Sunday Summary and #ROW80 Check-In

  1. First off, I got a truly lovely review of Devil’s Eye over at Random Musings. Thanks Christel!
  2. In other excitement I am (as of this moment) only 49 copies away from selling 1,000 ebooks in the month of January!!! EEP!  So if you’ve waited to buy for whatever reason, now would be, like, an awesome time to do it–you know, in the next 2 days because OMG, that would be so cool!  And tell your PR/UF loving friends!
  3. Yesterday I did a post about ebooks being the next pulp fiction, which has generated some truly interesting discussion. You should definitely go check it out.  I’m about to go back through and answer comments to give my own 2 cents.
  4. Yesterday hubby and I hauled off the old red chair (which has been living in his office) and a big bag o’ stuff to Goodwill. And another thing out of my house (to the tune of Another One Bites The Dust).  There are many many more things on my Simplify and Clean Out list, but it makes me very happy to cross stuff off.
  5. Last night we tried tapas for the first time at a new place the next town over. The taste and quality of the food was excellent, but the prices were exorbitant and the portion sizes were miniscule.  If I’m spending almost $60 at a restaurant for 2 people, I expect to leave FULL.  So the decision is that we like tapas, but we’ll make it at home with friends and have our own tapas party where we actually make enough to constitute a true meal.
  6. In other food news, next weekend we are attending a Super Bowl Party with Food of Epic Proportions.  Be on the lookout for my recipe for Man Dip (which should really be probably renamed Coronary Dip) later this week.
  7. On the gluten front, I nearly fainted at how much I spent at the grocery this week, restocking on staples, and coming up with gluten-free alternatives. It will get better as we go, as I learn which of our groceries has the best prices on assorted stuff.  As someone who primarily is accustomed to buying the store brand of stuff, having to buy brand name everything due to cross-contamination issues is tough on the wallet.  But I did discover that Kroger’s store brand products for things like canned vegetables, do NOT have the same cross-contamination issues as Walmart and their store brand rice chex are also gluten free (sadly the corn is not–it has malt).  And I’ve just ordered some of the weird alternative flours from Amazon (yay Amazon Prime).  The GF project of the week is to make our own hamburger buns.We’re still not 100% positive about the gluten intolerance as we haven’t had a true GF baseline.  He keeps getting ahold of gluten in unexpected places (beef jerky, blue cheese…).  But cutting out huge quantities seems to have helped and he’s had some symptoms after accidentally eating gluten.  So we’re going to stick with this for a while (and since I just bought several POUNDS of tapioca starch, I’m committed) and see how it goes.  For anybody who follows Pots and Plots who also has issues with gluten intolerance, I’m going to be talking a lot more about this over there, making a list of tips for how to cook gluten free when you DON’T have access to places like Whole Foods or health food stores.  And I’ve already gone through and tagged the existing recipes that are already gluten free.  /boring health food rant
  8. On the writing front (aren’t you glad you stuck with me this far?), the writing has been inconsistent.
    • Wednesday 955
    • Thursday 309
    • Friday 755
    • Saturday 483

    My goal, if you’ll remember, was 750 words a day, and to spend at least 30 minutes (or was it an hour? ooo that’s not a good sign that I don’t remember) a day unplugged from the net.  Well the latter part has definitely been an epic fail.  I’m just not good at unplugging.  I’m often on talking to writing peeps, consulting with my CPs, doing writing sprints with the fab Claire Legrand, etc.  Excuses excuses.  Anyway I am, so far, behind on my words, but I’m really not wanting to change my goal from 750.  If I can get my head in the story and get a stretch of uninterrupted time (which is often the hard part), I don’t seem to have too much trouble hitting 750.  So I’ll let that one hold.

    I’ve been splitting my time between Red and my anthology story this week.  Yesterday I had crazy lots of ideas about the characters in the latter.  I figured out how I was over-complicating the story, fixed that in the outline, so I should truly have finally written a short story that was SHORT.  Like 6-7k.  This makes me very happy.  I also have learned a lot more about Isla and Ransom (the hero and heroine of this story) and the bigger issues that they will face in their book (yes, they have a book…theirs will PROBABLY be the first full length Mirus novel), so they’re really starting to come alive and talk instead of just being puppets.  This is always a great place to be.  So the great irony is that even though the story and the hero and heroine have changed (well no, actually I’ve gone back to the FIRST hero I had), I think I’ll still be calling the next novel in the Mirus series Revelation.  I kind of like that it’s come full circle there.

13 thoughts on “Sunday Summary and #ROW80 Check-In

  1. Sprints work really well for me…sometimes? When Jessica Tudor and I had a date to sprint every morning, it was awesome. Because she’s very focused and disciplined, and that not only helped me focus, but it also helped being accountable to someone like that for showing up. The other thing that worked was the time of day at which we were both available. Right after the bus took the child to school, before I could get caught up in other stuff. Once she got into the editing phase, we kind of drifted. Everyone else I know is iffy at best about mornings and sprints at night–when I’ve either got too many people in the house I can’t turn off, or I’m too exhausted from dealing with them to think, or there’s just been so many things packed into my head from the day that I just can’t focus. /whine

    I wanted to see reactions to yesterday’s post but since we’d already talked about it, I couldn’t think of anything to comment to subscribe and then life happened. Going to go check that out now.

    1. If I am someday lucky enough NOT to have to mess with an evil day job, or at least not be bound to a traditional 8-5, I think morning sprints would work well for me because there is absolutely that component of my brain getting bound up in other stuff. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had ideas in the shower, jotted a note or two, and then by the time I had the time to do something with it, had forgotten what I wanted to write!

      You should poll the ROW80 folks for other peeps with morning schedules to see if you can find another morning sprint buddy!

    2. Agh, Susan. I’m so sorry that our 8 am sprints are just not working out. :/ I just have the hardest time with mornings. Forgive me? *puppy dog eyes*

  2. I have a hard time unplugging, too. I like writing with virtual company. You can chat and have people to bounce ideas off of without getting distracted and pulled away from your work, which is what happens with real company. I think it’s fine to stay plugged in, as long as you can tell your online peeps to hush if you really need some quiet time. 😉

    Congrats on your words, though, and on the progress re: shortening the anthology story. Also, I really like the title Revelation!

  3. ‘Grats on the sales/review/all that good stuff.

    Glad you’re figuring out you really can write a short story. 😉

  4. Sounds like you are doing pretty good. And I just contributed to your sales! I finished Forsaken by Shadow today – awesome. Big thumbs up and will be reviewing it sometime this week. So I just had to get “Devil’s Eye” and just bought and downloaded.

  5. I just found your blog through Amy Rose Davis, and I knew I was going to love it when I saw you obsessing about word count. I have an Excel spreadsheet to track mine. 🙂

    Here in Oregon we’re really lucky with gluten-free stuff because we have New Seasons, which stocks a lot of great products, and Bob’s Red Mill, which has all kinds of gluten-free flours. http://www.bobsredmill.com/ Maybe someone near you sells their stuff.

    Crossing my fingers that you will sell another 49 books in the next 26 hours. 🙂

  6. Why no, thank you! Your writing is superb, and I love that I got 42 hits on my blog from posting your review?! Awesome. 42 is my favorite number. Coincidence or psychic phenomenon?! You decide. 🙂

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