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Pending signing of a contract, Sister Night, Sister Moon has found a home with Drollerie Press, of whom you can learn more here:

Drollerie Press

This will be my first sale, pending whether or not I get the Cats Curious contract for Hulk Hercules before the Drollerie contract. And remember folks, until the ink’s on the line, it’s another soap bubble that could fall through. That’s publishing–blowing bubbles. Sonya, I think the ending of Sister Night, Sister Moon is much better thanks to your comments.

I’ve been sort of healing today, so I’m not as excited about this as I should be, but let me add a smile and a little wee. 🙂 But hey, two very likely projects. Not too shabby. And an agent wanting a second look. I feel a lot more real than I did just a few months ago.

I’ll go back to work now on Substance of Shadows. What a lovely pick me up for today!

Catherine

Did some blahblahblah whacking and some mind meld on chapter 9. Need to add a mystifyin’ clarifyin’ scene.

Long day yesterday. Cleared by the doctor to leave spaceport, but wore myself out by sitting too much. If you can believe it. Last night’s effort on the writing was certainly not all out.

This weekend, writing and checking papers will share the spotlight. We are getting closer to getting this rewrite sewn up, but considering the majority of the revision is happening in these pages, the light at the end of the tunnel is still a pinpoint.

More to come.

Catherine

Well, I was right. Chapter 8 held up pretty well. I cut about 3/4 of a page total.

Oh, the melodrama! Oh, the angst!

Chapter 9 on, though, will require me to be on, so to speak, so I’ll be giving it a miss tonight, because I broke down and took some pain medication. The worst that happens is a rash, so I’ll deal.

See you tomorrow, most likely after we’ve traversed the snowy roads to and from the surgeon’s office. I’m betting that we’ll have cancelled classes tomorrow…again.

Feelin’ a powerful bit better today, although the tummy still looks pretty savage. I’m beginning to be bored though, and that’s a good sign.

Today I even cleaned a bit of house. Mind you, nothing substantial. I can’t lift anything over 10 pounds for a while.

So, after catching up here a bit, I’ll begin chapter 8. Awesome. At least we did something this week.

Catherine

I am now coherent enough to let everyone know that I’ve come through the surgery okay. I’m not coherent enough to write yet, alas. You would not believe the combing I’m doing for typos in this short entry.

The operation was successful. Slowly but steadily I have been getting my mobility and my alacrity back. The fly in the ointment is that I have had an allergic reaction to the medicine they spread on my belly after the operation, so when my spouse returns home, I’ll be on both pain pills and benadryl for a bit.

Oh yeah. That’ll be good for editing. Sure. 🙂

But we’ll give it a try tomorrow and see how it goes. Today I think we’re just going to keep sleeping and relaxing and recuperating.

My stomach looks like a warzone. In spite of what they tell you, never take the bandages off.

Looking forward to getting back into some regular writing routine. At least there’s a finite end to this in site.

Hope you are all well.

Catherine

Students testing in front of me…so I must be back at work! But only for today!

And in preparation for Gall Bladder Liberation Day, it’s going to be pretty much school work and lesson plans, but here at Writer Tamago I wanted to add that I’ll be sending off an academic proposal to Wiscon about Margarita in Master and Margarita (deadline=Monday. Today, last really lucid day for a while) and another paper about either self sacrifice or about Neville Longbottom and the Hero’s Journey (because the last thing we need is another Harry Potter and the Hero’s Journey) for Portus.

Because part of the shell around the chick is an academic egg.

When I come out of the coma on Sunday, I’ll be trying to get back to a writing schedule. I have some papers to check next week, yeah, but if I can get comfortable and get my head together next week, I have a little enforced vacation of writing just waiting to happen.

However, I can be zen and heal if I have to. 🙂 I’ve been making as much progress as possible, consider the demon in my belly.

Every time I say something like this, I am fated to post again, but even so, I’ll let you all know when I have crossed the River Styx, journeyed through Hades, and passed on through to the other side. Hope the spirits don’t want to drink too much of my blood, because I’m not too interested in talking to most of them. Except I might stay a while to pet Toby and Michael.

I hope your pens are fertile, and I’ll see you on the other side, emerging like a phoenix from the carnage ashes.

Catherine

Thanks, Mark, again, for tweaking the site. It’s coming along, and I appreciate your help.

Last night’s activity was getting around with peeps from my writing group to plan out a group activity for reading at Wiscon. We’re going to do a great presentation with Julie Rose, Yolanda Joosten, Jenn Racek and myself reading, punctuated with a music track laid by Jools, and awesome artwork from Cat Horsfield for each story.

Then, to prove to myself what a crap proofreader I am, I applied spell check to the first seven chapters of Substance. Oh, never give me a job as an editor! I need proofreaders, I do!!!

Right. I’m teaching right now, gurgling gall bladder or no. I hope to do some writing tomorrow night while I’m waiting for a meeting, but there’s all that being gone for a week crap to do. I hope I feel like writing after the surgery some, because there wil be a lot of time.

Mata ashita ne!

Catherine

When you least need it, procrastination hits at work. But I am so tired, and in pain, so eh, what you gonna do?

While I was procrastinating, I reinstated some links on my links page so it’s mostly functional. I published an excerpt page from Substance of Shadows, the Esme’s Trial scene as it stands revised, and I added my bio page from the old site, now retitled “Your Host.”

I want to get a picture of myself on the front page and on the Your Host page yet.

Also, I want to make sure people can see the page links, so they know there’s somewhere else to go besides the blog.

Pages to do:

Wares: Stories I’m currently writing/peddling.
Excerpts: A few more excerpts to tantalize
Appearances: Riiiigggghhhtttt…but may need this in the future.

Mark, you can pretty much delete what I have at coffeebear now. I think I’ve salvaged everything I want from there.

For the rest of you: you can now reach me at

cathschaffstump.com

Update accordingly.

Catherine

Amanda Welkin and Sara Wolf are one…up through page 205.

And that’s all. On to chapter 8! Work and caucuses tomorrow, work Friday, so maybe more Friday night.

Guts on the down swing. Time to bind Stephan to the main villain. It’s that kind of mood.

Started making page for links to reduce amount of blank spaces on pages due to long side bar.

Catherine

I’m catching up here at Writer Tamago, mostly with being alive. 🙂 Surgery will be either Wednesday or Friday next week, and frankly, the situation is escalating to the extent that I may have to claw the gall bladder out of my abdomen before then. (Don’t say euw. Say hrm. Consider the possibilities.)

Anyway, have I been doing anything writerly in the last two days? Yes. My friend Mark has helped me work on some of the bits and pieces of the site. If you click on the about page, you can actually see a picture of me, and it doesn’t look so rudimentary. One thing I wonder about is this: can I reduce the amount of just blank color after the descriptive paragraph? I’ll have to ask Mark.

Anything else? Our multimedia group for Wiscon has scheduled a time to chat.

Today is my last day away from my job at Kirkwood, gall bladder flaring notwithstanding (imagine a gall bladder, nostrils flared, hoofing the ground, and all you have to fight it with is a red sheet and a couple of Advil. Or not.).
As soon as I am done doing internet things, which is taking a while today, I will buckle down and write.

The plan today:

Combine Sara and Amanda into one entity
Proofread chapter 8.

Ambitious? Sure. Hot to do it while I’m feeling okay. Sure.

I’ll report back tomorrow or Friday accordingly. Take care, everyone.

Catherine