After losing one of my dogs and the gecko last summer, I caved in the fall and acquired Finn the barn cat. Finn stayed through the winter in Maine indoors (smart cat) and opted to spend much of his time outside this early summer (smart cat) before eventually mozying along this summer to find other adventures. He might turn up once it gets colder (if he does we’ll really know how smart he is). Who knows? In the meantime I declared No More Animals! One horse. One dog. A cat somewhere hunting in the woods. That’s it. I’m done.

I made that resolution and stuck by it. For a whole month.

A kitten that was in need of a home is no longer in need of a home. She is coming to reside at Chez Campbell next weekend. The dog has no idea what’s coming. HaHaHaHaHaHaHa! Who am I kidding? I have no idea what is coming either. I hear she’s a sweetie with a tough streak despite her tiny physique. I, and the dog, will find out soon enough what she’s made of.

In the interim, I’m off to New Orleans for the weekend to see friends, family, and attend my cousin’s wedding. Yay x 3!

I’ve been on a crazy push to get the editing done of the 5th book. Still in progress, and I won’t be editing this weekend. So with the weekend coming up, have a great one. I know I will. See you on the flip side and post kitten adoption.

I asked if kitten adoption came with a head examination for the new owner. Apparently that costs extra.

In the last two weeks I have worked, traveled, wrote, and watched more Olympic games than I probably should have. This round of Olympics seemed to be a bit melodramatic and uninteresting. I enjoyed watching some of the sports, but I just couldn’t get into any (other than soccer) and really stick with them from start to finish.

My favorite thing about the Olympics is getting to watch so many different sports we typically don’t get on TV. Unless you’re an uber-competitive Badminton player going to tournaments or crushing your family members at play during the backyard BBQ, you’re just not going to see that sport played on TV outside of the Olympics (unless there’s a special Badminton channel I don’t know about).

Other than soccer, the next sport I watched the most was judo. I watched several other sports but none for very long, meaning anything from a few seconds to less than an hour. Back in my undergrad days I took judo classes and loved it. So I enjoyed the first few days of the Olympics and watching the later stages of men’s and women’s judo.

Ultimately I’m glad the Olympics are winding down, because as a sports fan they pull me away from other things I should be doing, like sleeping. I did still get some decent writing time in. As of yesterday morning, I finished the first draft of When Heroes Fall. As of this morning, I’ve completed 5% of the editing process. I have a long way to go with editing, but I’ll just keep chipping away at it. And without the Olympics to distract me, I will be able to get more done.

I’m totally doing the final word count guessing contest. That will happen later since editing will change the word count as things are added and removed. I’m still shooting for a late November/early December release. More to come.

It’s been two weeks since I posted about reaching the second plot point, and I’m now well into writing the climax to wrap this first draft up. Work beckons me to some extra travel time the next couple of weeks since we’re doing a big software roll out/go live/implementation/whatever you want to call it. In short, my weekends will become shorter than usual, my work days longer than usual, and I will likely be drooling into my cereal come Friday morning, assuming I have enough energy to make a bowl of cereal.

Oh well. This is life for me, and go lives and wonky schedules are all part of the game to pay the bills.

So I write when I can, and with the extra fun that comes from writing the story’s climax, I will find a way to keep writing on the weekends.

Scrivener software has a statistics option I can use to check my word count. Using MS Word, it constantly showed the word count for the document, and I initially hated not having that stat face up when using Scrivener. Now, I love that it’s not face up because I can just write and not dither with word counts.

Several weeks ago I remember seeing the word count around 65K and groaning. I had much of the story done (or so I thought) and really needed another 15K words at least to not let the final book be too short. I kept writing, not bothering with the word count again for a while, but I just checked it this morning. 86K and I still have more to go!

While I’m not sure where THAT came from, I had to laugh. My stress about having a “short” story when books one through four have all been around 80K was clearly unwarranted.

Maybe I should start a pool to see who can guess the final word count and win a prize. I’m digging this idea! 🙂 Stay tuned!

It appears that three weeks have passed since my last post. This is more proof to the long-standing fact that I can’t keep track of time worth crap. Working night shift many moons ago in the ICU destroyed my ability to keep track of the day of the week and sometimes month. I’ve even been known to get the year messed up a time or two and not anywhere around 1 Jan when most normal folks struggle to flip to the new year.

In the last three weeks, I’ve kept busy. Had a blast in VA for a couple of days with friends, then caught up with more friends in DC. Did my usual MD-ME travel for work, had a couple of catch up days with friends while in MD, and squeezed in more social time this past weekend with more friends.

Normally I’m not quite the social butterfly (or grasshopper?), but the timing was right to see all of these great people, and I had a blast. I use my weekends to recharge after work travel, and I somehow screwed up the recharging part two weekends ago. So last week’s work travel to MD was brutal. This past weekend was an amazing time to regroup.

I’ve done a lot of writing over the course of Sat, Sun, and today. Normally I’d be en route to MD on a Monday, but I’m off work this week. Yay! I have another day at home then I’ll travel to FL to visit more people before heading back to MD. The TSA folks know me well!

Today I made it to the second plot point of the 5th book.

“What the flippity flop is a second plot point?” you may ask, using those exact words, I’m sure.

There is a place in the story where all hope is lost, your hero has had the absolute crap kicked out of him, and he’s ready to give up. Then there is a turning point, where the hero regroups, ready to get back into the fight, and this is the second plot point (SPP). It’s also the 75%-ish mark of the story, which means you’re almost home. The SPP kicks off the story’s climax.

The movie Twister. When Aunt Meg’s home has been destroyed by a tornado and the ambulance leaves, presumably with Jo in the ambulance with her aunt, you then see Jo stayed behind. She’s watching the spinning artwork in her aunt’s yard and says: “I know how to make Dorothy fly.” Second plot point, kids.

For me, the writing process to reach the SPP is a slog. It’s slow, tough, and a very long process to get there. That’s not to say that once you reach the SPP things get easier.

For me (other writers may feel differently) the climax is THE toughest part of the story to write. It’s also the most fun. The action is at its most intense at this time when your hero finally turns things around and starts REALLY fighting back. End the story with a fizzling climax = unhappy readers. There is a lot of pressure on when you venture into writing the story after the SPP.

This is the final book in the Burnt Mountain series. Time to knock this thing out of the park with a bang. Or in my case a bang and a fire. Given the series name, I obviously like to torch things. It’ll be exhausting, but I’m wicked excited to be at this phase of the story now.

image from sxc.hu

The above photo comes from the public domain abyss of Facebook, and I think it’s hilarious. Of all the 4th of July stuff slathered across the internet this weekend, this one made me laugh, out loud, that is.

I spent the long weekend hunkered down at home. I used the Monday holiday to get some work done (the bill paying work) since I have some out of town travel coming on this Friday, but mostly I spent the weekend at home to write. The target right now is to wrap up the 5th book for release by early December. That’s this coming December, so I have to stay at it and this coming weekend I will be doing zip for writing due to playing with friends instead.

As I’ve mentioned before, the 5th book is called Burnt Mountain When Heroes Fall. I spent the weekend making those heroes fall, and it was a more difficult process than I realized. After writing with some of the same characters, to kill them off in the last book, well, I’d gotten a bit attached it seems. I’d write for an hour or so and have to take a break. Come back to it for another hour, then break again.

So while I’ve had a massively productive writing weekend on the 5th installment, I’m also spent. I’m looking forward to work tomorrow for a change of pace!

So happy indie day/treason day to folks. Have a safe weekend and don’t blow off any digits. If you have pets frightened by fireworks, I’m sorry. I have been blessed with an idiot dog that is oblivious to the sounds of exploding things, but don’t come knock on my door. He will certainly crap himself over that.