Day in the Life of an Idiot

 ...and am not fond of THAT.

I made the mistake assuming that a small library would have a small staff. When I worked last week, there were only two other people in the whole building (and at times only one other) and I kind of made a foolish mistake assuming that was the new normal. There was a full compliment of staff working yesterday and it was fairly nightmarish.  Especially the one librarian who informed me through her open office door that she had special permission to remove her mask in her office.

Yeah, thanks for that.  How about close your damn door, at least, then?

I have ALWAYS had a lot of sympathy for my fellow workers, particularly those who have no choice but to go to work, and, yeah holy heck. NO ONE should have to work in the age of COVID. We need universal basicincome, stat.

Right. Moving on.

In other much more pleasant news, I have a discussion about my latest book (Unjust Cause, https://wizardstowerpress.com/books-2/books-by-tate-hallaway/unjust-cause/)  with the North Country Gaylaxians today at 7 pm (CST/-6 GMT), via Zoom. It is free!  It is international so long as your time zone allows, details on this facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/653999645190057.  

Being at home with the pandemic seems to make me very sensitive to the weather. Today, in Saint Paul, it's warm, but overcast, and I'm feeling a bit gloomy myself. 

Once Mason is awake, I hope to go on a big explore with him. We haven't done that since he was a kid and... well, even though distance learning starts for Saint Paul Schools today, we've got the time. St. Paul is attempting asynchronous learning, which most online course are? The whole idea that you can do them at your own time/pace, so long as you do the work by whatever deadline. This has given my teen much joy, as he would much rather sleep in until after ten, at the very least.

I'm also bummed because, while I know all of you have done your part, the pre-orders for Unjust Cause have not been stellar so far. I am, of course, blaming myself. I have no idea who reviews paranormal romance any more and, of course, Precinct 13 came out in 2012, which is, let me do the math:  A LONG TIME AGO. So, no one is exactly clamoring for the next book in the series.  

But this fuels my "I am not woooorrrrthy" feels, which I have been struggling with since Penguin dropped me in, oh, let's see, 2012.  

I just spent several minutes trying to find paranormal romance/urban fantasy reviewers out there. If you know of any who might review my book, please let me know and I will pass that on to my publisher. 

I'm also going to see if I can figure out how to do a live-stream reading of my book.

But, yeah, between this and a general (obvious) sense of doom and gloom, and some conversations that just depressed me today because they highlighted a certain kind of selfishness that I find annoying, I'm thinking very hard about crawling back into bed and hiding.

Oh, and my coffee shop closed its doors, even to curbside deliveries now.

F*ck.

Please share good news, if you have some!

 
Image: my book cover! My book cover!

Here's my publisher's blog about it: https://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=26960

I am extremely pleased with how it turned out. Wizard Tower Press tells me it should be available to buy within a few weeks or so. I will post a link as soon as it's up on all the usual book buying sites. If you read any part of this while I was posting on Wattpad, I think you'll be surprised how different the novel version is. For one, this story has an actual ending!  But, there's also tons of new scenes and some that no longer exist. It does start much the same, but don't be fooled. This is an entirely new book.

 On Sunday, I got an email containing the copy-edits of Unjust Cause from Wizard Tower Press.

I'm not very far along yet, but I have stetted a number of things that are a matter narrative voice and/or of personal choice. I mean, the copy editor had crossed out "pennies" and written in "loose change." There's actually no need to change what I wrote, and mine is more specific, so... back to pennies, it is. I can see why, in that particular moment, the copy editor might have felt that loose change was more accurate since the earlier scene involves a number of coins that are not pennies. I don't care. I like the sound of the phrase "a rain of pennies" more than "a rain of loose change" and I am the author, so I get final say.

But, I mean, if that's my biggest complaint? It's so much better than the time that one of Penguin's copy editors didn't seem to understand what "Spidey Sense" was. 

Anyone who reads my journal regularly, however, knows how much I, in particular, need a copy editor. So, I might complain, but gods bless anyone who catches all my typos and fixes my overuse of commas.

I'm not sure if I talked about this here yet, but I also have had a conversation with the artist who will be designing my cover. I had to provide something called "an artist's brief" which I have never had to do before in my life, so I just made it into a chatty discussion of what the book is about with images of South Dakota and the kinds of stone eagles that buildings in the US have (since I wasn't sure if my artist was from the UK or not, since my publisher is... )  So, I'm looking forward to seeing that. I will say that I'm probably less picky about my covers than I am about copy edits since I have had some TERRIBLE covers in the past from Penguin.

No one should ever forget noodle appendage lady on the cover of Honeymoon of the Dead.

So, that's what I'll be working on today, I imagine. 

Otherwise, I don't know. I've been feeling kind of low-energy/borderline sad the last few days and I think it's just my body realizing that spring is coming... but isn't quite here yet.  I'm not sure. We are thinking of painting the kitchen finally, so that's a fun project to look forward to... like I said, part of it is a kind of underlying feeling of restlessness to get STARTED on spring things, while knowing I simply have to wait at least until the snow is gone.

I finished my novel Tuesday -- or, at least a first draft of it.

Hooray! 

naomikritzer read it super fast and sent her comments already, but I accidentally sent an earlier (incomplete) version to my other beta reader.... so I had to quickly rectify that this morning. This is less of a problem than it seems like, because Wyrdsmiths, my writers' group surprised me by wanting to read the book (or as much as they could of it) by THIS Thursday (which is to say, tomorrow), which actually legitimately warms the cockles of my heart, because that is a big ask, as the kids used to say. But, it also means that I probably won't be doing too many giant, substantive changes until I get everything back tomorrow night. 

Of course, today I feel super discombobulated. I am having trouble figuring out which end is up and there is garbage that needs taking out and kitty litter that needs purchasing, etc., etc. In fact, I may go take care of some of that right now, with the hopes of being able to settle down after that. 

Ugh.

I have to apologize for being so absent from here, of late. I do, at least, have a great excuse: http://wizardstowerpress.com/media/wizards-tower-acquires-unjust-cause-by-tate-hallaway/. I have been frantically revising and rewriting Unjust Cause to get it ready to send to my publisher on November 1.

If you had previously read any of the Wattpad version of this, THIS BOOK IS SUBSTANTIVELY DIFFERENT. The main plot will be familiar, as will some scenes, but the revision I have been doing goes all the way to the bones. This will basically be a brand-new book. Plus, unlike what you read online (if you stuck with it), this book will have an ENDING. (A huge bonus, I would imagine.)

The exciting thing about this for me--besides the obvious excitement of having another book published--is that I've really been enjoying the process. Writing has been fun.

That's what has been occupying a lot of my time. I have also continued to work on the front steps. The very last thing I've been doing is repairing the--I don't know what you call it, it's a feature that brackets the four steps that lead directly to our front door. At any rate, it had been crumbling and losing bits. I basically stuffed putty in the big holes and am now painting the whole thing with a sealant + stain, so it looks more "intentional," as we like to say. To put it another way, the paint is hiding a lot of sins.

Meanwhile, I tried to blow up the house last night. We have radiant heat, which means that every fall, I go around and bleed air out of the radiators and fill up the water reserve to maintain pressure. The water comes into the furnace via this ancient pipe that long ago lost it's knob. So, I have compromised by sticking a wrench on the turn-y bit, which is really quite small. Last night, I had intended to add a tiny amount to the system, like you do, and then go around and equalize everything, and add a tiny bit more, etc., etc., until the pressure is at the right place and all the radiators are spitting water instead of air, right? EXCEPT. The wrench slipped off while the pipe was in full ON position. This is a closed system. So, I was frantically trying to get the wrench back on the tiny little knob and watching the pressure gauge skyrocket. I finally ran upstairs--screaming at my family to grab a bucket--and used the radiator key to kick open a valve. I let water pour onto our floor and ran back down to get the wrench back in place, which I finally did, but then we had to spend the next thirty minutes not only bleeding out all the excess water, but also turning the heat way up so I could be CERTAIN there was room for the expanded volume of HOT water. 

Mason, being the helpful Stephen King fan that he is, kept following me around as I stared at the pressure gauge muttering, "she creeps." (Which, for those who aren't instantly familiar, is a reference to the boiler in the Outlook Hotel from The Shining.) 

This is only made more perfect by the fact that I am a writer. I told my family that they should double check my novel progress to make sure I'm not just typing "All work and no play makes Lyda a dull girl."

So, that was exciting, to say the least.

In fannish news, Yuletide is open for nominations for this upcoming year: yuletide-admin.dreamwidth.org/64764.html. (Only for a few more hours!) I love Yuletide. If you don't know what it is, it's a holiday fic exchange--specifically for fandoms that have less than a thousand works on AO3. If you sign up for a gift, you also have to write one for someone else. 

I have participated for several years as a pinch hitter, though there have been years when I've been unable to snag an assignment because the ones I could write for got snapped up so quickly. In those years, I usually write a treat. This is basically writing only the gift for someone else. Pinch hitters have no official way of receiving a fic in exchange, though there is usually an unofficial site to check out what pinch hitters might enjoy. I normally don't bother, because my fandoms are actually quite huge and I have more than enough fics to keep me happy. I'm in Bleach and Good Omen's fandom. I'm not hurting for stuff to read. :-)

There's so much I love about pinch hitting, but my favorite thing is that I get huge waves of emails that give me a sense of the especially hard to fill fandoms. (To the people who want RPF of Shakespeare, I love all of you!) When I find one I can do, it feels really great. Plus, because of the nature of pinch hitters (someone has had to default on their assignment for some reason or other,) I have to write FAST. I take a huge amount of pride in writing well, quickly. I want my recipient to never know they weren't my original assignment. Plus, it makes me push out the envelope of what I'd normally consider writing for. Thanks to pinch hitting, I've written smut for the LEGOs movie, an epic romance for the Munchkin card game, and a Christmas story for the dating sim "Dream Daddy." This is a resume that makes me deeply proud.

Speaking of things that shouldn't make me proud, but which totally do. I'm going to be at Gaylaxicon next weekend and one of the panels I'm on is going to be a bunch of us playing Chuck Tingle's RPG in front of an audience. If we can't figure out how to be pounded in the butt by our own role-playing game, I will feel vaguely dissatisfied. ;-)

As it is "What Are You Reading Wednesday" here on Dreamwidth, I should also be reporting on the things I've been reading this week, but the honest answer is: ALL MY NOTES FOR UNJUST CAUSE HOLY CRAP UNJUST CAUSE.

So, that's not something I can easily recommend.

There's other stuff going on in my life, too? The good and bad news is: Mason won 4th place at the University of Minnesota's debate tournament last week, I got cool handmade paper from my friends at offcntr , and I have been following with much trepidation the events on Terry A. Garey's CaringBridge Journal. Terry is someone who I consider a writing mentor of mine and she's in a rather bad way--having been hospitalized now for over two weeks with... the doctors aren't really sure, but she hasn't been able to eat or drink much. I've been thinking about her a lot and continue to hope for better news soon.

But, thanks to my renewed friendship with,  rachelmanija I have been paying close attention to the changing of the leaves this season. I've been collecting pictures of some of the trees as they begin to turn all their vibrant colors. 

 It's lovely out today, so I started this morning with a bit of light gardening.... or maybe garden repair? I love gardens and gardening, except I hate the work needed to put in even the most basic maintenance. I'm hoping that if the weather stays decent, I can solve some of this issue by doing little bits, here and there, every morning.

After that, I worked on Unjust Cause, the sequel to Precinct 13.  

For those following along at home, I recently realized that thanks to all the mucking about I did on Wattpad back in the day, I have most of a complete novel--at least in terms of a story arc.  There has been, periodically, some talk from me about 'finishing it up and making it into an e-book,' but I was never able to muster the wherewithal to actually DO any of that. Finally, it occurred to me that one way to force the issue was to see if Cheryl Morgan of Wizard Tower Press (the folks that brought you the e-editions of my Archangel Protocol books), would be interested in publishing Unjust Cause. Wizard Tower Press is a royalty sharing publisher, so that's no advance for me, but also no risk for them. Much, much more importantly, Wizard Tower Press will do all of the e-formatting, printing, etc., (something I, just frankly, dread) AND will provide me a hard deadline--the thing I need probably more than anything.  We are currently hammering out the last of the details, but a contract should be signed by me in the next couple of weeks. 

The previous manuscript, the one I was writing just to keep writing, is a gigantic mess.

If you've read everything that I posted on Wattpad all those years ago, I think that when the time comes you will find the Wizard Tower Press version to be a completely different experience. I'm writing it now to function both as a standalone and a proper sequel, which is to say, commercially viable. I'm trying to make it read like an actual book, not the meandering stream of consciousness that I had been doing. I mean, not to dis what i was doing on Wattpad, but I was really just trying to keep writing something original... and it kind of shows? There's lots of good stuff here, though, so much of it will work its way back into the novel, just maybe more...succinctly?

This is involving a lot of writing from scratch, which is why i insisted on a November 1 deadline. 

In other work related news, I have been contracted for another manuscript critique from the Loft, so I have find time in my schedule to work on that. (I'm thinking evenings?) 


Blah, blah, blah... work, work, work.

I will catch you all up on my weekend at some other point. Mother's Day was nice enough, though Shawn got her big dinner out on Friday night--we went to Taste of India, her favorite. I have decided that from now on, any celebration for me, will involve dim sum. The other big thing I did over the weekend was read a LOT of manga, thanks to a trip to the library. I may have to head out to see if they have the rest of the volumes of Pluto, which is one based on the world of Astro Boy, which I did not expect to like as much as I did. 

Right, okay. Nose back to the grindstone.

I've been terribly neglectful of Tate's WIP on Wattpad. I updated today, finally, after a several month hiatus.

There a lot of reasons I let the work languish. The first and foremost is that I felt like the story had gone off the rails some time ago. It's super easy for that to happen when you're writing like this, out loud, as it were, in front of an audience. Normally, I tend to write everything away from the public eye, so, when I make mistakes or go down a rabbit hole, I can pull myself up and revise before anyone is the wiser (besides my writers' group, of course.) Not being able to do that this time stymied me. I knew it could, and, while I normally don't worry overly much about looking like an idiot in front of a crowd, this tangle fed into my general sense of failure.

Yeah, I know I'm not a failure, but as I said to someone who poked me for an update on Wattpad, Precinct 13 and its universe is a particular trigger for my... well, for lack of a better term, depression around writing. I've been on the verge of being clinically depressed, so I don't mean to use this term lightly. There should be a word for the behavior that mimics depression but isn't quite it... because that's how I sometimes get around my Tate projects. I _want_ to do them, but when I think about finishing Unjust Cause/writing an e-book or e-novella, and even when I work myself up into a bit of excitement around various ideas, when I finally sit down to write... my first impulse is to crawl under the covers and not come out.

It's very unlike me.

Normally, I'm very self-motivated. I would not have gotten as far as I have in writing if I weren't. So, I don't know why I have this block and, as I've said in numerous other posts, I've determined that this is the year I push past all that.

I wish I knew what worked. I started to type that it helps me when people ask after projects, but what's funny is that that kind of thing only works when it's STRANGERS (fans/readers/FB friends/casual acquaintances/con friends) asking. If you're my relative (or gods forbid, my wife) asking, I double-down into a weird, bitter resistance-- a very 'don't tell me what's good for me' kind of attitude.

Well, regardless, the plan is to get over THAT.

This weekend I had another sparsely attended Loft First Pages. This one was writing "fan fiction" and was supposed to be a teen event, though I ended up having an adult sit through it (I tried to tell the folks on my FB feed that they should come, even if they were grown-ups!) The First Pages are generally hard to do because the way they were explained to me, at least, you're meant to show up in a state of unprepared preparedness. The Loft wants the experience to be walk-in, drop-by, and flexible. So, while there is a general theme, I'm supposed to be ready to go whatever direction that the participants want. Luckily, I teach all the time, so I can lecture on a lot of writing-related subjects without too much prompting. However, I always end up feeling like I'm flailing around since, at least when I teach, I do quite a bit of prep work or at LEAST review some things other people have said on the topic. This time I knew I might have one student since a friend of mine told me her daughter was planning on coming, so I had done a bit of research into "common fan fiction mistakes." I based my rambling on that.

It still felt like rambling, though.

But at least I had people this time.

I also read all of MY REAL CHILDREN by Jo Walton over the weekend. I powered through that book, which is very unusual for me since I'm slightly dyslexic. It's a funny book because it's not action-packed in any stretch of the imagination, but I found it weirdly gripping. Maybe it's just because Jo Walton is such a good writer. I loved her Small Changes series and this is very similar in that there's a strong alternate history vibe going through it. Now, I'm on to THE BOOK OF STRANGE NEW THINGS by Michel Faber.

I also gardened in between the bouts of rain. Now we've got a forecast of FROST, if you can believe it.

 I'm back to posting on UnJust Cause finally, so if you want to check that out, it's up on Wattpad now:  "To Err is Human (and Tomorrow is Another Day.)"  There's not a lot there, not too much more than 500 words, but I needed to get back in the habit.  Honestly, what I really, REALLY need to do with this is what Rachel and I just spent three weeks doing to School for Wayward Demons (SWD)... I need to take all the parts and get them into a huge document and start to really examine the whole shape of it.

Because if I'm going to make it into a book, it needs that.  I am learning, somewhat the hard way, that writing one's way into a book (and not planning it out like I used to do) might be hella fun, but it means a lot of work on the far end, the finishing end, as it were.

It's good for me to experiment with different ways of writing, though.  So no regrets.  I have learned much.

Besides, despite my belly aching, it's a well-known fact that I'm a heavy reviser no matter which method I chose: pants-ing or outlining.

In other news, Mason and I had some fun yesterday.  Shawn had to work late, so we went to our usual favorite hang-out place when we have time to kill but it seems foolish to go all the way home: the Roseville Library.  Mason tore through the shelves and took out old favorites and a few new-to-him books.  I'd settled down at a table and was starting to write when he did that kid thing, "Can we go to the coffee shop and get a scone??" I didn't think we should.  You know, it's money and treats, but then I thought about my own treat: a mocha, and so I was convinced.  As we were waiting for the staff to ring our stuff up and make my mocha, we overheard two guys behind us starting up a game of Munchkin. If you're unfamiliar, feel free to check out the Wikipedia article I linked to, but the short of it is that Muchkin is a card-game version of D&D.  Instead of role-playing you pull various cards and move through a very random "dungeon" as part of gameplay. It doesn't matter.  What you really need to know about the game is that 1) Mason LOVES it, 2) it is ridiculously geeky and often involves, like the best D&D games, arguing the rules, and 3) Mason constantly begs us to play and Shawn and I... well, we like it, but don't LOVE it, if you get my drift.  So, when these two nerdy college-aged boys asked if we wanted to join them, Mason was over the moon with joy.

I decided to opt out and sat nearby with my computer.  At one point one of the boys came over and said (in such an adorkable outgoing nerd way, honestly) "Your son is a delight." To which I replied, "Isn't he just."  But when nerd-boy looked baffled at that I said, "Yes.  Thank you."  Nerd boy wanted to let me know, too, that Mason was not only keeping up with them but, "talking just enough smack."  Which I honestly found deeply delightful to hear.  I wanted to say, "That's because I raised him right," but merely nodded and thanked them again for inviting us to join.  Because I mean, Mason is 11, I bet these two young men were twice his age: 22.

Mason was so happy afterward he not only nerdgasmed about the game play all the way home, he kept dreamily and happily muttering, "They argued the rules, Ima.  They argued the rules."

"Yes, my son," I said.  "You have found your people."

 My birthday was phenomenal.  

It started out with presents.  As I later talked to Naomi about, we're a family of impatient larks, so we always (with the exception of Christmas Eve) open presents at the crack of dawn.  Because of Mason's ridiculous school start time this means I opened my presents at 5:15 am, which is technically pre-the crack of-dawn.

My family bought me a blank journal (one of the things you can NEVER SCREW UP by giving me.  That, and art supplies,) and manga.  Inside the cover of Blue Exorcist #1 was a gift certificate to B&N, which, in essence, was a gift certificate for MORE MANGA.

Then, after dropping everyone off at their respective places, I stopped by my favorite St. Paul coffee shop, Claddaugh, and the barista told me it was on the house because they knew it was my birthday (tbf, I was there the day before talking about it, because had to hang around for several hours to take Shawn to her MRI.)  But, hey, it really doesn't get much better for me to get a free fancy latte.  It was my favorite kind, a "Black and Tan" which is horrible for my personal Irish politics, but is actually what is, in most places, called a meil or a Vienna (a honeyed latte, Viennas will also have cinnimon.  I like them both equally well, and Mary, the barista, makes a mean Black and Tan.)

So, with that in hand, I headed home wrote up a chapter of Tate's WIP, "Mending Fences." (This came out, as well:  "Post-Apocalyptic Pizza") And, just as I was putting finishing touches on that, my friend Naomi called to ask if it was okay to drop-by.  She handed me an absolute PERFECT birthday card and ended up staying and chatting for a really long time about all the things.

We chatted until I had to leave for my lunch date with Shawn where we went out to one of my favorite Mexican buffets on the West Side, called Boca Chica.  It's cheap and is the kind of place where, to be grossly general, a lot of office ladies seem to go to have cocktails with their cheap buffet.  However, that's a huge part of its charm, IMHO.  Plus, it's owned by a Mexican family and the food is authentic and very, very yummy.

Plus, I've long loved food out.  Though I love to cook and probably, ultimately would prefer a home cooked meal, I really love the dinning out experience.  Maybe because we don't do it a lot and it's kind of luxury?  Anyway, it was fun and, of course, Shawn is excellent company and has been for the last 30 years.

After that we rolled home (having eaten one after dinner mint too much), I napped.  Then, we picked up the boy and headed out to B&N to cash in my gift card for manga.  I decided to fill out some of my blank spaces in Bleach, so I bought as many as my card would cover.  Then, I headed off to my very last Japanese class.  I bought a bunch of Japanese snacks/candy at the Mall, so I laid them out for everyone to enjoy as part of my birthday.  This worked out well because one of the projects we did was origami so we folded paper, chatted, and ate Every Burgers.

I was particularly pleased to introduce Tetsuya-sensei to Every Burgers, because not only are they delicious, they are one of those things you read about on-line as "weird Japanese candies" and, given that he was born and raised there, I was like, "Ha!  And they said anime would teach me nothing!" (which, btw, is a long standing joke in my class.)

Even though class is officially over, we're meeting at Tonpopo, next week which I'm really looking forward to.  Should be a blast.

So that was my day.  I came home to a hot bath and manga.  Life is good for the 47 year olds.

I mean, really, one of the things that occurred to me is that I've been living happily on coffee and comic books since I was about 15.  It's nice to know that some of the same things still give me so much pleasure.