs and get it off to bed, seriously.
In the meantime, I discovered again a deplorable lack of information out there about genre. Most of the intensive information is workshops and classes. I want a reference book. So I’ll be adding into my already over-scattered writing schedule to put together a reference work called The Indie Author Guide to Genre, where I get to cover BISAC, Amazon, cross-genre, subgenres, and examples of how broad the scope of these genres can really be.
Then I’m also going to start putting together some tutorials on the Pods CMS plugin for my own benefit due to the fact that it is deplorably underdocumented and I use it extensively here and exclusively for my new series bible setup. I don’t know PHP. I don’t know SQL. I want an awesome site. Surely that's not too much to ask. :grins:
I’ll put both of these series under cuts so you can skip them if you want.
Didn’t do so good today, but it was a busy workday and I had to run to break on lunch. I got a chapter tweaked though and it’s off to the collaborator for editing and/or general assessment.
I look at how fast other writers produce and how they do it and I find myself wondering what in the world besides overthinking is holding me back, but then I remember it’s not always overthinking but sometimes sheer ignorance that must be rectified before my thinking actually produces anything of value again. Why do I insist on writing things that require me not to be ignorant?
Scribbling snippets here and there and not big ones, but they're coming.
As mentioned above, I think I’ve got a decent series bible setup now. It’s sparse because I’m focusing on canonical data and current WIP and building the site before focusing on filling everything out, but it exists. This is good.
Sign-ups for the Invisible Ficathon start tomorrow. Yay!
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Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
I did figure out my edits for the Dowse and Bleed cover, but otherwise thought the day would be a wash.
Well... Not so much.
For the last two hours of the day. Literally. I just decided to force the issue though I was tired and staying up until midnight was a lousy idea, but I did it. Yay me. I think anyway.
No reading yesterday at all, except the on-the-job SEO book. I had noticed Jason Gurley just wrote and published four short stories and I realized I hadn't put any time in my 2014 for can-finish-it-in-a-day shorts, so decided to write one. I got 820 words in though I'm not impressed, and then realized that this was not a pre-existing priority fic, so I wrote 391- and 460- word additions to the collaboration.
At 12:09 a.m. of today, I went blissfully to bed.
Something accomplished, something doneHas earned a night's repose
— "The Village Blacksmith" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
So over the course of the last few days, I have fixed my computer three times and it has unfixed itself. Virus scan tomorrow.
I am reading The Flood while reading other books because frankly, I'm not ready for the Fire and Water series to be over. The other books were the Queen's Thief books by Megan Whalen Turner. A very long time ago when I was fourteen years old, my writing instructor recommended The Thief. I fell promptly and wholly in love. I never picked up the other books. This year, I rectified that and wow, these are so incredibly good. I want more too. Much more. I feel new fandom coming on.
I got through page 20 of justifying/hyphenating the updated trade paperback interior of Dowse and Bleed. This proof already comes to hand too easily. I'm so ready to publish more and update Gone Hunting and write more. Alas! Only so much time and energy.
Started at 1696 words on Tracing Trouble, wrote 211, dumped those words, then went to the end and kept writing. I wanted to get 1000 on both this story and the collaboration today, but my computer was still crazy and my aunt visited today. I expect my evenings for the rest of the week to be similarly shortchanged.
*written by me in 2014
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
I didn’t intend to write 63 insignificant blog post words first, but I felt I owed it to you all to say why I didn’t do a daily scribble report or, for that matter, daily scribbles at all.
May I simply advise you that if your operating system ever has issues, flatten the whole thing and start from scratch. While my computer has had a productive life since that whole issue a few years back, it has also been fritzy and, at times, dangerously unstable.
So I started out tweaking the typesetting for Dowse and Bleed. In mass market size, the spacing suddenly becomes a lot more important than in trade, so I needed a little more than hyphenation to please me. I discovered that you can reduce the font size of the spaces in a line, which modifies justification without messing with line height or font spacing between letters, just words. Needless to say, this is a wonderful tool, though it also has limits, e.g. no more than a four point reduction and preferably only one or two.
Got back a testimonial to Jason Anderson, my formatter for the ebook versions who did a fabulous job. Growled umentionables at my test series bible site which won’t let me log in to add the style guide and series bible information from Dowse and Bleed.
My brain wouldn’t settle down for reading yet, any reading, so I’ll save that for the evening or tomorrow if I’m too exhausted tonight to do more than fall into bed.
Hold the presses! The proof arrived! Wow. I like it, though the cover is quite a bit darker than I expected, and I'm seeing a couple of tweaks. Oh, so exciting. I'll have to update the files. I wasn't going to finalize the mass market 'til I saw how my file did for the trade.
Wow.
Ahem. So not counting blog words for the no-scribble days simply because I can get away with it.
To all a good evening!
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
Well, to be honest, reading The Drought, Honor of the Queen by David Weber, and getting ready to dive into The Flood while also working on getting all formats of Dowse and Bleed ready for publication while trying to resurrect my dead-in-the-water home computer (registry error).
I'll get back to updating after I start scribbling again instead of just percolating and tech supporting. Did I mention tech is not my color?
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
I spent most of the morning turning out a mass market edition. My initial resizing had led me to believe my book would be 128 pages. It turned out to be 102. Needless to say, I might have to correct the spine width, but I’m hoping the difference is minute enough that I won’t: 0.05855 in.
Then, I contacted Createspace and asked them to add my second BISAC category to both editions and whether I’d plunked the Mass Market info in the correct field. We’ll see how it goes.
Got the first draft of the formatted ebook back and am very excited. Sent back four small corrections which were mostly my fault. Back and forth, then perfection! So happy.
Skipped writing for the time to read because noting what I’m reading on the tablet is a royal nightmare.
Too tired though I shouldn't be, so it's off to bed.
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
I didn't rush into anything and I took my time and here I am.
Today, I skipped reading The Drought like I was supposed to and read Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler and the collaboration fic so I could write in it.
Writing went well and is continuing. I also created the mass-market book cover for Dowse and Bleed. I like it better than the trade. I'll do the interior tomorrow.
So tonight, I added 19 sentences to Splintered Gates, which came out to 150 words. Now, I can go to bed.
*written by me in 2014
Originally published at Liana Mir. You can comment here or there.
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