Yay!

The new hose for my vacuum should be here Saturday.  You wouldn’t think I’d be thrilled, but it’s shocking how much food falls off of a two year old and four year old after mealtimes.  The living room carpet has been demonstrating that for a while, now.

I’m pretty happy with my book sales for the last two months.  I sold a Kindle copy of Survivors (print copies also available) and two of The Godshead last month, and two print copies of The Godshead this  month.  I’d love to be selling more, but other than my blogging, and the Facebook account, I haven’t got the first clue about how to market my work.  So, I write, in the hopes that the more I write and publish, the more I sell, and the more people recommend me to their friends and families.

Speaking of writing…it’s going pretty well.  I’ll probably be publishing The Last Pendragon within the next two months–I’m aiming for an early-mid April publication date.  I’m hoping to be done with an initial draft of the next one I’m working on in early June, and a draft of the next Modern Gods book by August.  Oh, and I’m revising my textbooks I wrote for my online composition classes for a classroom version–and will be back in the classroom in August.

I’m setting a modest goal, this week.  I want to get another three or four chapters of the book I’m working on writing done by Sunday.  That’s about 5-7,000 words.  Not a lot, but it’s what I’ve been able to get done, lately.  Here’s hoping I manage.

Okay, so the washer didn’t have a teeny-tiny sock stuck in the pump–the belt had come off of the pump after having gotten a sock stuck between the top of the washer tub and the rim of the washer, and jammed during a spin cycle.  Easy fix.  He just charged for the housecall.

When we moved in, we had an outdoor faucet.  However, the wrong kind of faucet was installed–it was a faucet for a washer–an indoor faucet–which led to the pipes repeatedly freezing and bursting.  We called somebody to cap it off after the third time it happened, because we didn’t have the time, energy, or cash to fully fix it.  The faucet has now been replaced.

We’ve rescheduled Lowes for next week.  The snow/sleet/ice storm had the roads so messed up that we didn’t get out until this morning, when we headed out for the visit with Andrew’s parents for his birthday.  The imp is staying with them tonight, and Andrew will pick him up at the halfway point between their place and ours before work tomorrow.

Grading is still going well, and so is writing.  I’m well on my way to finishing and publishing The Last Pendragon in about two more months, and will probably have written two more books over the summer (both of which I’m pecking away at now).  I’ve got about a half a dozen ideas for others to follow–five more in the Modern Gods series, one more in Pendragon, and possibly one or two more in the spare story I’m working on–the one that just came unstuck.

In the meantime, if you haven’t yet, click on the Miscellaneous Other Stories or Modern Gods Stories tabs up top, and tell me what you think.

Coming up…

Our washer is going to be repaired sometime tomorrow.  The repair guy is currently on the road, coming back from Mississippi (and no, I didn’t ask).

We’re also getting an outdoor faucet installed tomorrow, sometime.  Same plumber as did the bathtub.

Thursday, we’ll be going to Lowes to get a contract together for what amounts to a new kitchen (new cabinets and counter tops–our stove and fridge are still in excellent shape, and the dishwasher is going to be plumbed in when they install the cabinets).

Friday is Andrew’s birthday, and we’ll be taking the kids and visiting his parents.  We’ll be leaving Daniel there with his grandma and grandpa overnight.

The good Lord only knows when we’ll get the replacement hose for our vacuum.  I’m becoming more and more sure that a mouse or three ate the holes in the vacuum hose we’ve got.  Does anybody know if it’s possible to sort of squash it together and duct tape it for the time being?  I still haven’t been able to clean up after the bathtub installation…

As for grading…I am still, by the grace of God, keeping up.

Writing…well, that’s a different story.  I’m still having trouble with that, mostly because of everything else going on at once.  I have managed to get past the writers’ block on one of my stories.  I wrote around a thousand words on the story, and about five hundred in the outline, all in about forty minutes last night.  I may have some vignettes in the Modern Gods world to post soon, but I won’t count on it until they’re written.

Goals…update

So…grading is done.

The new bathtub is nearly installed.

However…our vacuum needs a hose replaced (I’ve ordered the replacement on Amazon, and am just waiting for it to arrive), and our washing machine needs something pulled out of its pump (probably a tiny sock, since I lost our lingerie bag).

After that?  We need to get the rest of the junk and old carpet out of the back room in the laundry area, and make arrangements to replace the lower cabinets and get a dishwasher installed.

Writing is happening, but only little bits (under 1,000 words) here and there, every couple of days.  I haven’t gotten any more stories on the next Modern Gods book finished, though I have several in various states of completion.

If only real life wouldn’t keep getting in the way!

Goals for the week

We’re having our bathtub replaced, and I’ve still got three papers from one class to grade, and all of my other class’s first “micro essay” (read: honest-to-God essay without needing citations) to grade.  So, my goals for this week are…survive the week.

I doubt I’ll get much writing done this week.  Maybe not next week, either, since I should be getting revisions back sometime next week.

It’d be nice to be proved wrong, though…

And how are you, this week?

I’ve gotten a whole bunch done–several stories outlined in about three or four sentences, grading is still about where it needs to be, and the textbook’s outline is shaping up–but one of the things I got done has derailed my writing temporarily.

We got my pantry set up.  However, the doing of said set-up has caused some major set-backs in the writing department.  Ripping out badly-done carpeting riled my allergies up something fierce.  Zyrtec helped, somewhat, on the day of the tear-out (everything but my eyes–which are still swollen, dry, and itchy), but left me feeling…strange.  Kind of echo-y in the mental department (worse than usual).  And Claritin last night helped some with the itchy, swollen eyes, but isn’t doing my brain any better.  So, writing’s on hold, until we get that back room done.  Since we’re going to be finishing the tear-out next Wednesday, it’ll probably be next weekend before I get any more writing done, between the allergies and allergy meds FUBARing my thinking capacity.

Thank goodness grading isn’t mentally challenging.  Emotionally, yes–especially patience–but not mentally.

Because I’ve got a butt-ton of grading coming up this weekend.

Goals for the week

Since the next Gods book has come unstuck in the ideas department, I’m going to try to write a few of the stories for that.  I’m not even going to think about trying to put them in any particular order until I’ve got the main plot stories done.  The Godshead had several, scattered through the book.  I’m thinking this one (title’s still not firmed up) is going to have between half a dozen and a dozen stories that are directly related to the plot, with several more that are affected by the events that I’m still not totally sure of, but not directly impinging on it.

As for the rest of life…I’m keeping up with the grading (that’s still a main goal), and I’m still planning on turning a spare room into a pantry.  This coming week.  It’ll be a lot of work, but I think it’ll save me more work in the long run.

Last, but not least…I’m going to revise and rewrite my Freshman Composition I textbook for classroom use for next semester.  Summer is going to be my time, for writing the next Pendragon book.

Yay!!

I managed to accomplish one goal that I’d failed at last week.  There’s now an ADA statement on my course websites.

My living room is a humongous mess, but I’m working at de-cluttering the place.  And a lot of it is toys and dirty clothes that the kids have drug in (and will be dragging back out today or tomorrow).  The kitchen is…better.  Next week, we’ll look into finishing up setting up the pantry so that I can finish up the kitchen.

And…I’ve finally come un-stuck on the next Modern Gods book, tentatively titled either Road Trip or Highway to Tartarus.  It’s interesting–I’d been trying to write it wrong.  I’d tried to get it out from Hades’s first person perspective, but it just wouldn’t come out that way.  I set it aside, and thought about the other, unfinished story ideas I had for the world, and…the idea came into shape.  Apparently the Gods universe doesn’t want to be written as traditional novels, but as interconnected short stories.  Weird, huh?

So, I count this past week a semi-roaring success.  It’d be a lot better if the pixie hadn’t come down with something that’s caused her to have ear pain.