Tuesday, November 29, 2016

wrap her up in a package of lies, send her off to a coconut island

Today was rather shockingly productive, considering I was not feeling #inittowinit for awhile (especially after I had some bourbon, but I'm getting ahead of myself here). I woke up this morning and forced myself to sit down and write for twenty minutes before I did virtually anything else, and that seemed to help get me into story mode even though I didn't have time to keep going. Instead, I showered, ate a snack, and drove down to Mountain View, where I had lunch with my old coworker friend Tomas. I hadn't been to campus at all since April, I think, and I've been v. removed from the gossip as a result. So, we caught up over one of those lunches that maybe would have wowed me ten years ago, but now doesn't feel totally worth driving down for (yes, I'm still spoiled even though I haven't worked there in a year and a half).

Then, I drove to San Bruno, where I had a writing date with Anne, Barbara, and Deborah. I often don't get much writing done with them, especially when we haven't seen each other recently - Barbara spent last week in Hawaii and Deborah and I have had alternating travels for several weeks, so I wasn't expecting much in the way of productivity. But I eventually settled down and got four pages, which I'll totally take. This was even with the distraction of email and texting and scheduling social activities for the week - so that was good.

Then, I sat in my car and called my mom, and then I drove home and quickly ate a frozen enchilada and made myself a boulevardier and called my friend Maya. She and I have been trying for weeks to get time together to talk about writing stuff - she lives in NYC, which makes the scheduling tricky. But we finally talked tonight, and it was great - we both want to make similar career switches over the next year (she also writes historical romance and wants to write something closer to YA or women's fiction), and we're going to start talking monthly and sending chapters to each other, and I'm excited about that.

I was also excited to discover that I make a mean boulevardier - I probably could have happily had five of them tonight. But since it's pure alcohol (bourbon, campari, and sweet vermouth), five of them would have put me under, and I need to work tomorrow and not spend the day recovering from a hangover. So, I limited myself to one (heroic, I know). Then, I turned on the tv and played a couple of episodes of the last season of 'Top Chef' so that I had some background noise while I was working. I've been meaning to finish reformatting the paperback for LORD OF DECEIT forever, and I really need to get it done - and some cooking in the background was the perfect complement to my eye-straining endeavor of redoing the InDesign file so that the book size can be 5"x8" instead of 6"x9".

So, I finally finished that - I still need to redo the cover to fit the new trim size (smaller overall size, but wider spine because there are more pages in the smaller book), but I'm going to attempt that tomorrow. For now, it's time to sleep and hopefully dream of something like Bali instead of something like running from Nazis (in other words, I'd prefer sweet dreams instead of my usual nightmares). Goodnight!

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