Adventures Without a Laptop

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December 24th through the 28th

The holidays are over -- at least for me -- and now I have a brief window between now and the start of winter quarter to get as much writing done as possible. Many of you have heard about my failed hard drive, and many of you have wished me luck recovering my work. Many of you are writers yourself and understand what an unfortunate blow losing all that work is to your motivation. I'm currently working on repairing my laptop to a usable state, but I require some key components that will invariably cost money and a bit of searching.

Until then, I will be sharing my husband's computer (the same one he works from, so the time-share may be difficult to manage at times) and really hitting the keys in order to recover that which I had lost in the hard drive failure.

When I have my feet under me again, I plan to post a sneak peak of my next novel's protagonists, as well as a general synopsis and teaser!

Writers of the world: take a moment this holiday season to back up your work!

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

What a long, long week it's been. Full of highs and lows, I stagger, feet dragging, towards the New Year. Here are a few highlights from my December:

1. Last Thursday: Finals -- all three of them.

2. Last Thursday night: Laptop hard drive breaks with a catastrophic clank and whir.

3. Last Friday: Moving out into our new apartment (with only a week's prior notice)

4. Last Weekend: When not at work I'm unpacking, unpacking, unpacking.

5. This last week: When I'm not at work I'm knitting, knitting, knitting my Christmas presents!

But you know what? It's okay. I've been without a laptop for over a week and without the internet for nearly as long. It's fine, I realized after a couple days. This is the first vacation I've had from writing in over a year. This is the first time in too long that I've had time to curl up with a book, knit a hat, or simply nap on the couch with my cat. After finals and moving, this break is like an oasis of peace, and I've learned to come to terms with the fact I've lost the 30,000 words I had written on Scorpion King (advice to those reading: back up your work frequently).

I've decided I'm going to write it all again, all a little differently. I'm going to produce something better than the original. And while I'm waiting for my laptop to be fixed I'll work on my writing, my research, and my craft. When I'm at last allowed a day of writing, I want to be prepared, fresh, and ready to assume my new character's much milder voice. She's no Khensa, but she's no less amazing, and this break gives me a chance to connect to her as an author.

So this holiday season you, too, might be stressed and flagging and stumbling towards the finishing line, but don't fret. As it's said, when life shuts one door it opens another. So let's head into the New Year with our heads held high!

Hug your loved ones, enjoy that hot buttered rum, and I'll see you next week.

My ass, on the line

What an October it’s been. Many of you might have heard by now that I’ve been out with some sort of tailbone issue. Well, what I didn’t mention in the brief blurb was that I ended up missing a solid week of work and spent a majority of that time lying face down on some doctor’s table with hands probing my backside. Need I alert you how uncomfortably close he came to my butt?

In the end, what started as a two-week long pain marathon, finished with a climatic bang. I was caught between a rock and hard place – the inability to move, sit, or walk and my ever-present need for money. No work = no green, something not everyone can live without.

How did I remedy this situation? With another doctor’s visit. With five shots of Lidocain to the injured area and a whole lot of love (and by love, I mean scalpels and gaze and iodine). Sometime in the near future I’m going to need to go back in for surgery.

All of this drama has ripped a good three weeks of my life away, stranding me face down in a sea of pillows. But don’t worry, I recovered just in time for… school. It’s a big juggling act, my life right now, and sometimes I have to marvel at my own determination to publish a book between it all. But I will, and soon.

Sulfur might be taking me a month longer than expected, but I’m finally able to work again and am very close to sending it on its merry way. I can’t wait to finish this project. It’s almost as though life, seeing me toeing the finishing line, has decided to throw every obstacle it could between me and the tape at the end of the track.

But I’m almost there.
Almost there.

Chugga, chugga.
Chugga, chugga.

Keep writing,
Arreana

P.S. Chapter 12 was posted today

Sulfur's Cover

So today I post Sulfur's cover for all to see an enjoy. Like the first cover, it is the creation of one Ms. Angela Taratuta.

I've had a lot on my plate this week. We're currently in the process of clearing out my husband's childhood house and moving. I've always been somewhat of a neat freak, and I'll tell you, the things I've encountered in this house... Some of this stuff has sat untouched for twenty years. I ask my husband "What is this?" "Where did it come from?" "Why is it here?" and his response is likely to be, "Because it just is." To someone who immediately throws out anything they don't use on a daily basis, this is shocking. Shocking, I say!

I've also been having to brush up on my mathematics, for a placement test I needed to take in order to enroll for fall quarter. I've been out of Uni for a year, and I can't tell you how happy I am to finally be able to go back. (On a side note, I totally rocked the placement test, and I'll be taking the math class I wanted!)

Then there's work, and I don't mean the writing, I mean the work of the 9-5 variety. It's a physical job, as much as I enjoy it, and afterwards I tend to get home, moan, shuffle into bed, and conk out for an hour or two. Conducive to my writing career? Not exactly.

Speaking of 'writing career'. I've found the adjective doesn't adequately apply to my work. Yes, I write. I write a great deal. But I spend almost as much time editing and promoting and answering letters and stressing over deadlines. In view of these added responsibilities, I think it only appropriate that instead of 'writing' I am 'noveling'.

"Oh, Arreana! What are you doing today?"

"Oh, you know, the usual -- noveling."

As long as I don't go writing any memoirs or histories, I should be fine.

So how will all these added pressures (school, work, moving) affect my approximated release of Sulfur? Not much hopefully. Back in May, when I started writing Sulfur, I estimated a September release. This is unfortunately looking to become more of a mid-October release. Life has thrown a couple wrenches into my schedule, but I'm still going strong, and I haven't let myself get knocked too far off course!

For reading a lonely history of a stressed 'novelist', here is Chapter Eight.

Vacation is a Comin'

Wow, I haven't posted anything in... too long. I've been so absorbed in Sulfur I guess I've let myself fall off the map. I've been working extra hours the last couple months and that, coupled with a mid-July sinus infection and getting myself enrolled for Fall Quarter, have compounded to make me something like a zombie. I mumble to myself a lot more, and I sit doing nothing a lot more. What I call, "thinking," my husband calls, "freaking me out."

Good news? Writing's going great. I've gotten to what I think will be my favorite part of this story, and writing it, though emotionally difficult , has been incredibly rewarding. I have approximately eight more chapters to go; I could be done in the next couple weeks! Phew!

I will be posting the first chapter -- fingers crossed -- on July 29th, the first day of my vacation.

Ah, vacation. When I get myself a week of work off to flee my house. Where am I going? My grandparents, which may astonish some of you but not me. To me it's the best sort of vacation anyone can have. They have a wonderful house full of memories, a fragrant garden, coffee in the morning, and an altogether awesome appreciation for ethnic food. It means naps in the afternoon and talking politics in the evening. It's relaxing, which is more than I can say for some other vacations, and an annual tradition.

I'll keep writing even while my husband and I are staying there. After all, I need no vacation from writing, as it in itself is a stress-relieving escape!

I hope all of you are having a similarly wonderful summer. I hope you're finding ways to keep cool. Moment of bragging: I live in the PNW and it's been raining here every other day or so, I call that a good thing!

See you again on July 29th!

Half Way Mark

So how did I end up sitting here in the middle of the night, red as a lobster and manically exhausted?

First last night I got too little sleep. Three hours. I went to bed late only to wake early and go crabbing with my Troll Dad out on the Sound. I was excited, it's opening weekend and it was supposed to be a gorgeous day.

Gorgeous day. One of the first we've had in the Seattle area in a while, and the first over 80 degree day we've had in a dog's age. For a pale-fleshed Washingtonian with little tolerance for anything that isn't rain, flannel, and mold, this was a disaster.

Double disaster: I was wearing a grungy t-shirt, and now not only are my arms burnt, it's a farmer's tan burn. It's not even either. I have these splotchy pale spots where I'd obviously touched my arms with my sun-screened fingers. (Yes, despite stupidly forgetting to lather my arms, I had coated my face, thank the Gods!) I look like a spotted monster, and after getting home, cleaning the crab, cooking the crab, and showering, I was ready to nap. I laid down, fully ready to embrace my pillowing exhaustion, only to find that my body, first burnt and tired, was now feverish. I couldn't get myself warm. It was eighty-something degrees outside and I was shivering. Some nap that was.

Now I think, "Fine, be that way, Lobster Arms, I'll just go to bed early tonight."

To which Lobster Arms reply, "Nope. You will toss and turn and ache and writhe until you can't take it anymore."

Well fine, Lobster Arms. FINE. If I can't sleep then I shall stay awake and write. Misery loves company after all, and I have characters enough to torture.

So tonight, as Sulfur approaches its final climax, I charge ahead smelling of aloe-vera lotion and coffee! Today I have finished the estimated first half of Sulfur. Huzzah!

(Today I also caught my limit of crab. Come the Fourth of July I shall eat it with a vengeance.)

The Truth About Arreana

She's a shameless nerd.

The interesting thing about this claim is how popular it's become in recent years. I remember when being a nerd was a bad thing. When you hid the fact you programed games on your scientific calculator. We're talking the sort of nerds that in high school would clump together in a giant nerd crowd to talk about games, philosophy, and politics before college made it cool. I find that people that use the phrase "I'm a nerd" nowadays mean it as "I like Star Wars and zombies and bacon-related products, aren't I nerdy in a hip way?" or "I like manga and anime so much that I dress up as my favorite characters when I go to work." I'm a Revenge of the Nerds sort of nerd, the awkward, hiccuping female breed.

My husband and I went to high school together -- yes, we were high school sweethearts. Back then I always kind of considered him the leader of the nerds, the one-to-rule-them-all per say (to throw in an ironically nerdy quote). I, meanwhile, was the only girl who came to their nerdy gatherings. (At this point you may ask, what is a nerdy gathering? Back then it was playing Magic the Gathering, watching bad horror movies for the purpose of critiquing them, and taking turns playing Stepmania. Lan parties... Diablo II Lan parties, how I miss those days... but I digress.) So my husband was at the hub at these activities, and I was the only girl. A predestined match in my opinion.

We're still nerds to this day. We're big gamers, we talk politics obsessively, we get into frequent "math fights" that I usually lose. We use words in every day conversation that most people have never heard. We critqiue scientific experiments we read about (both of us being in the sciences, this is something of a habit). We're generally insufferable to the most normal people. Which is why I usually keep my nerdom hush-hush.

So most people don't know that I: love Minecraft, play games almost constantly (in the last year this has included, Fall Out NV, Dragon Age II, Dungeon Keeper I (my favorite game as a kid and one I'm enjoying replaying), Portal 2, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, and a multitude of others). To top it off, I spend way too much time on reddit.com/r/gaming.

Meanwhile, I'm writing. The gaming, the bad movies, the card games, and political debates, are more a relief for my brain. When I'm tired, when I can take no more of my characters and need a moment to be me, I turn to Kyle and say, "Let's go get coffee and talk about dissections."

So now you know, rant complete. (But I still can't help liking bacon)

(Sulfur Update: Chapter 1-4 written.)

Too much of a good thing...

I've been wondering how long it'd take for my wrist to finally start acting up. I suffer from carpel tunnel syndrome (like most American's) in my right hand. I currently work at a library, and before that I worked at a bookstore. Ergo, I work extensively with books, and the repetitive motion of shelving and arranging them is destroying my wrist.

Not only have been writing like an insane person these last couple weeks, but I've also been putting extra hours at the library. Last night, an hour before I got off, the sharp pain started:

I thought, "Shit, I have a 4,000 word chapter to edit when I get home."

I put on my wrist brace and told my husband, "I need to keep writing."

"I know, but you really shouldn't when your hand's like that." He gestured vaguely to my brace.

"I'll type one handed," I postulated.

"Then that might work."

"What if I get super good at typing one handed?"

"Then that would be awesome."

Challenge accepted, Kyle. Challenge accepted.

So this weekend, I'll be typing one handed.

Of course, at the time it didn't occur to either of us that this might be somewhat bad for my left wrist. But hey, I'm left handed, that's my mega-hand. Success shall be his.

I just realized that, when thinking about them individually, I genderize my hands.