Saturday, March 24, 2012

In Between Projects

It feels like summer has come and gone. We were in the sunny, humid high 20s most of the week and have now dropped down to seasonal temps. Just a few days ago, we were sitting on our neighbour's veranda before supper, wearing shorts and t-shirts and drinking a glass of wine. Back to reality today with a bump. (At least no snow like some unfortunate places - Cold Lake, for example :-)

The contract arrived in the post from Dundurn for my recently accepted adult murder mystery. I'm about to read it over, sign and mail back. I have to trim my manuscript by about 4000 words and have started, already cutting 500. It's actually a good exercise to get rid of any extra words that do not add to the plot. I tend to be rather concise in my writing anyhow, so this is proving to be a challenge. Once the editing is done, I'm going to start working on the next in the series.  I've missed writing this month, but a break has been good.

This Tuesday is the Awesome Authors awards presentation evening at Ben Franklin place in Centrepointe. I've got my presentation and winners all typed up and am ready to do my part. It's a fun night with an auditorium full of young authors and their families in attendance. Lots of excitement and happy kids - I always enjoy the energy.

So, cleaning up a few chores on my to-do list. I finished getting everything in order for the accountant that does my tax return. As an author, I can write off some stuff, but it means keeping track of expenses and receipts - I'm learning that it's better to keep a running tally all year. That way, memory isn't strained to the breaking point and hair doesn't get pulled out in frustration.

Two book launches coming up in April - Dave Whellams' first novel, Walking into the Ocean on April 4th at Collected Works; Linda Wiken and Vicki Delany are having a joint launch on April 19th at the Library and Archives. I plan to attend both and will stock up on some summer reading. When I first started at the Department of Justice, Dave was the criminal law policy lawyer who signed off on some of my work - small world, all in all. We're actually going to put on a workshop at Justice the end of April about how we got started writing and how we found publishers. l'l be sure to steer clear of lawyer jokes.

Well, time to get that manuscript opened on my computer and my delete button warmed up. The problem with cutting words is that I normally want to add more. Writers are funny that way.








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