It's been some time since I've posted and I thought I'd come up for air. This year has been crazy up and down and all around. I have some exciting [and scary] news to impart! I am MOVING! [insert gasp here]

After living in sunny, gorgeous, balmy California my whole life, I'm doing the one thing I wasn't sure I'd ever do. I'm uprooting myself and moving 3k miles away. And for what? The best thing ever of course. Love. That is right! Until we can trek our way back across the continental US, my Mythical Man Beast and I shall abide in the New England...blizzard bowl. I don't know what else to call it. For crying out loud, what Seattle gets in an entire winter season the New Englanders can get in a single snow storm! I'm gonna freeze my piglets off.

It'll be nice because [for a few weeks until I can find a day job at least] I'll have some free time and space to breathe after the insanity that has become - and honestly been - my current place of employment. I'll be able to be all marshmallowy and lovey dovey with my favorite person in the world. And I'll be able to get to know his friends and family better so it's not like some crazy tattooed and pierced California hippy is absconding with their pal without even a "Wassup?"

I'm planning on taking that sweet time to do two things [other than be sickeningly sweet with the Mythical Man Beast]:

1. Work on figuring out what the hell I'm doing with the Haegtesse series since, for Crissakes, I can't for the life of me think of where my brain was going with that. I'm going to have to sit down and do some serious re-thinking, re-editing, planning, outlining and general word-witchery to get it to heel. Luckily, I've left it on the back burner in my brain so I've got some ideas simmering and an itch to continue writing past the first 6 chapters I've already got done for Thistletorn. I am still planning on redoing Thistledown and once I have Thistletorn and Thistlebalm all laid out so nice and purdy in the ways in which I've been handling the Welkinbane as of late, I'll get it all fixed up and re-self-publish it. I'm going to probably reduce the price to $0.99 just to get it into more people's hands since I suck major eggs at marketing myself. Har.

2. Write the Welkinbane. Such a straightforward sentence and one that is laden with manic laughter. Good on me, I used the writing of Thistledown and the brick wall that has become Thistletorn as a lesson and actually planned out the entire series. If you've been wondering what I've been up to, that's been it. I took the nebulous cloud of ideas and laid them out in strict order - filing in the gaps and working out the major plot threads so it makes sense. 5 books [with a potential for a backstory novella] all laid out so shiny and pretty. Taking on laying out each chapter hasn't been so hard. I'm attempting to outline at least a few chapters ahead so I give myself some wriggle room to move things around instead of having to completely rework the entire expanded outline. Since the book is from the point of view of the three main characters, I've outlined the chapters in the points of view of each girl in paragraph form. To clarify - I have a working plot point and note style outline for each chapter and book - but I'm only fleshing out the outline to prime it for writing a few chapters at a time. So far, this is working. With more time and quiet on my hands, I'm hoping to wrap this up and begin sending it out to some agents before we head back to the West Coast. If you'd like to read the unfinished first three chapters of the Welkinbane, you can find it HERE.

I don't think I'll be competing in NaNoWriMo this year as I'm moving halfway through the month. The first half will be crazy work-related and packing-related shenanigans. The second half will be re-learning how to breathe and trying to find another day job around writing. I may still "compete" but it won't be to reach the word max. It'll be just to track my writing progress for those few weeks.

Oh, have I mentioned that trying to choose which reference books to take has been one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do my entire life? All of the books I'm sending out there fit into roughly 4 USPS flat rate boxes. That's it. It may sound like a lot, but if you saw my bookshelves at home you'd be like "Wait, you really aren't taking that many with you are you?" Luckily the parental units are letting me store my stuff with them until we move back to this coast so it's not like I have to loose any of them in the long term. Still.

I'm super glad I have my Nook with all of my pleasure reading books on it since, for the weight of one paperback, I can have thousands of books at my fingertips.

Well it's off to the think tank.

Adieu!