50% Off Coupon for Returning My Sister’s Face E-Book

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Hope everyone’s holiday season is going fabulously! Got a holiday bargain for folks wanting to give the e-book of Returning My Sister’s Face as a gift or who just want to treat themselves: a 50% off coupon from Smashwords.

Just enter in the coupon code WC93X (not case-sensitive) before checkout and get Returning My Sister’s Face for $3.50! (Offer expires January 1, 2011.)

RMSF is available from Smashwords in every major e-book format, including MOBI (Kindle), PDB (Nook and Palm reading devices), LRF (Sony Reader), EPUB, and PDF.

Happy Holidays!

December Lights Project: Holiday Gifts of Free Short Stories Throughout the Month of December

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Received an email from the lovely and talented Stephanie Burgis inviting me to take part in a project she and her also-extremely-talented husband, Patrick Samphire, are putting together: the December Lights Project. It’s an online compilation of short stories to make you laugh, provide some warmth and good cheer, and generally make you feel good about the world, all for free, as a gift to readers this holiday season. Every story is guaranteed to have a happy ending, and several are already up—with new ones going up several times a week throughout the month.

“What a wonderful idea and a lovely sentiment,” thought I. So of course I told Steph to count me in. Stay tuned for an announcement of when my December Lights contribution goes up.

And herein a list of the writers who will be a part of December Lights: Continue reading →

Ailing Human Suit Leads to Rooting My Droid and Top 5 Essential Rooted Apps List

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Hope everyone who observes it had a fabu Thanksgiving holiday!

Spent most of mine lounging on the couch, dealing with human suit issues. I seem to have acquired a minor cold, which is throwing off my temperature regulation system. Irregular fever spikes are an early symptom of my immune system about to go totally wonky, so I took it really easy, even through I didn’t feel that bad. As such, I got little to no writing done. But I did take the plunge and root my Droid.

I’ve been wanting to root it for a while now, primarily so I can overclock the CPU. But I’ve been too lazy to go through all the hoop jumping, and I’ve also been concerned about the whole voiding of the warranty thing (with the related worry that I’d brick my Droid in my root attempt). But my warranty is nearly up, and a new, free, extremely safe, one-button rooting app recently came out: z4root.

Z4root provides the option of temporarily or permanently rooting your Android phone. So I could try it out first and make sure everything worked okay before doing it for keeps. And it also has an easy, one-button unroot option, so “permanent” isn’t a set-in-stone commitment either. Installed z4root, rebooted my Droid, ran z4root, and two minutes later, I was rooted. And suddenly a whole wealth of new apps with shiny options opened up to me. Time for another list!

Herein my Top 5 Essential Rooted Apps:
Continue reading →

Returning My Sister’s Face E-book Now Available

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Coming out a little earlier than expected, Returning My Sister’s Face is now available as an e-book in a myriad of formats. Just in time for holiday gift-giving! Buy it now for the low, low price of $6.99:

And for folks who still crave the feel of paper, it’s also available in hardcover and trade paperback:

Returning My Sisters Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice

It’s Time to Stop Writing for the Day When the Pain Becomes Blinding

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Managed 1.5K words on the new novel. Meant to try to wrap up the “Kiyohime” short story, but I wanted to put down a couple thoughts on Dragon Queller. “A couple thoughts” turned into “this scene” which turned into “this scene plus this bridge” which turned into “this chapter.”

Now head hurts a lot. Pain radiating down my neck and spreading to my shoulder. Looking at the monitor makes my eyes go squinty, and my stomach’s all queasy from the owing. Stupid of me, really, but I’d always figured that “suffering for one’s art” was figurative.

I think it’s time to call to call it done for the day. And take a handful of pills.

Writing Progress and State of the Human Suit. My Sinuses Hate Me.

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The good news is that my joints don’t ache, so I’m likely not having a flare-up. The bad news is that everything sinus-related hurts or is otherwise nonfunctional: head, eyes, face, nose. But the upshot is that I’m not contagious (probably), and with the application of a veritable pharmacopoeia of meds, I can still function. Sort of.

Managed around 700 words on the “Kiyohime” short story. Also decided to give in and began writing the sequel to Demon Queller. It feels like the height of presumption (and folly) to start work on book 2 when book 1 isn’t even at the “ready to market” stage, but it also feels wrong to smother the craving to put words on the page. Ergo, 2K words on Dragon Queller.

My muse, she is a skanky crack whore. I know it. She knows it. We’re way beyond rehab.

Making Progress on the Short Story and More Thoughts on Short Story Versus Novel Writing

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Managed 1.5K on the “Kiyohime” short story yesterday. It’s coming along well. Think I’m around the halfway point. Got the whole story outlined and plotted out, including the twisty bit which was annoying the heck outta me, and getting close to the climax scene. At this rate, I might have it at zero draft before month’s end.

It’s a little weird working on a whole new story after slaving away at the novel for so long. Having to reset my story/character head-space to get it out of my novel’s world. And I keep having the itch to return to my novel’s characters and continue their story.

That’s a brand new, shiny novelty for me. I’m accustomed to feeling done with a world and characters after finishing a short story. I’ve had folks ask me whether I was going to expand some of my short work into novels, and I had a hard time seeing the appeal of that. I mean, I told their tale, that’s it, the end. (‘Course, having said that, Demon Queller began life as the short story “Honor is a Game Mortals Play.” )

But I intentionally left room for continuation in the novel, and now I want to continue it. I see the virtue of being a novelist with an ongoing series. The characters and their world become fundamentally ingrained in your creative consciousness, and you don’t need to be constantly rebuilding new worlds and new people–although, don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of appeal in that too.

‘K, I get it. Writerly revelation, la. And I thought I was past those. Hah. The cosmos calls “hubris” on me yet again.

Weekend Productivity Fail – Lost in Research

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So I spent the weekend not writing. Instead, I researched.

I really, really try to only do ad hoc research for stories because I know that if I start doing preemptive/preliminary/preparatory research, it will eat my soul–and my time, which is more valuable. But I started looking up a fairly, or so I thought, simple detail about Buddhism as practiced in Japan, and that led to the Meiji Restoration, which led to some interesting things about Shintoism…and, well, soul-eating was had.

And now I’m behind where I want to be on the short story. Sigh. Stupid inquisitive, obsessive-compulsive brain.

Novel at First Draft But Printer Pushing Up the Daisies

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Finished my last zero draft pass on the novel. In these several zero draft passes, I ended up adding approximately 1.8K words. The novel is now officially at first draft and ready for critique. Yay!

However, our trooper of a printer gave up the ghost several months back, and we’ve been limping along with a backup printer–accommodated somewhat by the cosmos which has not required us to print out many documents recently. But now, as I discovered after printing out the first thirty pages of Demon Queller, the backup printer is officially kaput as well.

Sigh. Time to buy a new printer.

Guess I should be grateful that our primary printer, an Epson Stylus inkjet, lasted for so long. Haven’t needed to get a new printer in around ten years; that’s a pretty decent run. But I’m irritated that we need to now.

So, any recommendations for a low-frills, low-maintenance, workhorse-esque inkjet? Otherwise, we’ll probably end up getting another Epson. (The backup was a Canon, and it was not a workhorse.)