Sunday 'fess up...HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY WEEK

Hello my lovelies!  Boy has Anni had a good week.  Very busy, very stressful, and very LONG - but still good.

I did a lot of overtime this week.  It made for some long days.  I got a couple really good days in the fitness center too.  I'm working on trying to make it in 3 days a week for my regular workout and one class as well.  So 4 days a week in the fitness center.  I haven't consistently managed it yet but I'm trying.

We got our car paid off.  We get to go get the title on Thursday.  This is one less bill for us to pay.  Although we'll have a new car payment soon enough.  We need two cars.

We've also gotten all of our court costs from our nightmare paid off.  All I have left is my traffic fines and my reinstatement fee.  Then I can legally drive again.  YAY!

My biggest news is in regards to my writing.  I FINISHED ROUND 1 REVISIONS ON ONLY A NAME!  It comes it at 348 double spaced pages and 95,677 words.  I am really proud of myself.  Now it's going to sit and gather dust for a few months until it's time for round two of the revisions.

We've got a line on a 3 bed 2 bath trailer that we could possibly get into by the beginning of next month.  This means we'd have an office as well as getting out on our own again.  We've got our fingers crossed on this one.

Going forward, I have some big plans.  I've got a bunch of writing projects I want to play with.  I'm also going to start posting stories on my WordPress blog.  I'll be posting Magic Mondays - high fantasy, mostly my Aleran stuff but some random bits as well - and Freak Fridays - my paranormal and urban fantasy stuff - on WordPress.  Writing Wednesdays and SFU will still be posted here.  On the SFU posts I'll link the posts from earlier in the week on my WordPress blog.  I'll also post them up on Facebook and Twitter.

Vlog is posted as usual.  Added my story links & some video links as well as the vlog this week.  Enjoy!  If you read my stories, please leave me comments so I know someone's actually reading them?  Please?  Thank you!

Deirdre's Legacy
A Murder of Crows
Mama's Angels

Sunday 'fess up...HOO BOY, Anni had a bad writing week

Okay, I'll be honest.  I flopped this week for writing.  60.5 hours of work will do that to you though.  I've been flat out exhausted since Wednesday.  By yesterday I was ready to fall on my face.  I did get a teeny bit of stuff done - and I've managed to maintain my blog posts - but for the most part NOTHING got worked on.

Today, however, I've made some real progress on Only A Name.  You can see a bit of one of the early chapters in my Sample Sunday post.  I'm going to try to find some artwork to help me picture the characters better.  My only problem is Sorcha is a dusky/dark complected woman.  She's got the Indian (from India) look and do you know how HARD it is to find fantasy art featuring women of some other color than either chocolate brown or mayonnaise white?  Ugh...

This week's WW will be another featuring characters from K.D. Sarge's books Knight Errant and His Faithful Squire.  By the way, if you're a writer and want me to feature your characters on my blog in one of my WW posts please let me know.  I'll send you a list of questions to answer for the interview.

FFF will be another ethnic post.  I love Asian food in general (Vietnamese, Thai, and Korean as well as Chinese and Japanese) so I'll be doing a few posts on those.  Then I'll probably move on to German and Italian, which made up a lot of what I ate growing up.  Maybe even some stuff on Southern cooking, since my Gramma (dad's mom) cooked a LOT of it, up until Grampa got sick and she had to change his diet fast.

I'm still working overtime but not as much, so hopefully I'll get even more done on the writing front by next week.  I'm debating on which out of state con I'm going to go to - since Himself says he'll help me foot the bill for ONE - but I think I'm leaning towards DragonCon this year.  Which means not only do I have to get the money to get there, for the hotel, and for the con...I need a costume.  (Only reason I'm focusing on this one is because, health permitting, one of my Writing Idols is going to be there this year - ANNE MCCAFFREY.  If you haven't read any of her books, I recommend her Pern books and the FT&T/Rowan books.)  So, wish me luck.  I have to get the time off from work, the money saved, and a costume made by September...and we're in the process of house hunting too.  Wheeeee!

Vlog is done.  It's more focused than last week's but it's a little more depressing this week.

And one more video...just because I can.  It's based on the anime Soul Eater, but it's done to Marilyn Manson's cover of "This Is Halloween".

Sunday 'fess up...Anni's week from HELL

*waves*

Hello my lovelies!  Thanks for dropping by today.  I'm sure there was some concern over my getting this up - since I usually pre-write it and schedule it to post first thing in the morning.  To be honest, I actually forgot to preschedule it so I'm here, I'm writing, and the 'fess up shall be live soon enough.  (Which, since you're reading this, it is live. LOL)

This week can be summed up in one word: HELL.  Between Tuesday and Wednesday, I spent 25 hours at the day job.  We were pretty slammed at work so no writing between calls.  My breaks were spent chasing down information for various reasons - doctors, insurance claims, my W2, etc. - so no writing done there either.

My husband also got sick, and ended up at the doctor.  He's feeling better now but it was pretty touch and go with the whole "coughing and can't catch my breath after" thing.  I've been doing the same thing all week but I'm finally starting to feel better too.  Have you ever tried to talk on the phone for a long period of time while hacking your lungs out every few seconds?  It gets very difficult very quickly.

I got into some trouble at work.  Someone made an unfounded report on me to HR and I found myself having to defend against an allegation of peering up some dumbass bimbo's skirt.  My boss and HIS boss were all in on this meeting and they were pissed at HR for even entertaining the idea.  Then our center manager for my department (the BIG boss for my portfolio at the call center) walked in and wanted to know the situation.  My exact thought was: "Oh FUCK!"  I'm proud to say I didn't utter it out loud.  But it was a close one.

HR is going to drop the investigation because they were pretty sure it was just an attempt by this person to get someone into trouble.  Why they picked ME I'll never figure out.  But when I got back from my lunch my manager told me to check my schedule.  I have a 2.5 hour meeting block set up to meet with him, his manager, and the call center manager.  I've been assured by all three (yes, our call center manager actually spends a lot of time wandering around and talking to us, his own schedule permitting of course) that this isn't a BAD meeting.  But it does leave one a little.....anxious....over the weekend.  I'm trying not to worry about it but of course the thought does keep creeping in a little.

As might be expected, with a hell week comes hellish writing conditions.  I opened Only A Name, closed it again, and didn't touch the revisions all week.  I was just not able to focus properly on them.  Likewise with Cracked World.  Didn't touch it either.

That isn't to say I didn't get ANY writing done.  I did do some fluff (aka fan fiction), and I did manage to make my free writes most of the days this week.  I even got some work done on Ashe's world outside of the WW posts I'm doing.  I also managed to get a few character issues resolved and some plotting done on The Fallen, my angels/demons/alternate world UF.  So things have been progressing - slowly, but they've been progressing.

I'm hoping this week will be better.  I've got a few hours of overtime on Monday and 5.5 hours on Friday, but other than that my week is short for overtime.  Hopefully I'll be able to get more done.  I did manage to get my vlog done this week.  Then I promptly deleted it and did a new one.  I need to NOT do a vlog when I'm overly tired.  LOL  This week's vlog is a little different.  I share a tiny bit of my writing on a short story I've been playing around with.

That's it for this week's Sunday 'fess up.  This next week will wrap up my series on world building.  But that doesn't mean the WW posts are going away.  I've got some fun ideas and I'm looking forward to some great times going forward with it.

Sunday 'fess up...Anni found a new treasure

Hello to everyone on this cloudy, foggy Sunday morning.

As the title says, I found a new treasure.  I've been wanting a chance to read Knight Errant by K.D. Sarge (@KDSarge on Twitter) for some time - ever since she was kind enough to send me the bookmark advertising her book.  When it went up on Turtleduckpress' website, I read through the first three chapters.  I was hooked.  But I wasn't able to secure a copy for myself, finances being what they are.

Last night, after a particularly horrid day at work, I will admit to being rather cranky and depressed on Twitter.  K.D. offered to let me read and review her e-book version of Knight Errant.  I jumped at the chance.  Now, I am a speed reader so it doesn't take me long to read something.  Especially something that drags me in and holds me down until the story is over.  Knight Errant did that.  By the time I was done, I was giggling insanely and commenting to K.D. about how evil she is...and how awesome she is as a friend and a writer.

Here's the link to Turtleduckpress, where you can go buy her delightful book
Here's one of my reviews, posted to my book review blog

Now, on to the writing.

I found a website called 750words and I've been using it to do some free writing, and to work out some random plot problems.  It's really a very useful website.  It encourages you to write with no inhibitions, no distractions, and no other thought than just to write.  My friend Hawke pointed it out to me and I've been going there every day ever since to get my free writing done.  It's helped immensely.

Revisions are going slowly with Only A Name.  I took a break from the chapter by chapter revisions and read through the whole thing.  Once I did that, I began to doubt whether it'd be ready by June.  I'm still going to try to get it there, but I honestly don't know.  I thought it was a good story when I decided to revise it.

Yes, I'm doubting myself again.  I do that from time to time.

I've put some work into Ashe's world and her story.  There'll be some of that in the next Writing Wednesday.  I've also got a new short that might be going somewhere that I started with one of the days of free writing.  I'll have to figure that one out eventually too.

Still looking for an artist to help me out with cover art for the stories I want to toss up on Smashwords.  Still  revising and editing those too.  Read the style guide for Smashwords.  82 pages...my head hurt when I was done, and I'm still not sure I understand the whole thing.  I'll go over it again when I'm closer to being ready to upload the stories.

And, on a final note, my vlog.  This one isn't as interesting as the others - at least to me.  I'm mostly rambling...but I do introduce you to my new stuffy Lovin' Lion!  I collect teddy bears.  I also collect stuffed animals in general, but mostly teddy bears.  I lost my entire collection except for one little bear when we lost everything last year.  So now I'm rebuilding my collection.  Slowly, but it's started.

Me vlogging as well as blogging...and other stuff

If you've been following my Twitter feed, you'll know I've made an attempt to start vlogging as well as blogging.  It's not exactly my forte as I'm not very good with face to face stuff but I figured it wouldn't hurt to learn.  So...I've got exactly TWO vlogs up on YouTube right now.  I'm already planning my third one.  They're nothing fancy and honestly, I don't know if I'll make them fancy or not.  I like things simple so I might just keep them that way.

Anni's Vlog, Ep 1

Anni's Vlog, Ep 2

I've also got some of my writing going up over on WordPress.  I'm eventually going to purchase the domain name and use that as the start of my webpage.  Right now it's a good place to find some of my stuff.  I've only got two posts up there right now.  But I'll have a third up before the end of the year, and then I'm going to TRY to get something up every week or every two weeks.

Anni Writes! (No really, I do!)

Going to my dad's house for a little bit tomorrow (I expect to have to post a family rant later), then to our friend Katey's house, and then on Monday over to dad's again so I can play with my niece's two boys before I head to work.

I'll be posting my usual Sunday 'fess up this week also, so be watching for that.