Samhain Publishing

This seems to be a recurring blog theme for me the last few months. I know I should find something new to harp on explore, but I can’t seem to help myself. See, I can’t write in silence. It makes me nuts. I guess I got too used to having kids underfoot years ago and now that they’re all in school quiet is just weird.

For every book I write, I make a playlist but some books I listen to less music than others. Some seem to call for more visual inspiration, or just tv background noise, than others. For over a year, I’ve been streaming series I missed the first time round while I write. I missed some good stuff that was sadly short lived. Two of my favorites were Painkiller Jane and Dollhouse. There is nothing wrong with a kick ass female lead. And I must admit my new guilty pleasure is The Vampire Diaries. Damon is almost as good tv crack as Dean. Almost.

Then there is the foray into fantasy. There have been so few good fantasy television series over the years, and the offerings haven’t expanded much. The last few months I’ve watched Legend of the Seeker, Merlin, and I’ve just started Camelot. Loved the first two, reserving judgement on the last.

I’m going to have to find something new in a few days. Any suggestions? As you might guess, I like supernatural, paranormal, and just plain weird lol!

It’s my favorite part of year. I love summer, and in the deep South, summer is long. It probably makes a lot of us on the not right side of crazy. And I’ve seen a lot of crazy the last few weeks lol. I don’t want to focus on negative stuff though.

Two interesting, good things have happened lately. I reconnected with an old friend. It’s funny how years change you. Nine years ago, hell two years ago, I would have laughed at the idea we’d be on good terms again. But here we are. Sadly, over the last couple years I’ve had friends that drifted apart. I think that’s just life. It happens to all of us. It’s been fun talking to this old friend though. She held my hand while I learned to navigate the murky world of the Military Police Corps. It’s nice to have her back.

In other news, news that makes me sit back and say, no shit!? Really!? Not only did my oldest daughter ‘graduate’ from middle school this week, but she got inducted into the National Honor Society. So she’s a high schooler now and brilliant and was kind enough to remind she gets to start driving next year. Thanks for making me feel like a dinosaur, honey. In another year, both my girls will be in high school. They’re growing up against my will. To prove it, they’ve started raiding my books. Gena Showalter, Maria Snyder, Keri Arthur, and many others can thank me. I accept checks. No. Seriously. I do. LOL.

So another school year has ended here in the Hunt household and it seems as if the changes accelerate every year. Milestones and changes. Do they ever stop? (Don’t answer that, really, lol.)

Anyone else have kids that just stun them sometimes? Kids you look at and say, okay I’m smart but not like this? Please tell me I’m not the only one lol.

I’m writing this early because by the time the 23rd actually gets here I’m sure I’ll be a basket case! Every year I look forward to December with a combination of anticipation and dread. There’s lots of good stuff. Yummy baking, fun sappy movies, shiny pretty lights, presents!

Of course, those are balanced with the bad. Cleaning up after the baking, 15 showings of Rudolph, increased electric bills, grumpy shoppers. The worst though? No or very little writing, for me at least. There’s just so much going on especially this last week before Christmas that squeezing in some alone time with my WIP is next to impossible.

So I’m looking forward to Christmas morning, and I’m looking forward to it being over so I can get back to work too lol. Anyone else feel the same way or am I just being a Scrooge?

Hope everyone has a very merry holiday season!

I’m not a big fan of reality tv, but I’ll admit I’m hooked on the Discovery channel’s The Colony. It’s about a group of ten people trying to survive a catastrophic event.

I’ve loved this kind of what if since I read The Stand as a teenager. What if there was no water, no power, no communication? Who would you trust? How would you eat? How do you rebuild civilization and in what form? What we have now or something different? I’ll admit I find the idea of a simpler life appealing, but I’d like it to include electricity, modern transportation and medicine, and the internet. g

None of that negates my love for disaster scenarios and books, however. Especially books. Some of my favorites are Califia’s Daughters (Leigh Richards), The Marked Man (Charles Ingrid), A Canticle for Leibowitz (Walter Miller), and Alas, Babylon (Pat Frank). Movies just don’t seem to cut it in this genre, but I loved the tv shows Jericho and Jeremiah.

Anyone else fascinated by these stories? Why? Or why not if you don’t like them?

I love spring cleaning, I’ll admit it. That’s partly ‘cause I’m a neat freak, partly ‘cause I really hate winter, and partly the whole starting over new aspect of it. This is a three pronged approach for me.

My spring cleaning has already started outside. I’ve cleaned out the front and one back flower bed. I’m tackling the sides this weekend and a second bed in the back. I also have got quite a bit planted. Mostly veggies, but also pansies and some new roses. This is work I like to do and I realized last weekend, I really slacked off over the winter. I was so sore after just one weekend! It’s a good workout at least right? That’s what I keep telling myself anyway lol!

My husband plans on tackling the inside of the house while I work outside this weekend. Yeah. I had the same reaction. I’ll keep the camera handy so we can immortalize any accidental work lol. g I’ll probably get most of what I want done over the next couple of days while I have the house to myself and leave the floors for him to take care of.

And lastly, writing. And editing, and promoing, etc. I’ll have a look at my unfinished projects soon. Decide what I think is or isn’t worth pursuing and make decisions about what to work on the next few months. Thankfully, so far at least, all my edits for the year are done. So now it’s a matter of revising, writing, revising, submitting, etc.

So this is what spring cleaning looks like in my life. A total reordering lol! How about y’all? Anyone else go nuts when spring rolls around?

2008 is almost over and I am so glad to see the end of it. It’s been a long, hard year for me and my family. I’m hopeful that 2009 will bring better things.

Oddly enough, despite all the personal turmoil I had a great writing year. I wrote and contracted more than ever, and pushed past some of my old boundaries, including book length and plot twists, themes, etc. Basically, I decided to throw out the ‘writing rule book’ and it worked out well.

Now I’m looking to 2009. I usually make a pretty detailed plan for the next year after the chaos of Christmas has passed. I don’t know what the coming year’s path is going to look like yet, but I’m sure it will be another year for breaking rules and pushing personal limits.

Hope everyone has a wonderful New Year. I plan to! g

I’ve recently discovered the joys of Facebook addiction. Yeah. Probably not something to brag about, huh? But highly entertaining when you are in the throes of serious procrastination lol.

I joined under my maiden-married name thinking it would be cool to catch up with some old friends. And okay, my twentieth reunion is not far off so I’m obviously curious about what everyone else has done over the last 19 years. Seriously? I couldn’t write some of this stuff. The amount of people from the old stoner/partier crowd that’s now climbing up management in corporate America floors me. The people I expected to be in creative fields are…not. And the people I would have picked to be part of the establishment are running their own businesses. (That kind of fits actually.)

But the number of messages I’ve received saying, wow, wish I was a writer, just amazes me. These usually are accompanied by a list of reasons why said person can’t or doesn’t write and have a totally mystified tone to them. Like there’s a secret I can pass on. And what do you say without sounding like a smart a$$, really? There’s no secret to it. You sit down every day (or regularly at least), write, and eventually, you finish a book. If you’re lucky you have a product that can be revised and revised and revised until it’s good enough for publication lol.

So I’m wondering. If you’re a writer do you experience this kind of thing? Do people treat you like you’ve discovered a secret handshake or something? And if you’re a reader, are you an aspiring author? What kind of information do you look for from published authors? What do you find helpful or inspiring?

Well, actually I’m not at Hilton Head as I write this, but I’ll be there tomorrow when this posts. g It’s my annual squash vacation-last hurrah before school-go to conference tradition. Usually the order is more along the lines of vacation-conference-last weekend beach trip, but conference is later this time around and my very favorite part of the year—going back to school—is early.

I know I’m very lucky to be a stay at home writer and mom, and I love summer and my kids, but nothing gets done (outside of a good tan lol!) when I have all three of them at home. Seriously. Nothing. Maybe my ADD just can’t take the distraction. Maybe they’d distract a saint lol. But this summer has really made me realize I need to realign my yearly schedule/goals. I’ve been in the habit before this summer of planning lots of down time into November and December, but the older the kids get the more I think I’m going to have switch around those winter months for the two months the kids are off school in the summer.

It leaves me wondering if other writers do this? Plan to have some pretty non-productive months somewhere in the year, I mean. The holiday season worked better for me when the kids were younger (and after 10 months steady writing who doesn’t need some down time?). Now it’s time for some switching up. What about y’all?

I’m a writing challenge drop-out. NaNoWriMo, 70 Days of Sweat, even challenges at Romance Divas are, well, a challenge.

Even knowing I’m unlikely to stick these challenges out, I try them. At the beginning it’s easy—bright shiny new idea and lots of energy to make it happen. But after a few weeks that new idea is not so shiny and bright anymore. If fact it’s kind of…boring. That’s the point that I can no longer make myself sit and work on that book anymore. No problem, I tell myself, you just need a break, a change of pace, then you can go back to this one in a couple weeks. (Hey, don’t laugh! I know I’m not the only writer that has conversations with herself lol. ) Obviously those longer challenges aren’t good for me. There’s just too much time to say, the heck with this. Next!

That’s not going to cut it right now unfortunately. School gets out in 4 weeks and my summer-travel-everywhere marathon to visit friends and family is actually kicking off early in 2 weeks. I love summer, but it’s not a very productive time for me writing-wise. It’s more of an edit, revise, query time. But in order to have something that can be edited, etc I have to actually finish it before school gets out.

Enter the ultimate writing challenge. The one you should a gold medal for finishing. Fast draft. The idea is you write 20 pages a day for 14 days. I’m half way through. I fell off the wagon one day but got right back on. Today is day 8 and in a couple hours I’ll sit down and add another 20 pages to the 166 I have now. Hopefully by next Thursday (the day we’re going out of town for 4 days) I’ll have a 300 page first draft and a whole summer before me to make the story shiny again.

Since misery loves company, I have to know if anyone else has done this? And how much chocolate it took to recover when it was over.

Anyone get the winter blahs? (Not to be confused with, man is the holiday season ever going to be over angst!?) It probably won’t surprise anyone to hear I really don’t like winter. Heck, I live in southern Alabama partly to avoid snow. Plus I hate being cold. (My west coast friends have spent months warning me about Nationals this year. Bring a sweater? Really? In July/Aug? Considering I was the only person I know not complaining about the heat in Atlanta or Dallas, I’ll have to defer to their wisdom in this case.)

So about those winter blahs. I don’t get much writing done in December. I think it’s because of the general craziness of the month. When January rolls back around and things settle back to normal though, I expect to be able to get things done. As it turns out, not so much. It’s cold. It’s rainy and dreary. And I just want to curl up on the couch with a good movie or book. I prefer to write outside on my patio and I can do that most of the year, but not now.

This makes me wonder. Is it winter that actually slows me down or being forced to break from my preferred method? Do you find it easier to work (whatever your work might be) during a particular season? Or is it being forced to break a routine that hangs you up?