Year: 2015

On Saturday, March 14th, at a quarter to six in the morning, I changed out of my pajamas and into the clothes I would wear to drive from Tucson, Arizona to Dana Point, California. Unfortunately as I did, I changed from my blue flannel shirt to my red one, and left my new Fitbit Zip attached to the blue shirt. Which I then flung across my bed before packing up my car and herding the family out the door for possibly our most highly-anticipated vacation ever. What I did, basically, was shoot myself in the foot for the next four days as far as my fitness goals went.

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Today is St. Patrick’s Day, and I am Irish, so…ten things you never knew about me (and were afraid to ask). 1. My great-grandfather on my father’s side was from Dublin. He apparently kept his accent even though he was living here. My maiden name, Conroy, is about as Irish as you can get. 2. I have been trying, on and off, to learn Irish Gaelic and have been unsuccessful. It’s beautiful, but tough to learn.

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It’s been a hard month, friends. Also, it feels like it’s mostly over and yet we’re not even half done and I may die. As you guys may or may not know, for my day job I do freelance and contract editing and formatting work. In general, I specialize in helping indie and self-publishing authors make their books look and sound professional. (I also do a variety of other work, ranging from making scientific papers easier for non-science people to read, correcting marketing materials, proofreading blog posts before they get posted, etc.)

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You will have heard by now that Leonard Nimoy is dead. I’ve been struggling with what to write, knowing that I wanted to write about him and Spock but not sure how. I discovered Star Trek (both TNG and TOS) at age 12, right around the time I entered school after homeschooling up to that point. Junior high school (middle school to you Americans) was…not an easy transition. I didn’t know pop culture or slang or teen humour. I was bookish, awkward, nerdy. Of course I thought I was the only one who felt unsure and out of place. Is it any wonder I fell hard for both Data and Spock?

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  Technology is great. The advances in the medical field alone, in the last ten years… Okay, but this isn’t about that. In my humble opinion, technology isn’t just for making things happen faster and supposedly (often) better. Technology is fun. I am certainly one to hop on any interesting-looking technology train when it comes along. I’m not an “early adopter,” though. Usually I don’t jump on the the little push-car that gets that train started. I wait till mid-train when things are moving a little slower and the cost is a little less. Yeah, I’m not sure that metaphor works as well as I’d hoped. Recently I wrote about getting a smart phone. I dragged my housemate into the 21st century shortly thereafter, and she is still muttering about those darn kids and her lawn. But I see her internetting on the go, and I know she reads books sometimes, and we sure text a lot more now that she gave up the flip phone… And me? I’m still having fun. Since I wrote that post, I have found some more awesome apps.

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  So, as most of you know, I’ve been revising Grave Touched since Feb.1st, and I just hit the halfway mark last night after a marathon session of cutting, condensing, and my personal favorite, second guessing. Yep, that’s right. I got great feedback. I also discussed a few things over email with KD and Siri, and I feel better than I did but…the doubts always creep in.

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I hope y’all appreciate what we’re doing for you. Do you know hard it is for us authors to leave our dark caves and step out into the sunlight? Or any light? And then, to put ourselves on display, where other people can see us. It’s madness.  It burns, the light.

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Have you heard of imposter syndrome? The fear that you’ve somehow achieved everything in your life by accident, and sooner or later everyone will realize you’re an imposter who knows nothing? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Somewhere along the line, I acquired a bad case of it, and I’ve never quite been able to shake it, despite all evidence to the contrary. It’s all about the stories (and lies) we tell ourselves, how we frame events, the themes and patterns we draw out (because we’re always looking for patterns and narratives, that’s what we do, we humans).

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  The library in my elementary school was half the size of a classroom, but as full of books as they could make it. Still I’d read nearly every book in it before I escaped to middle school and more books. In middle school and high school, I read a book a day most days. I read through the middle school library in just over a year, and the kind librarians let me into the high school section early so I wouldn’t starve for books. On a rare trip to the county library I looked like a contestant in one of those “all you can stuff in the cart in ten minutes” contest winners. When I got home I always needed help with my stack of treasure—especially since I was generally eyebrows deep in the first book while I tried to carry the rest. In those years, pretty much if I wasn’t reading, I was writing. I had an old electric typewriter on a table in my room, and a bunch of notebooks for when I needed to hide somewhere else (and a 35-acre farm full of places to do the hiding!) and I loved to write the stories that I couldn’t find to read. (Stories I can now identify as self-insert Hardy Boys fanfic? Yeaaahhhh…there might be a reason that stuff wasn’t in the library.)

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I turned Grave Touched in to my editor on Jan. 1st, and have been between projects since then.  I wanted to work on something, anything, so I started thinking about what I could work on until my edits on GT hit.  I decided to write a novella in the Reaper Girl universe and resurrect a languishing novel that needed a rewrite (but only on Sundays.  It’s a long story).  I also wanted to start Fey Touched book 3, Ever Touched, sometime soon so there would hopefully not be three years between it and GT.  With me so far?

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