Good morning, Readers!

I managed to get to bed before 11:00pm last night, and that seems to have done me a world of good.  I am still feeling very fatigued, but less so today than yesterday.  Any improvement is very welcome.

I am also in a fantastic mood as the cats were being so lovely this morning.  Well, Persephone was being lovely.  Galahad was being an utter shit.  That is a story for a different day.  I woke up before my alarm this morning feeling exceptionally warm.  The reason was that Persephone had decided that she wanted to sleep on my pillow.  And so she did, with her little paws around the crown of my head and her head resting on top.

It was so. cute.

My heart may have melted a little bit.  It's hard to avoid that when a little paw is sitting against your forehead and something warm, soft and purring is resting her head on yours.  Sigh.  It was a wonderful way to wake up.

Though, I should have warned the Amazing Flatmate that she is in a particularly cuddly mood today...

Galahad ruined everything by scratching at my bed.

Yesterday I worked a little on Human.  When I say, 'a little' I mean a very little.  The most I managed was dividing the text into decent chapters.  I tend to write everything as one massive block of story, and then I have to go back and figure out where to place the chapters  It is a highly inefficient way to do things, but I'm afraid I cannot plot the way some writers can and do.  I mean, they have it right down to each chapter before they start writing.

And here's the kicker, they actually follow through on the plan.

I tried that once.  It was an unmitigated disaster.  I really wish I could write like that.  It was save me so much editing time.  Alas, I cannot, and so must contend with way more editing a planner would have to deal with.  Oh well!

Still, despite the little amount of work I did yesterday, it was still a pretty good day.  I completed lesson eleven of the Say Something in Welsh podcast, and didn't fair too badly.  Still making lots of silly errors, though.  Then I went on to Human and lastly, I managed a couple of hours reading of A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony.  It was so, so, SO nice to just settle in with a book.  It's funny, I don't realise how much I miss reading until I sit down with a book.

Today follows much the same pattern.  I will do my Welsh lessons, then move on to Human.  As I have to finish A Spell for Chameleon by tomorrow, I'll only be editing the prologue and first chapter today.  Then it's back to the book.

Yay!

I'm looking forward to the bus ride to training tonight.  I will be able to read the whole way.  Right, I'm off to get another cup of coffee and then start my Welsh.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers.

Well... I'm alive.

If that doesn't sound like the most enthusiastic endorsement for life, I don't know what does.

I was being sarcastic, if you hadn't already guessed.

Yes, I'm still feeling very fatigued.  Luckily, however, it has abated somewhat.  Spending all day in bed yesterday probably helped.  So did training, probably.  I went to training last night despite being tired as all Hell.  Around 4:00pm, I decided that I'd had enough of moping around feeling sorry for myself and decided to go to training.  It was probably the best decision I could have made, really.

Though I didn't do very well in my pre-training weight session (the next difficulty level designed to get me closer to doing a pull up all on my own proved far too difficult... Unrelated, I hate everything), I at least managed to survive the night.  I couldn't do that Monday.  I managed kick-boxing, then crashed hard.

Hopefully this means I'm on the road to recovery and I will soon be my normal healthy self.  Fingers crossed!  I'm still tired as all Hell, though.

Sad news I learnt this morning, there is no space left at Ottawa ComicCon, so it is highly unlikely I will be able to get a table there.  This makes me very sad as I have sold every year that ComicCon has been here, and I have always had a wonderful time connecting with everyone.  I have asked to be put on the waiting list, in case a miracle happens and a space opens up.  It is very unlikely, and so I must resign myself to the fact that I won't be at next year's Ottawa ComicCon.  Please excuse me while I weep uncontrollably.

To cheer yourselves up, read THIS article by the always hilarious and often very right writer Chuck Wendig.  It's about finishing that manuscript you've been working on, and it is funny, true, and quite pertinent.  All writers have had issues with manuscripts (my struggles with Human are a fine example), but even still, it is important that a manuscript gets finished.

On the agenda today, which hasn't been all the different from my schedule the last ten months of the year, Welsh lessons in the morning, and Human this afternoon.  Actually, it's going to be a very brief editing session, as I have to read A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony for this weekend's Silver Stag Entertainment filming.  This book is the first in the Xanth series and I remember loving that series growing up.  I hope the book holds up to my anticipation.

It's nice to hold a physical copy of a book again.  I have had audio books for some of the episodes of Nights at the Round Table, and it's just not the same.  I much prefer having something in hand.  Incidentally, I recently read an article stating that even six minutes of reading can be more relaxing than listening to music, going for a walk or even settling down with a cup of tea.  You can read the article for yourself HERE if you like.

I am hardly surprised.  I read a lot in high school, and my reading always increased in times of higher stress.  I have said it before, and I will say it again, books are the reason I'm alive today.  They saved my life in my teenage years.

Anyway, the point is, I'm glad to be getting stuck into a book again, and I'm even more glad that it's a physical copy.  The small things in life make me happy!

Right, I have to get on with my Welsh lesson.  I'm moving onto lesson eleven today, even though I don't think I have lessons nine and ten down properly yet.  Still, must keep moving forward.

Have a good day, all.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers.

Though, probably by the time you read this it will be afternoon.  I'm late getting this out to you as I just woke up. It seems that after the last few weeks my body has had enough.  It's done.  I'm not sure it it's a cold exactly, though I was sneezing a lot and coughing occasionally, I do have a runny nose, and my lungs seems to be working harder than usual.  The real issue though is the extreme fatigue.  I made it through kickboxing last night, but that was it.  I was so dead on my feet, I found a corner to curl up in before one of my friends decided to leave early and I could get a lift home.

I woke up this morning around eleven o'clock, though I woke first with my alarm, but I just couldn't get out of bed, so I called in sick today.

Honest question, does anyone else feel obscenely guilty for taking days off work?  I do.  It bothers me to use the sick days available, even if I'm feeling unwell.  In my head, I'm always thinking that I'm still alive, therefore I should still be going to work.  Perhaps it stems from my retail days when if I didn't work, I didn't get paid.  The number of people I infected because I couldn't afford to take a day off...

In any case, I always feel really bad for taking a day off work for any reason.  Today is no different.  Even if I am apparently so, so exhausted I slept for eleven hours straight and will be returning to bed very shortly.

In other, much happier news, I wrote the very last words of Human yesterday.  There was a facetious Facebook post about it, but that was the extent of my celebrations.  Why?  Well, because I know now that the real work begins.  I have to go through the manuscript and fix everything up.  I feel certain that this one in particular is a colossal mess, so it's going to be a lot of work to fix.

Despite the condition of the manuscript, I really am excited to get to this last stage of the first draft completion process.  As I was showering last night, I thought of a couple of scenes that I will need to include in order the strengthen the relationship between Aleksandar and another character, which will be incredibly important for the ending of the book.

Mostly though, I'm just excited about filing this book away for a couple of months while I work on Daughters of Britain.  I'm really looking forward to that story, and writing that character.  Just a warning to my friends reading this, I have a habit of taking on the characteristics of the characters I write for the period of time I'm writing them, so, for about three months, I will probably be sassy, bitter and angry all the time.

Just so you know, it's not you, it's Meredei.

I am insane.

The work, however, will have to wait a day.  Just getting up and preparing breakfast (which at this hour is really brunch) has me exhausted again, so I'm going to go back to bed and sleep some more.  Perhaps it'll help.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

I started this morning with a bit of a cry, so now it's your turn:

I don't care if it's an ad.  I cried.  

Sunday I went to the movies to see Big Hero 6 with my dad, who very patiently sat through the film with me.  It was a belated birthday celebration, and I needed something uplifting after the rough times I've been having.  I cried then, too.

It was a such a wonderful movie.  It really was.

I've noticed I've become more of a crier of late.  Perhaps it's stress.  Perhaps it's age.  Or maybe I've grown a heart (doubtful).

Who knows?

I'm looking forward to this week.  If I'm very diligent, I might just finish Human.  In fact, I'm very close to the end now.  I can almost taste it.  Ahhhh.... the end of the first draft.  The end of the first draft!  My problem may just be that I'll start dreaming about this draft being finished.... and spend so much time in that dream that I never actually get the draft finished.  That would not be good.

Discipline!  All writers need it.

Ooooh!  Shiny!

Wait... where was I?

Oh, right, yes.  Getting the first draft done this week.  I hope it happens.

If it does, it will have done so through a headache and the haze of a cold brought on by the fluctuating weather and the dip in my immunity brought on by the recent bout of stress.  It's a fun time right now.  Still, I am determined.

Also, I realised last week that there is a relationship I am going to have to strengthen earlier on in the book for the ending to be more satisfactory.  Sigh.  I'll probably add that in my cursory edit before I file the manuscript away for a month or two.

My Welsh lessons are going fairly well.  I do wish I had an opportunity to practice, though.  It's tough, not just because there are very few Welsh speakers that I know, but because I don't know that many phrases.  The conversation I could make is extremely limited.  I've only just started to learn how to refer to other people (he/she) rather than just you and I.

I need to make some Welsh friends.

I have taken to trying to sleep with the Say Something in Welsh lessons playing so that I might be able to subconsciously absorb them... or something.  I used to do that with my school work while in High School sometimes.  I'm not sure if it's working, but it can't hurt, right?

Honestly, all I want to do is sleep, but there is so much I have to do.  Not to mention I have to be at work for to earn money to pay for things like groceries.  Le sigh.

On that note, I really ought to get to work.  Lessons first, then to writing.  If I'm really good, I might give myself a nap...

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Let's celebrate prematurely, ready?

What's the reason for this premature celebration?

Well, don't quote me on this, but I think that my last week of writing the first draft of Human is ahead of me!  This first draft is shit, by the way.  Well, all first drafts are.  But this one in particular is quite shit.  That's entirely beside the point.

The point is that I finished writing the showdown between Aleksandar and his foe yesterday.  All that remains is to wrap it all up in a lovely bitter-sweet bow.

Then I'm going to print this manuscript out and throw it on a bonfire and watch it burn like the hell it dragged me through!  In your face, manuscript!

Of course, I'll have a several digital copies saved, so the burning will largely be symbolic.  Still, it's going to feel so good to watch it burn!

The bonfire might never happen.  What is likely going to happen is that I will do a cursory edit of the manuscript, divide the colossal text into proper chapters, and then file it away until the new year, when I'll take it out again, edit it again - hopefully with fresh eyes this time - and then send it off to the first Beta Reader.

In the meantime, I will be working on Daughters of Britain, my historical fiction that has been bouncing around my head for a little while now.  I'm really looking forward to writing this, not only because it is the first historical fiction I've ever written, but also because the heroine is totally badass - and bad tempered, irascibly proud, embittered and not a little bit abrasive.

I like her very much.

So, yes.  I'm celebrating prematurely.  There is a dance party happening in my chair at work.  I'm lucky no one has walked past.  It's been pretty rough going, getting this manuscript down.  I'm very glad it's coming to a close.

Outside of writing news, a friend of mine posted a trailer for a new Cinderella movie coming out next year.

I am not ashamed to say that I was a fan of the movie Ever After, an imaginative retelling of the Cinderella story.  I'm also not ashamed to say that I really want to see this retelling as well.  As much as my feminist heart rails against the notion of a woman being rescued from her life (as opposed to finding her own way) by some random dude (however handsome he is) just because he finds her pretty or whatever, there is a little part of me that still dreams of such magical connections however fantastical and impossible they may be in the real world.

I am going to go see this movie.

I'll probably end up going alone, as this isn't the kind of movie I usually see with my Dad... and I'm probably going to cry during it.  Tears are easier when there isn't someone mocking you for them.

Right, well, I'm off to learn more Welsh, then force myself closer to finishing Human.  Looking forward to that day!

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

So... I had a rough night last night.  A mild case of food poisoning, plus a cat that was acting out by trying to get at the gecko I'm looking after for a friend, made for a very sleepless evening.  Also, the cat was extremely pissed at me, and wanted that gecko very badly.  In the end, I emptied a mug of water on her and she spent the night sulking.  It made me upset to have upset her, but seriously!  She had plenty of warnings.  That gecko is not ending up in her mouth if I can help it.

The other part of the night was even less pleasant.  I woke up in the witching hour with terrible abdominal cramps and, well, plenty of you have had food poisoning and knows what happens.  It has been a long time since I've had food poisoning and though this was very mild compared to the stories I have heard, I was still a little bit panicky.

I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out what I had eaten that was different from my normal menu.  Nothing is coming up as different.  I'm stumped.

So this morning, I woke up very, very tired and very hungry... but my stomach is still a little delicate.  I'm regretting breakfast.  Still, I'm here and alive, so I can't really complain.

Sigh.  And last night was such a good night too.

I went to training last night, having decided that morning that I would.  I did alright in my strength training before Kung Fu, with the number of assisted pull ups reaching a personal best of fourteen.  I still can't do one unassisted.  I'm working on it.  Anyway, despite still recovering from the strange 24-hour cold thing I had over the weekend, I managed to make it through the whole thing with only a minimal protest from my lungs.

Kick-boxing was fun, and afterwards, we got to play with knives!  Fine, they were plastic and not steel, but still!  It was the first knife-fighting class for our school.  I had a blast!  Half of the fun is, of course, working with my Kung Fu sister C.S.  She's hilarious and I almost always end up on the floor laughing hysterically when I train with her.  It was a very interesting lesson.  It is interesting how different knife fighting is to both empty hand combat and other weapons combat.  A knife is not a sword, and they are most certainly not used the same way.  The footwork is similar though.

Before training, despite a very late start on my writing, I hit my daily two thousand word goal and started the showdown between Aleksandar, Prince of his House, and his assailant.  The first draft is very nearly finished.  And I'm now getting really into the story.  I can tell I am because it is the last thing I think of before going to sleep, and bits of story pop into my mind at random moments during the day.

Last night, for example, the final scene of the main story popped into my mind just before I drifted off to (a much disturbed) sleep.  It was beautiful and sweet and sad, and I rather like it.  I'm a little bit sad that this hadn't happened much before now with this story, but that's the way it goes sometimes I guess.

Oh, and I have just received an email from the publisher that had Skylark on it's slush pile for a long while.  Almost a full year (it's a year less a day) later, I finally heard back from them.  Alas, it was a very gentle but pretty standard rejection.  I'm a little bit sad about it, but such is a writer's lot.  At least they were true to their word and replied.  Eventually.

No word yet from the agency.  Alas, I am not hopeful about it.  Experience has taught me not to be.

If worst comes to worst, at least I can self-publish it.  I have received really great feedback about this story in particular, and I am determined that it will see the light of day one way or another.  I'm sad about the book store thing, though.  I would so love to see this book on those shelves.

Oh, speaking of books and writing and stuff, I'm now on Wattpad.  For those of you who don't know about it, it's place where story tellers write stuff for everyone to read.  At the moment, I am serialising The Dying God & Other Stories.  You can read the first story for free, and the next one will go up on Friday.  I am not putting up the illustrations or the poems from the book, though.  You can find my profile HERE.  Check back every Friday for the next story in The Dying God & Other Stories.

I'm thinking that I will upload at third of my self published stand alone titles, and the whole first book of any series that I write.  The only stand alone title I'm posting there in full would be The Dying God & Other Stories, though even that isn't quite true as I'm not posting up the artwork or the poems.  I don't know if that is what you're supposed to do on Wattpad if you're trying to make writing a career (as in earn a wage from), but that's what I'm doing.

Any experienced Wattpadders around to lend me some advice on the matter?

Right, it's getting on Welsh lesson time.  I need to get on with it.  Have a great day.

Ciao!

Good morning, Readers!

Thanks to a long sleep, lots of food and delicious tea, I think I finally have my wild depressive spiral under control.  Wasn't that fun?

No.  No, it wasn't.

Anyway, today the sun is shining down on the snow and it just looks wonderful outside.  It also feels wonderful.  It feels like winter at long last.  The cold wind, despite being sharp, put a smile on my face as I walked into work today.  The snow sparkled (where it hadn't been pulverised into ice by traffic) and the air smelled crisp and fresh (when it hadn't been polluted by traffic. I really do need to live in the country...).  Autumn is my favourite season, but the first few months of winter come in a close second.

Naturally, because it's snowy out, I'm wearing my snow boots to walk to work.  This is the second winter I have worn them, and it took less than one season for them to be filled with holes through which melting snow can seep in.  I walk a lot, so I'm very hard on all my shoes.  I'm sad about the holes.  I spent lots of money on these boots, hoping they would last more than a season.  They did not.  Alas, I have to wear them any way as I don't currently have the funds for a new pair.

In any case, they're large and clunky and not especially fashionable... but they cast an epic shadow.  I only notice it on sunny days, for obvious reasons, but my shadow looks pretty cool when I'm marching to work (I notice because the shadow is in front of me practically the whole way).  In fact, it almost looks like I'm wearing a pair of these:

For the record, I would happily wear these to and from work every day, provided that the city cuts back on the amount of road salt they use, thanks very much (or it they're oiled really, really well).  I also wouldn't mind wearing a breastplate...  Actually, if I could rock up to work dressed kind of like this:

...I'd be well pleased.

The major take away from this is that I need to work at a medieval/dark ages/fantasy themed theme park.  I would rock that job.

The point is, I felt exceptionally epic walking into work this morning, provided I kept an eye on my shadow.

I'm a twit.  I know.

My cold seems to have abated a lot.  I decided against going to training last night, despite the fact that my energy levels had recovered to roughly normal by the end of the work day.  I figured a little more sleep would probably help me along the road to recovery faster.  I still have issues with my lungs, though it wasn't so bad this morning.  I guess it was one of those weird illnesses that lasts only 24 - 48 hours or so.  That or my immune system is brilliant?  I'm hoping for the latter, or all of this exercise and eating well is for naught!

Despite my brain being fuzzy and not being much in the mood for anything due to illness, I managed to write yesterday.  I even made it to my daily two thousand word goal.  As the story stands right now, Aleksandar, Prince of House Svetoslav, is about to get his murdering on.  For the record, don't ever piss this guy off.  He's a good guy... until you piss him off.

Naturally, I'm having fun with the story now.  Of course I am.  People are dying all over the place and a character is about to go postal.  It's really fun to write that stuff.  I like to see the folks who deserve it get their comeuppance.  Alas, that only seems to happen in fiction.

Fiction, giving hope for humanity since we first realised how awful we are (so we made up heroes).

Well, that thought was particularly cynical.

I think the time spent writing helped improve my mood yesterday.  There is something about a singular focus that helps calm the mind and ease the heart.  That, and being productive feels better than lazing around.  Most of the time.  Sometimes you need to laze around.  I hope that writing goes just as well today.  It should... hopefully today is the day I write the epic showdown I've been promising for the past fortnight.  Damn the details that need taking care of!

Right, well, I'm off to attempt Welsh again.  When you're finished reading this post, you should read THIS one by author and publisher Hayden Trenholm.  His daily ten minutes are usually very good, and this one is exceptional.  And if you're done with that, have a listen to the song that has become my latest obsession:

You'll have to excuse the spelling error in this video.  I didn't make the video, so I bear no responsibility for it.  If such errors upset you, you'd better just close your eyes and listen.  It's a great song.

I'm off.

Ciao!