Spring and updates, both finally here

Ok I'm totally aware that for all intensive purposes, this project has seemingly died. I swear to you it has not. I am writing again, I have it all mapped out, and my goal is to finish by this fall and publish it. So like, two years for a sequel is terrible, I totally know. I was trying to do one but life randomly got in the way. Injuries, boyfriend, work, moving, planning for the future, all sorts of crap. And also, honesty? I wasn't in the mood to write. Terrible, I know. But I started reading again, and was inspired to write something I would personally want to read. And then I was like oh hey I'm already in the middle of that I should totally keep working on it. So here we are. I've got like six word documents and a tiny little leather notebook full of scribbles and a brain just bursting with words. So I am trying to get them all down on paper.

Not writing for a living, and totally making zero money off of this project, I'm totally more or less doing it to get the story out of my brain. The fact that actual people I don't know have read it and then want to know more? Totally both inspiring and terrifying. Cause like, it's like publishing a diary. These are my stupid characters and my stupid plots and I'm putting it out there for strangers. Exciting, and pretty scary. But honestly reading reviews of it, kind of hopeful. People don't seem to hate it. So I'm gonna keep on with the work (I mean I have the plots for 4 more books already in my brain) and really push myself to keep to this goal.

Right so...as I am currently at work, in a legit office, but legitimately waiting for videos to magically render using some newfangled form of slow technology, I should probably get back to writing. Rose and Connell are in a...delicate situation and I really wanna know how it ends.

Updates forthcoming

Awww yeah I actually followed through and have been writing. Though it's weird cause I'm writing this book on my laptop, on my desktop, and in a notebook at work when I have down time. So trying to keep all of the documents up to date and like organized is actually a challenge. Luckily, I have drop box (even on my phone) so I throw it in there and then download the latest version on whatever computer I'm on and save it again. It'd probably be easier if I only wrote in one place but that would be smart and simple and make waaaaaay too much sense.

This next part is going to have um...well I guess some spoilers? Not like plot ones or anything but location. And stories about why I chose it and whatnot. Cause I couldn't think of what else to write about since this is the part of the book I'm currently working on I figured I'd give some info on it. So....I guess if you don't want to know the road map for it, you could stop reading here.

So, let's see. Updates include actually beginning the road trip sequence of the book. Yup, book two is a road trip. First stop, Washington County, Maine. Ok personally, never actually been there. It's like in the middle of the wilderness. However, my parents go there like a ton. Something about liking the open space and not having neighbors and maybe taking up serial killing or something, I don't know. In any case, they told me once they were sitting on the porch when a black bear just came up out of the woods and like crossed the road all being a bear. And there's moose crossing signs everywhere. And like a ton of people actually choose to live off the grid, no power no internet no city water no nothing. Like wow. So, what better place than the middle of the woods off the grid for a werewolf family to live?

Ok that one actually was a spoiler. Werewolf family. I'm not gonna say any more about that. Nothing to see here, move along. I'm not sure if I'm gonna do the NaNoMoWri thing again this year (or well....attempt cause I totally didn't finish last year). I like the concept because it sort of pushes me to write more. But also I sort of get stressed about it and then real life comes in and I kind of procrastinate. As usual. So I think instead I'm going to focus on writing regularly instead of trying to pump out like 5k words a day.

Awww yeah consider my year MADE

Riiiight so, guess who hasn't been updating anything? Or really writing? Or much of anything besides work and minecraft and working out? Hey PS did I mention work? Like actual money creating job, which is awesome in that money but not awesome in that, I have to wake up at like 7:30. Who does that. (Hint: basically the rest of the world)

Right so anyway, what brings about this random new splurge in updating? I totally randomly checked out my Amazon page for the book and...lo and behold there was a new review there. As in one I hadn't ever seen. And what's more it was totally from someone I didn't personally beg to write it. Which means...someone I don't personally know actually read the damn thing and then actually liked it enough to write a review about it. Like whoa. Really? That's fucking amazing. Like that was the ENTIRE reason I even bothered going through the whole thing. Totally just made my existence.

So now that I know someone besides me actually read it (and I didn't pay them to haha) I now totally want to get back to the sequel. Which is ever so slightly hard to do because I've been like...stupidly happy. Boyfriend, job, working out, like....I haven't got time to be depressed and write twenty pages a night. Which is possibly the best excuse why I haven't been writing (sorry can't write today, life's too awesome....) but again really any excuse is kind of a cop out. My bad. So I am going to go back to trying to write every night and get some real progress made on it. Writers should be able to write in any mood really, and also it'll give me something to think about at work besides well...work.

Off and running

Right so, after a slightly rocky anniversary on the first (yeah...fun) the time to actually buckle down and work on this thing has come. Which means...I just totally copy pasted everything I had of my sequel into my NaNoWriMo account (username: Misszaius, book title: Hounds Thorn) like today. Which means the 10k words I had struggled to write for ages and ages are totally like already out there for all to read. And that means that I only have 30 days to write another 40k. Considering the time it took me to write the first fifth of the thing...this is going to be a crunch. A mad crunch.

Alright so I haven't yet added any of my possible friends that are also doing this because ah, I am technologically incompetent. Super secretly true, I totally didn't even know where I was supposed to put the damn novel to begin with. BUT that is not going to deter me from totally working on this today. Which is to say that after I go to the doctor's and paint a commission for a lady I'm going to write. No more "oh it'll be fine if I write ten words as long as I write something". Now is the time for writing like a damn 1.6k words a day. The horror. Procrastinator me, meet your nightmare.

This'll be fun.

Well this is embarrassing...

So I haven't died. I have been in fact going to physical therapy. And looking for work. And other hobbies. What I have not been doing...is writing. Which I intend to totally start doing again. For real. Know why?

I totally signed up to participate in the 2012 NaNoWriMo. I am 100% taking a write a novel in a month challenge to get me to work on my sequel. And, for extra fun, you can totally follow me and my progress and whatnot at http://www.nanowrimo.org. My handle is Misszaius. Right like Dr. Zaius from Planet of the Apes only Miss cause I'm a girl, right? So you can add me, follow me, stalk me, yell at me for being a major procrastinator, whatever you like. And of course I will attempt to update this blog with my progress from this whole write a damn novel in a month challenge. Cause holy hell it took me a year last time and they want fifty thousand words in thirty days? The math on this makes my brain hurt. And if the sequel is anything like the first book (hint: it is) it will be closer to double that size. Which I guess means I need to stop obsessively watching Honey Boo Boo and actually get to work.

For anything else taking the whole NaNoWriMo challenge, holy shit good luck. And good luck to me. Cause I am totally going to need it.

And now for something not entirely different

This I found when I was digging through my pile of random, mostly unfinished story fragments. It has vampires, and line cooks (write what you know apparently) and actually is something I might go back one day and fix. Because, oh god, the errors in it. And the style of writing...it's close but it isn't quite right. But I think some of it is at least entertaining enough to share. This would be the first chapter of a completely different story in a completely different universe and a only slightly different style. I forget when I wrote this but it's gotta be...oh like at least three or four years ago now.

The headphones were digging into my ears, but I was willing to put up with the pain as long as they kept blasting hardcore music therapy into my brain. Ten hours in a kitchen on a Friday night in August is pretty much the seventh circle of Hell in New Haven. At least with the drowning loudness of the phones I could numb out the sad fact that I had no life outside Jim’s Deli.

            I was a line cook at the deli, and Friday nights were the worst. Followed only by Saturday nights, oh great. I had started working at Jim’s when I was eighteen and a dishwasher, which is worse than a line cook but only slightly. The main reason is because as a line cook, you didn’t have to deal with Harriet, the industrial strength washing machine from Hell. By the way, it’s called Harriet because that’s Jim’s wife’s name. I’ve never seen the woman, but if her shrieks over the phone were any indication, the dishwasher was actually the nicer of the two. At least it couldn’t talk.

            Three years ago, on a Friday of course, one of the normal line guys hadn’t shown up to work (We found out later that he didn’t show up because he got eaten but that’s beside the point). Jim pulled me out of the clutches of Harriet and threw me into the line, and it stuck. Despite having no culinary background, I’m not ashamed to say I am a damn good cook. Not that it really takes a culinary background to make one hell of a hamburger, but hey.

            The bonus to being a line cook was more hours, more work, more stress, and a tiny bit more money. Joy. I kept working as a line cook because, despite it all, I really enjoyed cooking. Hell, I might even love it. As a guy, that’s a pretty big thing to admit, especially when you used to be the star forward of the New Haven Angels. Haha, the Angels from New Haven. Get it? The town thought it was cute. The guys on the team thought it was bullshit. Not to mention the baby blue uniforms. And the cherub mascot.

            Like I said, it was Friday, I had been on the line, and Jim’s is famous for being a hole in the wall restaurant with more customers in a night than any hole in the wall restaurant should be allowed in a year. I was wiped. Add to that I was trying my best to make my ears bleed with my favorite band on shuffle. I was pretty much walking pulp by that time, so I have to cut myself some slack that I jumped six feet in the air when a paper white hand materialized out of the black and wrapped itself around my arm.

            I hadn’t seen or heard anything, besides the music, and all of a sudden I was in the death grip of some druggie or another. Not the best place to be. I tried to pull away; no dice. The arm was much stronger than I could have anticipated. Hell, it was stronger than a bodybuilder on roid-rage. What drug could do that to you again? They had said it on the news awhile ago but I don’t really watch the news and that important bit of information seemed to have slipped my mind right now.

            The hand tightened, and I freaking winced. I am not a weak guy. I am 6’2” of still-in-shape line cook, kept that way by constant gym time and tossing around heavy duty cast iron pans in a 6 o’clock rush. My mouth opened involuntarily the same time my head dropped and I finally got a look at my leeching companion.

            It stayed open as my brain took in long, lean, delicious paleness. Tight jeans, black tee over nicely perky C’s, leather jacket, and yellow eyes… Yellow eyes? Fuck shit shit fuck yellow eyes. That meant one thing: vampire.

            This wasn’t happening, this couldn’t be happening. Not now, not in New Haven, not to me. I started running through the options in my head. Demon? Demons had red eyes, damnit, and didn’t blend in with humans so nicely. Except succubi, but she was wearing way too much clothing for that. Were? Full moon was out, she wasn’t furry. Not a Were. Ghoul was right out of the question, as was zombie, since there was a distinct lack of rotting flesh. Vampire? Pale skin, yellow eyes, strong enough to snap me in half. Check. Fuck.

            New Haven is a small town in the middle of no where. The biggest city around boasted a whole two movie theaters and a bowling alley. This was not a town where vampires would want to even drive through, let alone hunt in. What in God’s name was she doing here?

            While my brain was screaming outrage at the absolute wrongness of the situation I was in, my vampire friend hadn’t been standing around waiting for me to come to my senses and scream. She had pulled off my headphones (How? I hadn’t even noticed she’d moved) and was pulling me along the road.

            “Don’t. Scream.” Oh, great, thanks lady, I’m sure you say that to all your future meals. I didn’t though, which was to my credit, since I’m pretty sure it would have sounded something like my soul escaping through my mouth. “You’re being hunted. Just shut up and follow my lead.” Well no duh I was being hunted. I was already caught. What was the big deal anyway? Right in the middle of my train of thought, she tilted her head up and just kissed me.

My brain shut down. It had had enough apparently. Too much to take in at once had forced it to just shut down and I now saw the world through a veil of numbness. Which was sort of neat, except that it made logical thinking pretty much impossible.

            “…and then Jess was like, no way, you are so not gonna wear that! And I was like, oh my god just shut up already, you know?” She was going on about something; where had I been for the first part of this conversation? I was suddenly aware that she was talking really loudly for some reason, like she was projecting to someone across the room. Didn’t vampires have super sensitive hearing? What the hell was going on?

            She looked up at me, a very human gesture, except she was a vampire. She was a vampire god damnit she wasn’t allowed to have very human gestures. My brain clicked just enough to realize she wanted a response, so I let loose some sort of primal grunt. Apparently, it worked, because she started talking again. Her Valley Girl voice would have normally been a cheese grater on my ears if I wasn’t completely disconnected from my senses; as it was, it was still annoying as hell. She kept it up the whole time she was dragging me to some unknown destination, presumably to eat me. My bad, drink me. Vampire, after all.

            I felt her tense for just a fraction of a second, then release. She even let go of my arm, which was nice since it had lost feeling five minutes ago. “He’s gone.” She stopped walking, and in my state of numbness I stopped right along with her. “What in God’s name is wrong with you? Do you want to die?!”

            This was new. Valley Girl was gone and in her place was this pissed off bad girl in leather and heels. I’m sure in any other situation this could qualify as a fantasy but right now, not so much. Whatever it had been that was keeping me numb snapped and I did something exceptionally idiotic. I yelled back.

            “What the fuck is wrong with me, what the fuck is wrong with you?! This is New Haven for Christ’s sake! What the fuck are you even doing here?!”

            “Saving your life!”

            “So you can eat me yourself?! No fucking thanks!”

Stupid stupid stupid. It’s in the Book of Common Sense somewhere that if a vampire grabs your arm, drags you somewhere, and then lets you go that you have an obligation as a human to run the fuck out of there. Or there would be if any vampire had ever let a human go. I was failing this test miserably.

            She didn’t get mad. She didn’t scream. She got very still. The still that isn’t human kind of still. The still that only a corpse can be. “I’m not going to eat you.”

            Do not antagonize the vampire, please please please Josh for once be smart and do not antagonize the vampire. “Yeah, and I’m screwing Margaret Thatcher.” Oh goddamn.

            “Go home. Get a cross. Do not go out after sunset.” She turned away. She started walking. She was walking away from me. Why was I not running as fast as I could in the opposite direction?

            “I can’t.” I was suicidal. That was the only answer I could come up with as to why I was continuing to talk to an undead killing machine.

            And she stopped. Oh hooray, my brilliant get-away strategy had worked in that she was coming back. “You do not understand. You have been marked. If you go out after sunset again, you will be eaten.”

            “I’m a line cook. I work nights. There is no way I can all of a sudden just ask to switch hours.”

            “Quit.”

            Why was I continuing this conversation? “Give me another option.”

            She shrugged, another one of those human gestures that was just completely wrong coming from a dead body. “Die.”

            Fantastic choice there. My brain, already planning my body’s death, continued on and tried another angle. “You said I was marked. What’s that mean?”

            She was walking again, and I was following. At least she hadn’t eaten me. Yet.

            “The vampire who was following you was alone. There are no vampires in New Haven normally, but he must have wandered in. He marked you, and now you are a beacon to any vampire within fifty miles. If he does not eat you...” She let her sentence die midair. No sense in finishing what we both knew. I was a walking hamburger.

            “But, how? I didn’t even freaking see anything.”

            She just stared at me like I was being retarded. Which I was, of course. I hadn’t seen her either, and she had been close enough to grab me. “Technically, he threw a bit of his aura over yours. Human aura mixed with vampire aura to create a beacon for any vampire in the area.” 

            “Well…how do I get rid of it?” It seemed like the logical thing to ask, and she was still not eating me, so why not?

            Something akin to surprise crossed her face. I realized with a sudden start that I had been staring into her eyes the whole time. Not looking a vampire in the eyes is like, rule number one to survival. “I…do not know.” She stopped at the foot of a set of porch steps, and hesitated. “Can I…come in?”

            “Yeah.” The word was out of my mouth before my neurons could fire the correct response, which of course, is HELL NO. If I hadn’t said that one word, I would have been home sweet home and safe in my bed. She wouldn’t have been able to come in. Except that I invited her in. Now it didn’t matter how many times I changed the lock or doused the threshold in salt, she could come in. So why wasn’t I pissing my pants in fear?

            Because I believed her when she said she wasn’t going to eat me. Call me the biggest sucker in the world, but I believed she was telling the truth.

            “You have no wards at all.” The phrase came out disappointed, but not necessarily surprised. I guess I hadn’t made the greatest impression on her.

            “Yeah I don’t uh…” How was I going to finish that sentence? That I didn’t place wards on my house because then I’d be acknowledging that the magical world wasn’t a fantasy? That it was part of the real world and that I wasn’t willing to accept that? That not buying wards was my small way of rebelling against that fact? And how the hell exactly was I going to explain that to a vampire, of all things?

            “You will. Crosses?”

            “Uhh…”

            She snorted, which was actually kind of funny. “Those too. Silver.”

            “And garlic too?” Sarcasm is apparently my default tone in hanging-out-with-a-vampire situations. Since I seemed to be having so many of those lately.

            “Not everything they write in books is correct.” She stepped right in the line of salt on the threshold. So much for that line of protection. “Sea salt, not iodized.”

            I really wish I had known earlier that a vampire was going to come into my apartment and inspect my defenses against the supernatural. I might have made an effort to clean. I worked so much that the apartment tended to collect...things. Like half-eaten sandwiches and dirty laundry. Although, when I did clean it, it looked like no one lived there, since I owned almost no furniture. Maybe there was a happy medium somewhere in-between.  It only occurred to me after the thoughts had already run through my mind that that was an absolutely idiotic thing to be worrying about since I had just given an undead bloodsucker free access to my home for all time. Priorities, you know.

            “How long will this marking thing last?” I flipped the light switch on and cringed at the trash lying across the living room floor. Of course, she already saw it, since that whole vampires-see-in-the-dark deal. Still. This time I didn’t bother to think why I was concerned with what she thought about my living conditions.

            She didn’t settle down on the couch, not that I could blame her, but instead went to the windows and started inspecting them. “Well, taking into consideration the fact that no one who has been marked has lived more than a week, I do not think that is the first priority.”

            “A week?” She had just given me a death sentence. Why was I so calm? Had she charmed me? Weren’t vampires supposed to be able to do that, if you looked into their eyes long enough? And believe me, I had looked long enough.

            “I am being generous. The longest is three days. There was torture involved. I am hoping you can avoid that bit though.”

            “Why did you even bother saving me if I’m gonna die in a week?” No answer, just the deathly stillness that was still unnerving as hell. “What were you doing in New Haven?” And here is Josh. He likes to talk to walls. Man, I would have never guessed vampires could be annoying. “You are a vampire…right?”

            I didn’t see her move. All I know is one second she was staring out the window (which her reflection didn’t show in by the way, creepy) and the next she was on the doorstep. “Do not go out after dark, even to work. Ward your home. And buy yourself a cross.” And then she was gone.

            I slumped down onto my couch, pushing a pizza box onto the floor in the process. I had just been stalked by a vampire, saved by another one, invited her into my house, and then had her tell me I had a week to live. Well, a week if I was very very lucky. I had to do something about this.

            So after my fifth beer, I was starting to be more optimistic. Whoever the vamp I had invited into my house was, she wasn’t interested in eating me. Or at least, hadn’t been tonight. I was willing to go on faith that she’d keep on that path, seeing as how the alternative involved a very nasty death and then potential rise from the grave. Maybe not as a vampire, since she probably wouldn’t be interested in turning me, but possibly as a ghoul. Lots of violent death victims came back as ghouls. Or a zombie. I had always suspected my landlord of being a Voodoo priestess; maybe she’d raise me so I could keep paying rent.

            Ok, I was being ridiculous, but seriously, how would you take the news that you’ve got three to seven days to live? My solution just happened to involve alcoholic beverages made from grain and some morbid thinking. Not the best, but it was all I had on short notice.

            I wasn’t going to work tomorrow, of that I was damn sure. I was going to march my pansy, refusing-to-use-wards ass down to the charm store tomorrow morning and buy as many protective wards, charms, and crosses as I could afford. Since a vampire had given me tips on how to keep vampires out, I figured they were reliable and at least worth some monetary investment. Then maybe I’d go to the nearest church and bathe in holy water.

            But what was she going to do? Stupid. She’s a vampire, she’s going to eat other people, not worry about your retarded, left-for-dead self. Why did that bother me? I should just start making plans to check myself into a psych ward because I was seriously unhinged if I was upset about a vampire standing me up.

            I stood up to lock the door before I went to bed, but the spinning nature of the floor was a bit discouraging. And besides, if I really was marked by a vampire as a happy meal on legs, one itty bitty bolt lock wasn’t really going to do much.

            I stumbled to the door and locked it anyway.

I'm totally not dead

For reals. It's been awhile. And progress has been amazingly slow mostly because life is kind of odd. I got distracted by things like: coming to terms with the fact that according to the state I am disabled, figuring out that the state will actually help me get a job because I am disabled, working out like a fiend to try and not be so disabled, willing nerves to grow faster, playing video games and watching movies with boyfriend who is okay with the fact that I have a cane, giving advice to no less than three couples who have broken up despite having no qualifications to give advice on relationships, and also I decided I want to buy a fish. That's random but I found a fish bowl while cleaning my room (another thing I did instead of write) and decided it should be a home for a fish. Even though I have a cat. Who may eat it. Or at least mess with it enough to give it a tiny fish heart attack. But hopefully he will do neither of these things because then I'd be a fish murderer and mostly I just want a fish.

But honestly I write best when I am upset. When I got dumped, I started book one. And loved it. Because it was totally my escape. My life was shitty because my emotions were just wrecked so I wrote and wrote and wrote and could disappear for awhile. Currently, despite the fact that I am still technically partially paralyzed (there's such a thing as partial paralysis I swear), I am really happy. I like my life. It isn't shitty emotionally or even physically and so I have no need of an escape.

This is the test then of actually writing. I have to force myself to do it even if I'm NOT doing it to hide from the real world. Or doing it sneakily on my breaks during work because then it's like they're paying me to write a book on their time. I also have to find a job, move out, live independently. And honestly, ALL of these things are important. I suppose if I had to prioritize it'd go job, move out, live independent, write a lot. But writing is kind of the one thing I can do on my own without any requirements (aka I don't need a job to write). So....it boils down to I need to get back to some serious fantasy writing work. If only because I want to know how the series ends.