Line edits/adjustments for Ask Me…
Creating a blurb for Ask Me…
And then, just for fun, I worked on my cover art and the header for this website.
The line edits/adjustments took two days. It would have been one day, but the computer had a Microsoft Brain Fart ™ and lost much of what I'd done. Okay, it lost all of what I had done. But after another day-long marathon I have it completed.
The blurb, however… Three solid days of kicking my own tokhes. That's right. Three days, to write eight lines of text – one hundred sixty-three words. If I'd written the entire manuscript at that speed, it would have taken me…
Okay, I don't know. I think it works out to roughly 5.6100176 years or something like that. I stink at math and I'm brain-fried from trying to get all this done before the bulk of the Summer heat and my trip to the US are upon me, so I could be a tad off in my calculations. Actually, I know I'm off, because I'd only calculated using the current manuscript, and didn't include the 127 pages which were cut (the Alternate Rialto section, for those of you familiar with it).
Anyway, I'm exhausted. My office is too warm, and I still have a lot of writing to do. I've had 27 Stages on hold for quite a while, during the edits on Ask Me…, because I can't work on two manuscripts at once. I tend to merge the characters or lose focus, and I can't afford to do that right now.
So, I keep working on the final polishing of Ask Me… (the end is in sight, I swear I can see it! No, wait, that's just a curve in the road…), and keep storing ideas for 27 Stages away, making notes here and there and occasionally allowing myself to visit Abby and Federico – just to keep in touch, of course – between stays with Emily and Davide.
The funny thing is, when I started writing Stages, I was convinced that Abby and Federico would never blossom for me the way Emily and Davide did. Now, I see I was wrong. I can't wait to get back to those two, and the other cyclists, and the Tour d'Europa (and just in time for Le Tour de France, I might add) and all the insanity surrounding them. But I have to be completely finished with one before I can indulge in the other.
I just hope Abby and Federico understand. They keep torturing me with a storyline that wants to continue after the Tour is over – and I can't have 27 Stages become fifty chapters long! Then again, Emily and Davide are trying to get more time with me, too – in another book – so perhaps Davide will go to the US with Emily…?
And then there's my "lifeguard" story, as it's come to be known… Eros and his sexual confusion, bless him, intrigues me from afar…
AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!
Yeah. Let me finish this one, and then the next one, and then the next one, and we'll get to see where it leads, eh?
Oh, yeah - the cover art? Took the least amount of time of any of this stuff!
Ciao for now!