I sort of have a voice this morning. I haven’t tried saying more than a few words, but they don’t come out too raspy. I have a feeling this is going to be a very low-key FenCon for me. I only have one panel late this afternoon, so I should be able to get through it, and then I can rest until the next morning before I have to talk again.

Today’s panel at 5 is on “So You Want to Be an Evil Overlord.” We’ll be offering suggestions for writing (or being) an effective villain. I will probably rant against poor use of subterfuge, overly complicated plots, and how unattractive a victim complex is for a villain.

I have an autograph session at 10:30 Saturday morning — and don’t worry, I’ll use hand sanitizer before I touch your book.

Then two panels:
One at noon on what’s next in the Harry Potter universe, talking about the upcoming Fantastic Beasts movie and what other periods in history they could explore.
And one at 2 on creating costumes based on books when there are no movies/TV shows or other illustrations to draw upon.

And then I’ll get to rest. What I do for the rest of the day will depend on how much voice I have and how I feel.

Sunday afternoon at 3 I’m on a panel about whether or not to self publish.

Fortunately, I gave up my reading slot to help with a scheduling issue because I don’t think I could read out loud for that long without a coughing fit.

I should probably add that on the unlikely chance you’re coming to this convention just to see me, check Twitter first because if I’m really not feeling well or if I realize that doing this is beyond me this weekend, I’ll announce if I’m having to cancel. I don’t feel that bad, but I’m also tiring very easily.

In other news, I finished my round of revisions. The book will rest this weekend, and then I’ll reread it next week in a proofreading pass, and then off to the copyeditor.

I discovered yesterday evening when I started teaching my kindergarten choir that I only thought my voice was back. I hadn’t talked much since I live alone and work at home, but I had tried a few words to see how I was doing. It turns out that after more than a few words, the voice fizzles out. The bad news is, I have a convention this weekend, when I’m supposed to be speaking on panels. I have about a day and a half to get my voice back. So, it’s vocal rest today (not that different from most days for me, I suppose) and lots of fluids, and maybe by my first panel tomorrow afternoon I’ll be able to say more than a few words at a time.

My next hurdle will be Sunday morning. It’s my church’s anniversary celebration, so we’ve got lots of music, and that means lots of singing. I went to choir rehearsal last night so I could at least listen and learn details of what we’re doing, but making sounds didn’t work. Will my singing voice come back before Sunday morning? We shall see!

But I’m going back to a more or less “normal” work schedule today. I can do my work without talking, so I hope to finish revisions. I’ve got a little more than a week to get this book to the copyeditor, and the long-range forecast is showing next weekend to be potentially glorious, so I would like to have the rewriting done today, maybe tomorrow morning, and then do a round of proofreading next week, then have a free weekend. And then it will probably be time to dive into the next project.

Meanwhile, I’m still in the early developmental phases of something else. Last night as I drifted off to sleep, I found myself pondering how magic will work in this world. That led to imagining maps. And history. Sometimes, I wish I could just make up imaginary places without worrying about details like plots and characters.

I’ve now reached the point in the recovery from my cold in which I want to get back to normal activity but am not quite there yet and am getting frustrated by what I don’t feel up to doing. It seems like it’s been forever but, really, this is just the fifth day from the very beginning of symptoms, and I didn’t start feeling really bad until late in that first day. I’m perfectly on target — maybe even ahead of schedule — for this sort of thing.

I’ve watched enough movies and miniseries based on Dickens novels that I think I could write a decent paper analyzing themes and parallels among the major works. I’ve also developed a turning point theory about the production values in British costume dramas. There’s a definite change in the mid-1990s from a more “stagey” approach, in which most scenes are interiors with sets that look like they could have been used on a stage, to a more natural, cinematic style, like we see today, where the sets make you wonder if they are sets or if they used locations, and there are a lot more exterior location scenes. I have a feeling the big 1995 Pride and Prejudice adaptation had something to do with that. Now I wonder if anything’s been written about the topic.

But I finally maxed out on watching costume dramas yesterday, and when I couldn’t seem to stay awake enough to do anything but couldn’t fall asleep when I tried to nap, I watched Tangled for a complete change of pace. Watching a movie I just about have memorized while lying in bed in the dark almost seemed to count as a nap. And it also sort of counted as “work” because it was when I saw this movie in the theater that I had the first spark of an idea for the book I’m researching now. The actual story has very little to do with Tangled, but there was something in it that clicked with an idea fragment that had been floating around in my head, and that made me realize what I could do with that idea fragment. Now, years later, I’m finally ready to dig into that idea and start writing it.

I didn’t write it back when I came up with the idea because I was in the process of drafting Rebel Mechanics. I did have a moment or two of Shiny New Idea Syndrome, when I was tempted to drop the current project and start playing with this new idea, but I wrote down what I knew at the time (which wasn’t much, it turned out) and went back to work on what I was doing. In the years since then, I’ve had time to do research and develop this idea further, so it’s going to be a much better book now than it might have been then. Getting sick just seems to have accelerated the development process, since I haven’t been able to think clearly enough to do revisions or work on anything else. Not thinking clearly is great for brainstorming and free-associating, when you’re not yet to the point of having to come up with structure or plot logic.

But I think today I might dive back into revisions. I’m feeling better, just tiring easily, and I actually want to work, which is a positive sign. Or possibly means I’m dying.

I came down with a cold-like illness this weekend, so it was pretty much a couple of days of lying on the sofa or on the bed, watching British costume dramas. The worst of the cold symptoms are over. My voice is sort of back and my throat doesn’t hurt anymore, but I’m a little feverish and tired, so I’m taking a sick day. I’ve got a convention this weekend, so I really need to be back to 100 percent by Saturday.

All those costume dramas were actually somewhat work-related because they feed into my worldbuilding. I’ve been getting imagery. But I might be getting a little burned out on Dickens. I need something a little lighter for a change.

I’m wishing I had the adapter that would let the Roku work on my bedroom TV (the HDMI port is in a bad spot where the stick won’t fit). I finally connected the old DVD player to that TV, so I can watch anything I have on DVD (but not Blu-Ray). As cheap as Blu-Ray players are, I may get a “smart” one that connects to Wi-Fi, and that way I can stream stuff in the bedroom. Then again, I very seldom watch TV from bed. Only when I’m sick. So I’m not sure that this is a major necessity. It’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t even use most of the time, but when I want it, I really wish I had it.

I’m hoping this is my one big cold for the year and I’m getting it out of the way early. I’ve already had my flu shot, and we’ll hope that will prevent anything else nasty. I just hate being sick when it’s warm and sunny. That feels all wrong. It’s far better to be sick when it’s cold and rainy. Then it feels good to drink tea and snuggle under a blanket while watching British costume dramas.

It’s Friday, and I’ve almost finished this round of revisions, though the part that’s left is the hard part, the last few chapters when I was just tearing through, so I know it’ll need a lot of work. I may or may not get that done today. Maybe today will be a read-through and a planning of what I need to do. What I really want to do is go to the library and get more reference books for that other project, but I must make good choices.

I’d already done a lot of restructuring and rewriting on the rest of the book, so revising hasn’t been that bad. I’ve just had to add detail and emotions. I think I’m on the right track for the last few chapters, but I need to amp them up a bit, putting some meat on the story bones, so to speak. The trick is to force myself to do it slowly without getting impatient. My last chapters always need a lot of work because I get so impatient and excited that I rush through them, and then on revision rounds I’m usually eager to just get this book over with.

I’m actually a little curious (and worried) about what I’ll find when I reread these chapters. Me writing the last few chapters of a book is something like those hypothetical million monkeys at typewriters who might accidentally churn out Shakespeare. I’m just frantically typing, and there’s no telling what might come out. About all that I remember is that there was a dragon. I think. I seem to have been working in an out-of-body experience.

So, off to see what the last chapters hold for me.

Children’s choir starts again tonight, so I guess I’m on my full fall schedule now. I have no idea how many kids I’ll have this year, but I had this age group for music and art camp this summer, and unless a whole bunch of new kids I don’t know show up, I may swing back to having more girls than boys this year. I know of maybe 4 or 5 kids who are very likely to be there, and all but one are girls. I should also keep my twin streak going — I’ve had a set of twins every year for the past four years (though a couple of those years the kids were very intermittent in attending, and last year’s set of twins dropped out early in the year). I’ll probably have to adjust my teaching style because a class of mostly girls works very differently in kindergarten than a class of mostly boys.

This means it’ll be a short workday for me today. I’m revising one book and researching another, using the research as a break between revision stints so I don’t start zoning out. When I reach the point of thinking “whatever” instead of really thinking about how to fix it, I switch over to reading reference books. I’m probably hitting overkill on the research, but I’m building a new world, so better to have too much input than too little. Since I’m working on something else at the moment and not ready to start writing, it’s not as though I’m using research as a procrastination tool. The world I’m working on is taking elements for several parts of history, which means a lot of reading. A couple of the areas are things I’m already interested in and have read a lot about, but then there are some new things that I didn’t know a lot about but that may turn into a serious interest.

And it’s interesting how many parallels I keep finding for the present no matter what part of history I’m studying.

Yes, this is something new. I want to find a new publisher, and to do that, I need to have something new to offer. They aren’t interested in a series that was started by a different publisher. I will still continue on the series I have in progress, but it takes a long time to go through the submission process and get a book published, so I want to get this going, and then I can go back to my other things while I wait. And this is why I can’t devote a whole day to going through my closets right now.

Longtime blog readers may have noticed that I have a bit of an obsession with organization. I’ve come to realize that I’m actually kind of a neat freak, but I’m also lazy and have bad habits, so I’m also a bit of a slob. Plus, I’ve lived in my house for more than 20 years, and before that I had moved every 1-4 years throughout my whole life, so I have no clue how to purge and deep clean a house without moving. I never lived anywhere long enough that this became an issue. I would love to live in a house that’s basically like a hotel room, with no clutter and perfectly clean. I think that’s part of why I love hotels so much. I unpack and put everything away, and I tidy my stuff before I leave for the day, then when I return it’s been cleaned.

I’ve been working on getting my house in order, and it’s been a long-term work in progress. The one bit of organization that’s really stuck was when I got my dresser and my t-shirt collection dealt with last summer, and I did that based on an article about the “KonMari” method. When I found Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Things Up, in the library, I thought I’d take a look.

She definitely goes against some of the conventional wisdom, like saying it’s better to do it all in one day than to try to do it gradually, a little at a time. Then again, doing it gradually hasn’t really stuck for me and the thing I did all at once has. I think the trick is to cut the overall project into chunks that can be done in one day. Otherwise, you may be doomed. There was a time when I’d been watching too much home improvement TV and decided to “Clean Sweep” my office, putting everything in boxes and getting it out of the room, then starting over from there. I was digging through boxes to find stuff for years and the office was soon a mess again. But there is some sense to doing a category of things all at once because it will never stay tidy and organized if you don’t have a place to put everything, but you won’t have a place to put everything without doing a good purge.

I don’t have time right now to stop everything and devote a whole day to cleaning out my closet or book collection, so I’m tentatively planning to tackle the closet when I do the seasonal changeover, probably in November. By then, I should have some urgent projects off my plate. But I can also do some preliminary purging along the way — if there’s something I know I don’t want or need, I can get rid of it now.

She has a few things that are way too hardcore, even for me, like putting your bookcase in your closet. Even if I purged clothes and books to a minimum, I wouldn’t be able to fit my bookcase in my closet. And there are some things that seem like overkill, but make some sense when you think about it. Like, she says she unpacks her purse when she comes home each day. She has a designated spot for each item in her purse, and she puts things like receipts and business cards in her office to deal with, then wipes down and puts away her purse. The next day, she chooses the purse she wants and packs it. I think if you leave the house every day and go to the same place where you need the same things, that would be excessive, especially if you stage everything at night so you can grab and go in the morning — you’d be unpacking your purse just for a few hours. Maybe a Friday-night unpacking would work. But for someone like me, where I leave the house just a few times a week and go different places, it makes some sense. Then the things I carry with me would be intentionally chosen for that outing, and it would eliminate the purse full of old tissues, old receipts, and stale cough drops. Or, she says not to store shampoo or other product bottles in the bath or shower, not even in those shower caddies. Instead, store them in the cabinet, take out the ones you need for each bath or shower, then wipe them down and put them away after the bath/shower. That seems a bit much, but I guess it wouldn’t take much time, and it makes the shower easier to clean without working around those bottles, where mildew and mold tend to build up.

We’ll see if I can actually get and keep things in order this time. I’ve told myself that when I get the house organized and decluttered, I can start getting a monthly cleaning service. That’s enough to get the regular deep cleaning taken care of and since I’m the person who’ll clean for the maid, it would force me to tidy at least once a month. And then, theoretically, I would be more productive. But first, I have some things I need to finish writing.

Back from vacation! I spent a few days in Chicago, and it was a wonderful trip full of pleasant surprises. It was already a treat to begin with because my airfare was free, thanks to a bump I took on a flight last fall, and then I got a great hotel rate through a Hilton sale, with an even better rate from pre-paying for the room. When I arrived at the hotel, the desk clerk called to see if my room was ready, but the number she mentioned was different than the one I’d been given on the online check-in. The clerk looked at her computer and said, “Oh, that’s because we’re upgrading you to a suite.” So, for my great, cheap (relatively) pre-paid rate, I got a suite that was bigger than my first apartment. It had a kitchenette with a full-size refrigerator and microwave (and dishes!), a full-sized living room, and a bedroom that was the size of a normal hotel room. My mom worried that it was so nice I wouldn’t want to leave the room, but I found that it made it feel more like a home and less like a hotel room, so I didn’t have that “I want to cocoon in the hotel room” response. I did spend time relaxing, but I also got out a lot.

While I was waiting for my room to be ready, I walked along the river and had lunch at a riverside cafe, then went to the Sephora on Michigan Ave. and picked up some stuff for a spa night. Then I felt I deserved some hotel time once I got in. The hotel’s heated indoor pool was actually nice and warm, and they had a sauna. There was also a lovely terrace where I sat and read until it got dark.

Thursday was my tall ship day. There’s a tall ship that does cruises on Lake Michigan, and sailing on a tall ship was an item on my bucket list. I got there early, as they were still getting ready, and they asked me to give them about five minutes until they got the ticket office open. I wandered a bit, took some photos for some tourists (I guess I’m still the designated tourist photographer), then came back. They still weren’t ready. When I finally got to buy my ticket, they gave me a discount for being so patient and so eager. The cruise was amazing. They let some of the passengers help raise the sails, so I got to experience that, and once we were under full sail with the engine off, it was so peaceful as we flew across the water. I don’t yet have a sailing ship scene planned for a book, but I think it may happen someday.

I had lunch by the lake, then I met up with a friend and got to tour the American Library Association offices (it’s a tourist attraction for novelists) and spent the rest of the day hanging out with friends and having dinner at a lovely little neighborhood place they know.

Thursday was Art Institute day. I spent most of the day in the museum, just absorbing images and getting inspiration. Then I figured I deserved a rest and spent the afternoon relaxing and reading before I went out to get some pizza for dinner. I had to wait on the pizza, so I wandered the neighborhood and found the fire station they used for the bar in the TV series Early Edition. That night was spa night, using the stuff I’d bought earlier.

All in all, a good vacation. I did two major touristy things, spent time on and by the water, did some exploring, hung out with friends, relaxed a bit, and read three books. I didn’t even come back utterly exhausted. It helped that I came home Saturday and was able to have a normal Sunday relaxing at home, which helped me feel like I was back on schedule. Now I’m ready to dive back into work.

I’ve got the copyeditor lined up for October, so it looks like Enchanted, Inc. book 9 will be coming toward the end of the year, depending on how the cover artist’s schedule is looking.

That also gives me some breathing room because I don’t think I have a month worth of rewriting/revision to do, and that means I’m giving myself this whole week off. I’m doing some research and thinking about other projects, but I’m not trying to do actual writing amid all my trip preparation.

And the vacation countdown has begun. Laundry is finishing, and then I have to decide what to bring. The forecast temperatures look cool to me, but I’ve noticed that temperatures tend to feel cooler here. I don’t know if it’s quite as bad in Chicago as it is in New York, but a 79-degree day in New York feels about like a 95-degree day here. I think I’m going to go with lightweight long sleeves, with a sweater for mornings and evenings. It looks like one day will be rainy, so that will be my museum day, and then it will be lovely for watching it rain in the city while I sit in my room and read.

So, off to pack, and then see you next week!

I’m going on vacation later this week, and the goal is to do nothing work-related (well, aside from the fact that experiences are always fodder for story ideas, and I’ll be doing a lot of reading, which kind of counts as work). For someone with an extremely flexible schedule, I’m terrible about taking vacations. I think I’ve taken maybe five trips that weren’t work-related in some way in the past fifteen years, and several of those were to events, so I was on someone else’s schedule. I’ve taken two pure vacation trips. I’ve tried doing “staycations” a few times, but I always seem to fall into my regular routine instead of really acting like I’m on vacation.

But on this trip, I have ideas of things I want to do, but no set schedule other than my flights. There’s enough to do to keep me busy, but I’m also planning some time to hang out in my hotel and read. I have a massive e-book backlog that I want to make a dent in. Between waiting in the airport, flights, and relaxing time at the hotel, I might get somewhere.

First, though, there’s the pre-trip preparation. I’m kind of obsessive about this, but I find that part oddly fun. I make a big checklist of everything that needs to get done and schedule times to do it. The goal is to be completely done with preparation early on the evening before the trip so I can start relaxing then and get to bed early, and then that morning I can just get up, have breakfast, get dressed, throw the last few things into my bag and go, with no stress, rush, or panic. I also like to have the house clean so coming home isn’t a big stress.

I’m more or less on schedule for this week, but the next couple of days are going to be a flurry of laundry, packing, doublechecking schedules, etc. The vacation begins tomorrow evening when (I hope!) everything will be done and I can sit back and relax.