Thanksgiving, NaNoWriMo and life

Well... day before Thanksgiving and instead of baking pies and finishing cleaning the house and all the other stuff I writing a post! It's a writer thing I guess. Oh, the rest will get done... kinda has to as I'm hosting 8 tomorrow... but for now I write.

Thanksgiving is an odd sort of holiday. I have mixed feelings.  I'm grateful for family and friends and a roof over my head and food on the table, but at the same time I think about what the first one must have really been like.

No fancy table settings, or flatware. No sparkling dishes. It was probably pretty chilly, and they are outside... cause you know, no dinning room. It would have been an interesting menu too.I'm guessing a wild turkey or two, maybe wild carrots... fish also. But it wasn't just them... they had guests, who brought their own dishes.... oh yeah folks, the first Thanksgiving was probably a Potluck! The dishes would have been different, as different as the guests.

I doubt there was as much trust as is shown. The native people wore what they wore, which was considerably less that the pilgrims! They were strange, but they... well some of them... had helped, so these folks wanted to be able to thank them, as well as give thanks to God for helping them survive. Thanks Giving.

Alright... enough of that. It's also NaNoWriMo. Sadly I've not made much progress on the story. Basically after the first couple chapters I'm at a loss. My word count is worse than last years, and I doubt I'll get much time to work on it in the next two weeks. Bother!

The brightest part has been the official release of Toe Beans! I've already has sales! Yay! I really want to bombard everyone with urging them to go buy this book! It's a mostly true story, though some details have been changed for artist reasons. I'm really proud of it, as it's the first thing that I've done for children, and it wasn't an assignment or my usual fantasy! It really is a perfect Christmas gift!

Go buy Toe Beans! Now! Please.

Well, those pies aren't gonna cook themselves, and the floor won't mop itself either, so I guess I should get to it.

Fall...

Well... I've survived the summer... which consisted of mostly trying to make money while making money... I've done one better than the other frankly. It's funny... at some point, you get so focused on survival that the creativity kinda wanders off. Maybe it gets bored.

With the return of fall however, it ambles back. Next month will see the debut of my fist attempt at a children's book. Next month is also.... NaNoWriMo  otherwise known as National Novel Writing Month. The idea is write a novel in a month. Not necessarily one ready to publish, but one ready to refine. I attempted this last year and didn't get as far as I wanted.... because of school mostly. This year I once more am attempting this thing.

For me it's not about winning.. yes, you can win...but rather the attempting and the making progress. I've known about NaNoWriMo for several years, but up until last year I was too scared to try it. No idea why it scared me, but it did. This years attempt (like last years) has already been started, but has been sitting stagnant for months. Hopefully this will have it making progress.

What am I working on? Oh, I thought I'd prod at the sequel to Restart.

Four months..?

Of course it's been four month. Why wouldn't it be. I'm incredibly bad about this blog thing, I really am. In any event, I'm here now, so let's do this, okay?

On July 29th my new book, "Porcelain Dragons" was born. It took at least two years to happen, which makes me feel a bit like an elephant. However, it's another first for me, being my first anthology of short stories that had been written for assignments. There is only one in there that isn't, but it fit, so I added it in. I personally think it's some of my best work, but I'm biased.

Self publishing is an adventure for me. I'm now having to learn how to "sell myself" to the public, and in doing that sell what I do. It's hard. Really hard. I actually spend hours coming up with ideas on how to get the word out about me and my work. Most of the idea's I discard, because of affordability. I recently joined a group that meets once a month to discuss this very thing. Many of them seem to have at least some idea of what they are doing. I know I need to get reviews of my books, but so many places want you to pay, and internet searches are all day affairs!

Maybe I'm stumbling on the fact that my books are only loosely connected, that right now they aren't a series. That's probably it, but... I want to make sales. I want the world to read my work. So I guess I'm going to dive in blind, and do a lot of praying that something works.

I've improved my website, so that it actually looks like ... well... I know what I'm doing. Pardon me, while I roll on the floor laughing hysterically.... never can seem to type that without hysterical laughter.

Okay, done laughing. In all seriousness though, I'm working at getting all of these seemingly random bits and pieces of me together to form some sort of a "product" that I can market. So much updating to do! Guess I should get to it. With luck I'll get back here and update this more often.

Another one of those long gaps...

It happens, because life happens. Anyway...

Writing and compiling the newest project is a much slower process than a full novel. Close your mouth, something will fly in. Seriously though.. because unlike a full novel, doing an anthology requires more writing, and as the writing in the new project is generated through my college classes... well, it's slower, but I feel it's been better vetted. It's really a trade off.

I am going back to the NW Book Festival in Portland this year. I'm really excited about it. Last year was such a learning experience. This year I have a proper canopy, have spent a bit extra to have power, thus will be able to have a fan and will be able to charge phones and tablets!!! Yay!

I'm learning more about myself and my writing. I've realized that I'm stuck in some sort of a genre rut, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but for some classes, it's frustrating. I need to be able to write stories that don't always involve dragons and my world. Currently even, I am wrestling with this, as I again am faced with writing a short story, and I have to "keep it real".  Now it's more annoying than anything. However, I can recall a time where I thought I couldn't, or I wasn't good at it, or some combination of those. That said, I don't have a clue where to start or with what.

I've been trying to be more active with my FB page and posting regularly. Mostly quotes about writing, but it's something, right? I've also done a webpage through Wix, and updated that as well. All of this though doesn't get homework done. Of course, neither does writing this post sooo...

I'd say I'll try and be better about blogging, but we all know how that goes, so I won't bother.