I’m blogging at The Lucky 13s today about my editorial letter. It’s serendipitous, because I just finished going through my second round of edits with my editor for Linked.
So, it’s about half past two on a grey November Wednesday afternoon, and I’m feeling slightly ill, am dosing a killer backache with painkillers that seem to do exactly nothing, both my daughters are off school, I’m trying to catch up on a full work load, and I’m surrounded by a full groceries delivery that I haven’t yet put away and a cat who keeps spraying hair all over the place.
Then I get this tweet from my Simon & Schuster editor, who is currently working on the second round of edits for Linked, and everything is better!
@navahw Navah WolfeDear @imogenhowson, thanks for making me cry on the train this morning. Love, your editor. #editorjoy
Friday:
For youth group: Toilet roll, balloons, shaving foam. Pasta, chocolate-cake-in-mugs.
For Gloworm: E45 Cream, antihistamine tablets.
Sunday:
For everyone: Steak and Kidney Pudding, roast vegetables, gravy, treacle tart, custard.
For Gloworm: E45 Cream, antihistamine tablets.
Monday:
For Gloworm: Chicken Cup-a-Soup, tinned tomato soup, calamine lotion, paracetamol.
For me: Paracetamol, wine.
Tuesday:
For Gloworm: Chicken Cup-a-Soup, tinned tomato soup, ginger beer, Dairy Milk bars, paracetamol, calamine lotion.
For me: Paracetamol, coffee.
Yes, what looked on Thursday like eczema, and turned on Friday into what looked like really bad eczema, on Sunday was clearly not just eczema but hives, and on Monday was diagnosed as neither eczema nor hives, but Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease. Which is a virus in the same family as chickenpox, and the only cure is waiting for it to go.
I don’t have Gloworm’s symptoms, but I am feeling kind of flu-y, so either I’m fighting off the virus…or I’m working my way towards demonstrating that I didn’t fight it off at all. I do most sincerely hope it’s the former.
So I went to the doctor and explained I hurt my knee playing hopscotch, and he told me that as long as it didn’t swell up (it didn’t) or lock when I bent it (it doesn’t) I just had some bruised cartilage and it would get better by itself.
I asked if there was anything I should be doing to help it heal.
And he said, “Don’t play hopscotch.”
It’s a horrid cold day here – no frost or anything interesting, just that damp cold that goes all the way through you. I felt bad for my daughters having to come home from the bus stop in the cold, so I had spiced cider waiting for them when they arrived. Now my whole kitchen smells of Christmas.
And in case it’s cold where you are, too (which it is, unless you’re Serenity Woods), I include the recipe for you.
Spiced Cider
Place ingredients in saucepan, warm gently until piping hot but not boiling. If you’re going to keep this for longer than a couple of hours, take out the spices or it starts to taste like cough medicine!
Entering into a time of extreme busyness (oh good, just before Christmas). For all excellent writing-related reasons (in really good news, I’m at over 18,000 words on Linked-the-sequel, Mirrored, and I finally like the damn thing!), but I feel a little frantic all the same.
Right now, I’m catching up on some work while Abstract cooks dinner (tuna noodle casserole from my American cookbook), and tomorrow I need to phone Merry Maids to see if my fabulously thorough cleaner can come for a bit longer every week.
I also need to phone the surgery. Falling down the stairs didn’t hurt me, beyond making my triceps very sore (I reached behind myself as I fell and grabbed the bannisters, which saved me from falling all the way to the bottom but did my arm muscles very little good), but in the same week I played impromptu hopscotch with the youth group, and have done something bad to my knee. A week later it’s no better, so I have to go see the doctor.
Is it really bad that I don’t feel I have time to see the doctor?
In between doing edits for Linked, and editing a (fabulous!) manuscript for Samhain, and struggling with the hell that is Telepathic Twins Save the World, I’ve joined The Lucky 13s, a group blog of YA and children’s authors debuting in 2013. I just spent far too much time reading about their books, and oh my goodness, 2013 is a long time away to wait for some of these stories!
Who else wants to read The Assignment by Elsie Chapman, for instance? Or Bruised by Sarah Skilton? And yes, the first is about (sort of) twins, and the second has a heroine with my name – how cool is that?
I hope to blog regularly over there in the new year, and 2012 will be filled with luck and excitement and squeeing over cover art as we prepare for our debut year. Well, I expect, anyway.
In other news, I went to a chocolate tasting and demonstration, and tried out the new Indian restaurant in the next-door village, and read lots of Kindle books, and fell down the freaking stairs.
Various things said over the last few days:
“Don’t lick it. It’s a systemic flea killer.”
“If I’d known it was meant to be funny I’d have fake laughed.”
“I want a laundry chute!”
“My food is problematic.”
(Yes, the funniest one was a quote from Firefly.)
Emerging briefly from my editing cave, it strikes me that I should update my blog.
But every time I come here all I can do is admire my beautiful new graphics, courtesy of Hot Damn Designs.
I have matching business cards too. Oh the happy. When I was ordering them at Vistaprint the other day I had to restrain myself from ordering matching pens and mugs and banners and…wait for it…car magnets. How awesome would our dull dull blue estate car look with huge magnetic business cards all over it?
So, half my advance arrived, in a cheque (in dollars) that caused some consternation at the local bank. (Assistant to colleague in hushed voice: “There’s a customer with a very large cheque.”)
I’m investigating accountants, and talking to a web designer who’s going to design me a custom header for my website (and matching business cards!). I’ve bought some new RSI gloves and am going to be buying a new computer chair and possibly a new desktop computer–and laptop when this one dies. All sensible, career-oriented, business-expensey type things.
And, as a not sensible, not career-oriented, definitely not business-expensey, purchase, I bought myself a charm bracelet. I love them anyway, have never had one, and it seemed like the perfect way of commemorating career-related milestones.
So now I have a little silver charm bracelet with four silver charms: a champagne glass to commemorate getting my (fabulous!) agent, a red-enamelled apple to commemorate my manuscript getting to New York publishers’ desks, a book to commemorate Linked‘s sale, and a piggy bank to commemorate receiving the advance. You have no idea how many times I mistyped commemorate in that last paragraph.
I’m coming up to a super-busy time. I’ve got edits for Linked coming this week, I’m writing hard on the sequel, Telepathic Twins Save the World, I’ve got a partial and synopsis for another book in with my agent for her thoughts, I’ve offered a contract on another of my Samhain authors’ books and so need to be editing that as soon as the paperwork is all through, and I’m doing a critique for one of my critique partners. Plus all the usual work/life/family stuff. And – oh heavens – Christmas is coming up. And I have to take all three cats to have their teeth cleaned. I still have scars on my hand from the last time they needed a trip to the vet – in July. Yes.
But it’s okay. Because I have my charm bracelet. It says, See what you did? Bet you can do it again.
