Status check: Writing
So my schedule is blown up, but that's ok. I'm looking at the silver lining, and seeing that I'm going to have a few hours a week where I'm basically sitting and waiting on kids at various activities. So! I should be able to write during those, if I practice good discipline.
However, I do have some projects that are not-quite-writing but related. One is that I have decided to re-edit, re-cover, and re-release Vulcan's Kittens and a possible omnibus edition of the duology with God's Wolfling. This is going to be a slow-burn project as I'll also be writing a third book in that world (Spot and Dierdre's story) and I'd like to tie the three things together in some way. Second, and more urgent, is that I need to cover and release Lab Gremlins. I've taken it down from the blog, and have been working on editing it, but I'd like to release it sometime in the next month or so. I am moving at a snail's pace. I'm also working on an art project...
On the art front. I have been working almost daily this summer on art. Much of it has been digital, due to time and space constraints, and the big problem I've had with digital from the beginning is that there's no way to bring it into a physical realm. Well, I may have solved that problem. Paper prints are a good thing, but I found a company that does prints on metal, and wow... science fiction art on this stuff looks amazing. It's not cheap - I can't offer a $10 print sublimed on metal, it's going to be in the realm of $45-$50 at an 8x10 - but it won't need framing and matting, either, if I offer them as the floating print I ordered. I really can't emphasize enough how gorgeous and sleek these things are. Once I've had a chance to photograph this, and set it up in the webstore, I'm hoping that folks who've asked me for prints will be willing to take the plunge. Art is best seen in person, I fully understand that, but jumping through the hoops of finding a gallery willing to take on an unknown... not now. Maybe not ever. I'll have the shop here on the site, and we'll offer POD prints, sent directly to the customer.
I am writing. Just... slowly. I find that after work I come home thinking I'll be able to sit and write, but once I've eaten and showered and... thud. I just can't brain. And I've tried getting up early, but that conflicts with the First Reader's schedule and besides, I'm a morning person but not that much a morning person (we're talking oh dark thirty, here. My alarm rings at 6, and while the First Reader rolls out of bed almost two hours earlier I'm deep in dreamland at that point). And when I am home with energy, I have plenty of household chores to wear me out before I can finally find some quiet time to sit. And when I sit, I start falling asleep. You see how it is. Also, I've tried (again) doing dictation, but when I am composing in my head, and trying to speak it, the software gets very confused. It's super awkward. I'm going to try, and try again, probably with a voice recorder and then transcribing. I should be able to transcribe even if I'm brain dead tired.
header image is "Interstellar Commerce" the piece of art I've had made into a metal print.