Month: March 2013
Happy Birthday Jackson!
Today is Jackson’s first birthday. He weighs 16.6 pounds now – same as Isabel, the 7 yo cat, whose very nicely posed birthday portrait is here.
It’s like he knew I wanted to do his portrait and a special post for him, too. He was in full Rocket Cat mode this morning. This was the best of the lot.
And, for your entertainment, here are some of the outtakes.
RWA National Convention
I’ll be at the RWA National Convention in Atlanta, Georgia on July 17th – 21st, 2013.
2013 Reader Author Get Together
I’ll be at the Reader Author Get Together in West Chester, Ohio on June 6th – 9th, 2013.
RT Convention
I will be at the Romantic Times Convention in Kansas City, Missouri on May 1st – 5th, 2013.
Schedule
May 2, 2013
Signing at eBook Expo
4:00-6:00 p.m.
May 4, 2013
FAN-tastic Day Party
6:30-7:45 p.m.
Breaking News!!
I’ve been sitting on this news for a couple of weeks, so I’m SUPER EXCITED to finally get it off my chest!
You all know how I am – not much for keeping interesting news to myself. Ask me to keep a secret and I’ll carry it to my grave. But fun, exciting news like this, that I just have to hold onto until a Specific Day? Gah!
So, what? You haven’t skimmed ahead yet? You have. I know you have.
Okay, okay.
Fabulous Piece of News #1
The amazing Agent Pam has announced today that she and Laurie McLean have left Larsen-Pomada and are forming their own agency!!
When Pam called a couple of weeks ago to tell me their plan, I didn’t hesitate to tell her I would go with her. I have great faith in Pam and Laurie’s abilities and ambitions. They have exciting plans and I’m thrilled to be part of them. I feel so lucky to have signed with Pam when I did and privileged to be part of this grand, new adventure.
Also, now that the agency-thing has been settled and is public and all….
Fabulous Piece of News #2
With Pam’s assistance, I’ve agreed to a two-book deal with Carina Press for the next Covenant of Thorns books!!! Yes, all you Rogue fans – this means two more books to round out the trilogy! Yay! Looks like Rogue’s Possession will come out around the beginning of October. I know, I know – it’s a long time from the first book. 🙁 BUT, the plus side is that book 3 should come out about six months after that! Whee!!!
All very exciting, isn’t it?
I think so, too.
Approaching Word Count Like an Olympic Athlete
I’m over at Word Whores today, talking (more) about increasing productivity. Sue me – I didn’t think to look at the WW weekly topic before I did Friday’s post.
Upping the Wordcount and Keeping the Faith
Jackson, in a post-breakfast stupor. Not that any of us can relate to this.
Regular readers know I’ve been plugging away on the Phantom e-Serial. I’ve got another month to finish it, which sounds like a lot that way, but when you realize that’s 31 days, it sounds much worse. Still, I have it in hand, I believe. I’ve been working fairly steadily at about 1,675 words/day. That puts me finishing around March 24 – with a week to spare for revising. Fortunately the CPs all took a look at the first half – while I took a week-long break and wrote a new Facets of Passion story for a Christmas anthology (I hope) – and they all liked it! They really liked it!! (Cue Sally Fields Oscar gif.)
For you math whizzes out there, that rate is, yes, around NaNoWriMo levels. A while back, I never thought I could steadily produce at that rate while working full time. Amazing how things change! Last month – ooh, on February 1, even! it’s like a recurring THEME – I posted my cumulative wordcount numbers. I’ve been tracking my weekly and monthly numbers lately, to better understand how I work.
Here’s the chart of my weekly wordcounts. The first and last “weeks” of February are a bit artificially low, as they were partial weeks. Still, that second to last week of February, I hit 20K, which might be a personal best. (I haven’t been tracking weekly counts long enough to be sure.) I got there via a vacation day and a holiday, plus a solid weekend of work, to write that new Facets of Passion story. I like how I can see my rate increase through the month, however. This week was down, due to dealing with family illness and travel. I was feeling kind of bad about that, until I saw my monthly stats.
Yes, I just made 50K for February, which I’ve only done once before. Plus, as the lovely Laura Bickle generously pointed out, it was a short month. It will be interesting to see what March and April bring. I predict March will be another high month and April will drop considerably, because I’ll be revising two novels in that month. Editing time makes for poor metrics – even if you count pages revised and you’re clipping along at 30/day, that looks kind of pitiful. I need a way to weight that. Hmmm…
Oh! And the other fun news is that a spin-off story from the upcoming fantasy trilogy (The Twelve Kingdoms) has been accepted to a sword and sorcery anthology! Former Word Whore James R. Tuck is editing. CP Marcella Burnard will have a story in there, too, so it should be loads of fun. Turns out they’ll do two volumes of the anthology. She and I, of course, wrote very female-centric stories (not usually the thing for sword and sorcery), so we’re curious to see if Tuck divides the volumes by male/female, which would be interesting. It should be out in June, so we’ll keep you apprised!