Friday Five for August 23, 2013

1. I want to first give a HUGE thank you to Heather Musk at Reading, Writing and Everything In Between. She started something new on her blog called Book Thoughts where she'll share her thoughts on the books she's reading every Thursday. Over the next six weeks, she'll be featuring the novellas from the 13th Floor series. She already has her thoughts on THE MARQUIS posted. Please stop by and have a read. She hit on exactly what I was trying to do with that first story.

2. I'm thankful that my son started preschool this week or else I wouldn't have had any time to be productive. I got my revisions done for my short story based on my CPs' critiques and sent it out to my beta readers. So far everyone loves the bonus story for the 13th Floor Collection. I put all the novellas and the short story together in one document to edit it for the collection, and it's over 139,000 words. Wow. I wrote, revised, and put all that out in a year? I'm a bit in shock and giddy with it.

2.5 My son had an excellent first week of school. He's comfortable with the new class and his teacher. He makes no complaints when I leave. Yay! I had my first school meeting, and I was saddled with more responsibilities. Not a huge deal, but I would've preferred to know these things before they were suddenly thrust upon me, and I had no clue what I was doing. I'm lucky to have some good helpers, though.

3. I sent out the info and cover for The 13th Floor Collection last night. I had a long list of people volunteering to help out. I'm so very grateful to you guys. You're awesome! Please forgive me if I forgot you on the mailing list. Just send me an email or leave me a comment if I forgot you or if you'd like to be part of the cover reveal on September 13th.

4. Have you heard of this wonderful group of speculative fiction writers called Untethered Realms? *wink, wink* This week, we all wrote a little something with the prompt: "awesomesauce." It's so much fun to see how different each one turned out.

5. Did you get a chance to peek at my workspace on The Writing Nut's blog this week? Please pop on over if you haven't yet. Here's another look into my world. I was excited to return to the library this week with my son's return to preschool. My usual spot is in a comfy chair at the end of the sci-fi/fantasy section, but unfortunately, that chair with its little table is gone. (You can see in the picture below there's a big empty spot by the windows where it used to be.) So I settled into the little desk with my laptop. It's not quite the same, but I'm trying out new spots. Hopefully I'll find a new favorite.

Have a fabulous weekend!

My workspace

I love getting a peek into other writers' lives and seeing where they write. I thought I'd share with you my recently reclaimed office (which still remains a game and storage room too). I like having a neat workspace. I usually have a big cup of water there on the desk as I write. My thesaurus is right beside the keyboard along with a notebook for my current project. The bright colors and frog have absolutely nothing to do with what I'm writing, but it's a cute notebook!

The room is small. It's 6 x 8, but it's a nice calming moss green and right across the hall from the bathroom. The window is to my back as I write. I love to look out the window, and it can get distracting if I'm facing it.

This is the side of the room to my right as I'm sitting in my chair. The walls are covered with invaluable works of art. The artist, my son, of course! There's two old "gaming TVs" on the dresser and some geeky card games. I have the collection of anthologies I have stories in, and in the frame to the right of the lamp there, if you can see it, it's the first dollar I made selling a story. It was a drabble, and I was proud to have made a buck. The dresser is full of stationary, notebooks, manuscripts, games, games, and more games. The closet to the left of me when I sit in the chair is full of boardgames.