Downtime: Week 2

I sympathized with Jen's feelings over the weekend, thinking "why isn't anyone blogging?" Then I remembered I wasn't, either. Heh.

Well, last week at work kicked my ass. Worked late (meaning past 7 pm) Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. (This after getting there around 8 am. Yeah, I was pushing 60 hours.) And I was busy most all of that time, so unfortunately not much blogging, Forum, or anything besides work. I was lucky to see Little Boy before he went to bed.

Had Book Club with my playgroup Wednesday night, during which we discussed The Time-Traveler's Wife. I also passed around my copy of TSL - hey, we were in a bookstore - and recommended it in case there were some closet romance readers (or anyone interested in becoming one, or who liked books about spies). *g*

Saturday was spent almost exclusively with LB at a playgroup thing, giving DH the day off to bum around the house. Sunday was church and then in-laws (the fun ones).

And so passed my second week of "rest" before diving into rewrites. I'll probably do that around February 15th, give or take.

I decided this week is all about the fiction for me. I just finished One Night for Love by Mary Balogh, one of my favorite Regency authors. (Save TSL, I hadn't read much Regency since starting OHN, so it was a nice change.) I'm also reading Hand of Devils and The Peculiar Princess *nods at Christy* and coming up in my TBR are the Kinsales and Woodiwiss that the good folks at the Forum recommended for me. Also Child of Awe, which I never finished. Hmmm...and I've got The Sixpence Bride by Virginia Farmer, another time-travel which looks good - cover art notwithstanding! - and The Highlander's Touch by Moning (I wasn't overly impressed with her first, Beyond the Highland Mist, but I've heard her later stuff is better).

Next week will be the non-fic, the craft stuff, that I was putting off reading (or rereading) until I had a first draft. Sin and Syntax looks as fascinating as grammar books can get *g* and I have Writing the Breakout Novel by Maass (some of you *cough* may know him). Also The Novel Writer's Toolkit - signed! - that I picked up at a Crusie-Mayer workshop. And such staples as The First Five Pages (Lukeman), Self-Editing for Fiction Writers (Browne), and Characters and Viewpoint (Card), etc.

We'll see how many I get through. Hopefully all the reading will get me charged up for plunging into OHN and making it really shine.

I also need to fiddle with Liquid Story Binder and get everything set up, since I think I want to do my rewrites in there and take advantage of all the nifty features it has. I've already set up character dossiers and photo galleries for Alec and Elspeth. I can do a timeline, storyboard, track changes, auto-backup...

Gah, it's after midnight, and tomorrow I don't get to go in late like I did today. (I went in at 11 am this morning, after a leisurely family breakfast and some errands, thanks to my gracious and understanding boss, who suggested it after all my hours last week. Unfortunately I was also at work tonight until almost 8 pm. *sigh*) So I'm for bed.

OH! I just sent off an e-mail to a really awesome comic book/graphic novel artist (Jason Badower - see his blog here) who is accepting commissions to find out how much he would charge to do a drawing of Alec and Elspeth. How kick-ass would that be? Extremely kick-ass. So I hope I can afford it and he has time to do it before his next big project. *crosses fingers*