Super quick update...

It's been a week come and gone now and I'm still sick. Not badly now, fortunately. I have a fever that comes and goes which occasionally knocks me out, and I'm not good for extended trips out yet, but better. I am back to work, as of today, which I'm happy to report. I wrote 600 new words on one of my rewrite chapters and I'm hoping to finish that chapter tomorrow.

Other than that, I've been dealing with the extreme cold here in Calgary. Our temperatures have been hovering around -30C which means I have very few reasons to leave the house anyway. I've been making a point of walking down the block to the mailbox every day to make sure I don't end up feeling cabin fever too badly.

And that's where I'm going to end today. Rest up, if you're sick, stay where its safe, whether its fire or ice you're hiding from and take care of yourself until next week.

Bleh... Its that time of year again...

Sorry guys. I was hoping to have this out early for you guys with a full report of doings done and how much of my novel I finished. Instead, I came down sick on Sunday and its been kicking my ass since then. Writing after Sunday was impossible and even doing art was tough. Don't worry too much about me though. I've been taking care of myself and, despite still being tired, most of my symptoms are nearly gone now. I'll probably be back to writing today or tomorrow and adding in daily time for art after that.

All of this doesn't mean I was entirely unproductive, though. I edited the first two chapters before I got sick and got a little over 500 words done on a rough draft of a new chapter before the flu knocked me out. I'm loving where the story is going and I can't wait to work on it again.

Here's the art I've been working on!

 This is a sketch I started working on. As you can see, I haven't gone much further into it yet. I've seen a lot of people doing "my art from 10 years ago". Unfortunately, I couldn't find a picture of mine from 10 years ago, so I grabbed the one in the corner. It was my first digital art picture from 6 years ago. It was terrible and at the time, the tools I had were very substandard. Trying to use them was more frustrating than anything else and that was the best I could manage. This new picture is still just a sketch, but its already surpassing the old art. Heck I haven't even added in fingers to the hands yet, making her look like a lobster hybrid, though I suppose at least I have marked out where the hands will go eventually, so that's one major improvement. I'll post an updated picture once I finish working on it. but this is where I am so far. As you can tell, I tend to start with a very sketchy body, then add in the face and neck and start figuring out where the body actually goes. I tend to work from the head down, which is why she has a fully detailed necklace, but her hands are claws and her dress is nothing more than a few folds.

These two paintings are paint pours I was working on yesterday. I'm less fond of the way the black/silver one turned out. Not that it turned out badly, its just less to my style. I like the one above much more, though I should say that, once again, that silver just overtook the other colours. Still, I love the way the green turned out. I'll be trying both colour sets again, sometime soon.

This is one I did just this morning and it's still too wet to tell exactly what it will look like when its set. The colours are slightly messed up in this picture... on canvas, it looks mostly black with just a slight touch of subtle shading and shine, which I love. This one was a complete mess to work with though. I'm trying a new binder and my first test with it was that it was way too thin. After this dries, I'll try it again, with more paint, no water, and just the extender. Still, I really like the way it looks, so I don't consider it a failure.

What do you think of my work this week? Which one is your favourite?

If I can't adult, maybe I can cat?

          Well, that was a reasonably depressing week.

          All last week and half of this my husband had a miserable flu. I was counting myself lucky at not catching it till Monday, even then I didn't have a fever, I wasn't throwing up, my stomach was fine... I had a cough and a stuffed up nose. Annoying, but nothing to lose work over. Tuesday, the cough worsened, but I still counted myself good. I'd avoided a killer flu, after all. In the meantime, I'd managed to edit my way through a chapter and a half. I was killing it. This was going to be fine.

          Tuesday evening, I started to suspect something might be off and by Wednesday mid-morning, I was glad I had the day off. Calgary was in a literal heat wave and I had a fever. Yeah... I was no longer congratulating myself on avoiding the flu. I had that fever until Friday morning and still feel weak as a kitten now on Sunday. Still, I was able to do a small amount of house-cleaning yesterday and I even managed a trip to Safeway for some groceries and then Subway for dinner.

          What I'm getting at here is that I'm clearly getting better... just not particularly fast. My cough is still here, and its entered that stage where I'm certain that parts of my lungs are going to come up and my throat has been ripped to shreds... talking is pretty tough for me right now. I have to get some house-cleaning done as well. We have company coming over today and while my kitchen doesn't quite need to be cleansed with fire yet, I'd rather get to it before we reach that point.

          So yeah... this week I managed to complete the first pass of a chapter and a half. I'm keeping my motivation steady by assuring it that as soon as I am not kitten-with-eyes-still-shut weak that we will rock that shit. In the meantime, if I can't adult, maybe I can cat... Meow?

When do what you must is all you can do...

          I'm sorry I missed my Sunday post... Another bout of flu is going around the city and this one is kicking my ass. I got everything; cough, trouble breathing, sore throat, fatigue, excessively runny nose, lag(ie-my head is stuffed with cotton). I will say that from Friday till Tuesday I did not get a full nights sleep; waking up multiple times each night to blow your nose or change position because you can't breath is a bitch.

          Anyway, it means that I've only gotten an extra 1000 words or so finished, bringing my total up to 57,221 words. I did try to write... the results were laughable enough that I just decided to concentrate on getting better. My doctor has said that I can try going back to work tomorrow, so hopefully tomorrow or Friday I'll be able to get started again. 

          I did realize I had a few extra scenes to write so the sick time hasn't been a total waste. And three months to write a book while working full time is entirely reasonable, so I'm still very proud of myself. 

          One thing sick time as been good for is reading. I've now read 37 books this year with another two on the go and a few books in my to-be read pile. In particular, I've found an urban fantasy series that I have to share with you. It's called the Fated Blades series by Steve Bein. 

          The first novel, Daughter of the Sword, is about a female detective in Tokyo working in the narcotics department. Her new boss, a misogynist, assigns her to a case from another department when they ask for help; an attempted theft. The sword in question is undoubtedly worth quite a bit of money, but its most important quality is that the sword has become imbued with kami(spirit). When she finds a link between the attempted theft and her current case(a massive shipment of cocaine being brought into Tokyo by an unknown dealer), its up to her to solve both cases before time runs out.

          If you're at all interested in Japanese culture, history or just want to read an urban fantasy that isn't your typical werewolves/vampire fare this is it. A solid four star read. Here are some links to pick it up on Kindle or Kobo, if you're interested. (Before you ask, nope, I'm not getting any money from this, I just really enjoyed the book. I mean, just look at that cover!)

Far-Seeing from 56,000 words

          From the lofty place of 56,379 words, I can see a bit further than I could when I was only at 50,000 words. The first thing I notice, is that I have a lot more writing to go... okay, not a lot, but more than I thought. At my best guess now, I have 1-2 more chapters (1.5 - 2k each) to get out the end conflict of my novel. I'll also have an expected 2 chapters and one tenuous scene of epilogue material (another 1 - 2k each) which means that my novel will probably be end up being around 62,000 - 63,000 words long.
          The second thing I realize is that despite the advice to write every day when you get home, it can be really difficult, even when you're excited as hell to write. A few weeks ago I hurt my foot and despite taking some heavy duty anti-inflamatory's and some pain killers, my foot is still really hurting me when I get home from work. It means that either I'm being too tough on my foot or that something more serious is up with it (more on that when I see my doctor in two weeks, so until then, I'll take the prescription and do what I can).
          The third thing I've discovered is that sometimes life likes to kick you in the gut just to see you spew all over the ground. I'd rather not talk too much about it here, but I've got family that got some bad news from the doctor... not life-threatening, but it could be life-changing and it leaves me feeling uneasy. At least, I can say that life took me out to dinner before it kicked me in the gut though.
          This last thing I'm going to talk about has nothing to do with my writing life or life kicking me in the gut. Near the end of February, I signed up for WowBox, a Japanese Candy subscription box. It finally arrived yesterday. I got some pretty awesome stuff in it, but the main thing I've taken away so far is that these snacks thus far have been insanely sugary.  Good/Bad, I'm still deciding, but sugary, is something I can say with conviction.
          That's it for me today though... hopefully, I next time I write in this blog it will be to tell you I'm done my novel! We'll see though. I'm getting close, but it all depends on how much time I have to work over the next little while. Either way, I'm looking forward to it.

Finally Better!

          Bleh. That cold was horrible. Even after I was finally better, I still spent the next week feeling tired for no good reason. Fortunately, my strength is back now. I've even started writing again (though I have not managed a thousand words in a day yet). However, despite February being so miserable, I did manage to finish some significant things accomplished.
          First off, during February as a whole I got about 13,000 words written. Considering the tendinitis and then getting seriously sick, that still means that I was writing whenever I could. I have reached 44,000 words and even hit page 100. Since the first novel only got to 175 pages on the rough draft, I can say that I'm more than half way through this novel. I'd say I'm probably approaching the 60% mark. My characters who had split off to go their different ways have found each other again and the story is progressing quite well.
          One thing that is making this novel a bit more difficult to write is that this novel originally was plotted more as a travelogue than anything else. Now the story seems to be coming together as a lot more than that. It means that I'm finding some parts that hardly get mentioned and that some places end up seeing a lot more care put to them than they received in the outline. It's pretty awesome though.
          I think I have another 30k to finish up this rough draft, which means that if I dedicated March to finishing it, I could conceivably finish this month, though most likely it will be finished the first week of April.
          I will say that half a month of not writing has been good for my reading. I'm read 30 books this year so far. According to Goodreads, that's 13 ahead of where I need to be. I'm glad for the extra though, It means that when I have weeks of no reading (or an insanely long book), I'll have a bit of a cushion to rely on. The full list is below if you're interested.

A week of Nausea

          Bleh, its been another shitty week for me. Not from the tendinitis though. My wrists are almost 100% now. They're still a little more prone to hurting than I would like, but after nearly three weeks off of novel writing, I'm not surprised. Hopefully, with the weather turning towards spring, it will be gone for a few months. No, the reason this has been a shitty week for writing has been sickness. Our entire house (only two of us, but trust me, it doesn't help when its both of us) have come down sick this week.

Picture I made of a quote using Kobo's reading app. Quote was taken from Anne Bishop's series, The Others, Book 3, Vision in Silver. Note: The next novel in this series comes out next week & I am super excited. I can't wait to buy it!

          It started with my husband on Sunday, though I think he was feeling less than great for a few days before then. Soon after I caught it and then followed a week of hell. I was able to work on Monday and Tuesday, though my stomach was less than pleased to have me eating anything. Then Tuesday the full force of the flu hit me and I was out until Saturday. Even then I didn't leave the house at all this weekend, I'm still tired a lot and my stomach is displeased with just about anything I choose to eat. I assume I'm going to need another three or four days to get my stomach fully under control.
          Again, Bleh. I give myself the time I need while sick to get better, but it still urks me to remember that writing, while a sedentary task, is still work and thus, a no-no when I'm sick. Still, I got some writing done on Monday and Tuesday and got another 400-500 words written today, so my current total is 42,617.
          While I most likely won't reach 43,000 today, I am very glad I got some written. I'm hoping that I can move into March and get moving on it. By my count, I have about another 35k to go on this novel. My goal is to have it done by the end of March if at all possible. Regardless, I'll be keeping you guys updated on it.