Samhain Closing

On February 28th, 2017, Samhain Publishing will close its doors forever.

So what does that mean for me (and you)? Well, if you have books you purchased from Samhain's website, go download them now while the site is still live. If you have books from Samhain through third-party vendors (like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo) you should be fine. The books won't be yanked from your device.

As for me, it means I get to enter the wonderful world of self-publishing.

Oh yes. I'll be self-pubbing the Halle Pumas, Heart's Desire, The Nephilim and the True Destiny series at a minimum. There's a lot of work ahead of me to get this going, but the author community is awesome and they're all willing to help someone who needs it, especially Carrie Ann Ryan and Piper J Drake. One gave me sites to investigate and the other let me vent my fears and frustrations. Others have offered their input as well.

I'm lucky to be in a field where we are willing to help each other succeed. I hope to pay it forward some day.

So Speak Thy Name will come out sooner than June, the date Samhain had given me. I have to hire an editor and a cover artist before I can upload the book to the different sites. I understand the Google bookstore is not accepting any new authors, so I may not be for sale there in the foreseeable future, but all the others should be doable. It also means that Hide and Seek will be up as soon as I finish the two sex scenes I still have to write, have it go through the Meat Grinder and the beta readers and have the rights back to the rest of the series.

I'm hoping the rights reversion doesn't take too long.The sooner I own the rights once more the better. I have to find out if I need to get new ISBN's for the books that are already in print or not. I have to arrange to purchase the covers for both print and eBook editions. I need to learn how to format for ebook and print editions as well. There's so much to do, so many lists of things I need to take care of, so much to research...I...adulting is...

Stick a fork in me. I think I'm well done.

One of the Lovely Things About Being Over Forty

Yes, I've been sick. Yes, I've been a LOUSY blogger. But I haven't forgotten about blogging, I just haven't had the pain management or the energy levels to write something. Next week I'll post about my upcoming release, Indirect Lines, but for now I wanted to dip my toes back in the water with a short, funny bit that's been floating around in my head for a while now.

There are a few things they don't tell you when you're approaching the big four-oh, let alone what's going to happen to your body as you stumble your way through your forties. I'm forty-seven now, and I tremble in fear of what forty-eight has in store for me. This is just one of the lovely things about being over forty:

What Happened to My Boobs?

The first thing that changes when you leave your thirties? Your boobs. Your love bags. Those things on the front of your chest that used to be perky and bright. Remember them?

Yeah, I hope you took a picture. They'll never look like that again without a shit-ton of plastic under your skin.

Now, don't get me wrong. I like my boobs just fine. But perky only happens with my ponytail these days. At my age, a booby check isn't to look for lumps. Nope. That's called a booby squish, aka a mammogram. Nope. A booby check is to make sure my nipples are both facing the same direction.

And can we mention sag? Oh, yeah. I love the thought that by the time I'm sixty I'll be able to tuck them into my waistband.

Hmm. Then again, it might save me some money...

I Felt the Earth Move Under My Feet…

So an earthquake wasn't enough for you, was it? How about this?

And according to the Weather Channel, the sky's going to come tumbling down. An earthquake and a hurricane in the same week? Someone seriously ticked off the karma gods. Dusty's Florida relatives are sending us ideas on how to ride out a hurricane, and we're looking at evacuation if Irene is a Category 2 when it hits us. Tonight we'll probably pack up essentials like our birth certificates, passports, homeowners insurance papers and the latest vet records for our pets. By Friday, we'll know whether or not we're going to try and stick it out or run for the hills (I'm looking at you, Ohio).

This is the first time either one of us has been an earthquake. I'm not certain either one of us is ready for it to be the first time we ride out a hurricane. We have to remember things like the children's medication and making sure each one of us has some form of identification on us. I read somewhere that you should have dogtags made up that state your name, place of residence, allergies emergency responders need to be aware of, and any medication that you're on. I'm thinking of having that done today.

Now I have to admit, I'm hoping none of this is necessary. I'm hoping at worst we'll get high winds and heavy rain. We've dealt with 65 mile an hour winds before, and we will again. But if we're told to evacuate, we are so out of here.

Why did the chicken-shit cross the road? To get away from the god-damn hurricane!

Sickness Suckage

Yup, I caught the head cold my entire family seems to have. My five year old and I were cuddled together on the sofa yesterday hacking and wheezing in true family style, while the ten year old and Dusty tried to laugh at MythBusters and wound up coughing instead.

Isn't family time great?

Anyway, if anyone has been trying to get a hold of me and I've been tardy, that's why. I've got the Nyquil list of symptoms and I've lost my voice on top of it. I'm going to have to send Dusty out for a wipe-away board I can carry with me. I'll chase after the kids writing furiously. "Look at me when I write at you!"

Oi. I think it's time for more Nyquil...

DONE DONE DONE AND DONE!

Pantpantpantpant....

Today was one of those "Let's see how hard I can trot" days. The new washing machine/dryer was delivered half an hour early (and works, which gives it a leg up on the last pair); I almost forgot to make M's lunch for his field trip today; I had to finish the artwork paperwork for Mating Games and Animal Attraction; I finished the Meat Grinding of Bear Necessities; and I did final line edits on Shadow of the Wolf.

Guh. Brain death imminent, but I got it all done. I'm not sure how, either. I think I may have subconsciously cloned myself and passed off the housework to the poor confused fool who's still wondering what to make for dinner tonight and why her new washing machine plays a jaunty tune every time the cycle is done.

I'm going to enjoy myself this weekend, glut myself on leftover Snickers bars and get myself ready for NaNoWriMo (by glutting myself on leftover Snickers bars, of course). Next stop: Noble Blood!

Tax Time... Ugh

You know, I thought I was more organized. I had my medical, W-2's, 1099's, etc., all neatly in a file on my desk. Everything else was all over the place, but my tax stuff? Totally accessible. I like to file as early as possible, so I usually start mid-February just to make sure I have all of the documents I could possibly need.

I was wrong.

My husband, bless his heart, reminded me that I needed to pull up all the documents for my business. You know, my writer stuff? Flyers and bookmarks and business cards and ebook purchases? That stuff.

Gah. I have the one doc, the official doc that says I got paid and how much, but now I have to hunt up receipts for things. Receipts that, like little tiny lost butterflies, have landed on the sticky fly paper trap of my desk and died, little crinkled wings fluttering, because I don't USE my regular desk anymore, I use a computer cart and a laptop. And everyone knows the one flat surface in the house that doesn't get used is the one flat surface that doesn't stay empty for long.

Sob.

Why oh why didn't I file things? It's going to take me the rest of the day to collect all that stuff, scan it in, zip it and send it off. Luckily I'm not doing the taxes this year, so that will essentially end my involvment, but still. Ugh.

The one bright, shiny thing? The picture up there? That's not MY desk. Someone out there is worse off than me. But honestly? Not by much.

So it's off to tax land, meaning Mr. Mage and his Heart's Desire will have to wait until tomorrow for the rest of their story. The good news is that the rough draft is almost complete. I think it's pretty good, but we'll see what my betas have to say once its been through the Meat Grinder. After that I have to fix Bunny's little red wagon, and then? Possibly book 3 of True Destiny or book 2 of The Gray Court (which has been whispering to me fairly loudly. Sidhe, vampire and leprechaun, oh my.)

Isn't it always when the muse whispers loudest that you have to ignore it? Oh well, as Scarlett said, tomorrow is another day. Hopefully it will be filled with fewer paper cuts and cuss words.

One of THOSE Weeks

Have you ever had a week where you feel like you're running in place? You're hot, you're sweaty, you're legs hurt and you're breathing hard, but you haven't gotten anywhere?

Yup. I'm having one of THOSE weeks.

Monday was fun. I posted the Sammie winners, and that was pretty much that. M decided he needed his Mommy, and Mommy wound up hopping up every ten minutes (Dusty timed me) to deal with something M wanted.

Tuesday I read over what I'd written, realized it would need major overhauls, and wrote the Aaand They're OFF! blog post. Then M decided he needed his Mommy...

Wednesday, SNOW DAY! Yup, both kids home, building slush forts in the back yard and sucking down hot chocolate. Of course it started to rain, so of course my kids sat down in the muddy slush and continued to play. Dusty, watching them, says "Are you telling me my kids don't have the sense to come in out of the rain?"

Thursday, I updated my website, particularly the Books section. I think it's neater now, but feel free to let me know what you think. Otherwise? The doorbell rang at one p.m. Not expecting a package or anything, Dusty went to the door, only to find R standing there looking sad. Seems school is getting out early for the next two days due to parent-teacher conferences and we forgot, so we weren't waiting at the door as usual. Eep. Lift hands from keyboard, deal with bad teacher note, deal with sad older son, younger son wants attention...

Friday. Yelled THREE TIMES at R as he stood on the corner waiting for the bus, because a) he threw an ice ball at the stop sign just as a car was going past it, b) he SAT DOWN on the ice and started building an ICE FORT and c) he almost left his trombone behind when he went to get on the bus.

I'm sensing a theme this week. The theme is Dana Isn't Writing. Gah. And today I woke up with three new scenes in my head for Bunny, Tabby and Julian! Argh. So here I am, a frustrated author, with no one to turn it on.

Or do I?

Tonight, I'm heading to my BIL's. I'm GM'ing my MC's World of Darkness game, and there will be death tonight! MUAHAHAHA! *cough* Maybe I'll actually get their back-up characters to be something other than Awakened...

Yup, It's Monday

I open Cat, thrilled that yesterday I managed to hit my end of the week word count of 20k (although techincally I consider Friday my end-of-week, considering everything that had gone down I decided to count the work I did Sunday). I stare at the very odd formatting and think, "What the hell?" All of the text was on the left hand side; the page was waaaaay too huge, but Reveal Formatting showed that it was exactly as I had set it.

Which means that somehow Cat got corrupted. So I did what Dusty suggested and opened my back-up program, all ready to download the file and get to work.

It's not there. NOTHING is there. The daily, three a.m. backups apparently don't exist.

Eep.

I tried my best to fix the formatting, but Word was stubborn today. I finally copied the entire text over to Notepad, opened The Wallflower and copied the text from Notepad over it. It accepted The Wallflower's formatting, so now I'm mostly back on track.

Unfortunately, because I copied it over into Notepad I lost all of my headers, page breaks and italics. I have to read the entire doc and fix the italics; I've already done the headers and page breaks.

On top of all that my headache is back and my baby boy is sick. When I asked him where it hurt he opened his mouth and pointed, so, gee, I'm betting on a sore throat. He and Monkey, his favorite stuffed animal, are currently drinking juice and watching Monsters Inc. while Mommy yells at MS Word.

What Have I Done To Piss Off The Karma Gods?

So my migraine finally abates (sitting in the house for five days straight will usually do that for me). I feel sooooo much better.

Until the 100.1 degree fever kicks in. That stuck around for about two days.

Today, I appear to be fever free, but my sinuses are acting up.

Whatever I did, I'm sorry already! Sheesh!

On a lighter note, I'm just about done editing Beta Testing. It needs "polishing" before I send it off to Editorland to see if it's good enough to be a law... er, book.