Submissions, Support and Special Mentions

The word of the week is submission.

October 8 - Guess what I did ALL WEEK LONG?

I'll be honest with you: I've spent the whole of this week editing my novel. Today's entry is a heads-up, as there was little that was exciting or non-novel-related went on this week. Really.

Every single day, I've been up at 7am, in my comfy couch-chair at 8am and editing until at least 10pm at night.

I begrudged myself time to eat lunch or dinner or take a 10-minute sanity break every hour or two. Those were necessary, to keep me focused and to let my brain have a 'processing break' to help the story stay in perspective. Which worked; I came back at it every time with a happy will, working to grind a fine edge onto the tale to make it as perfect as possible.

That's about it… but it's all part of reaching the goal, so read on….

October 9 - Borderlands2 Is Extra Awesome Today

I'm fairly excited to be able to get back to playing Borderlands2 later this month, once I finish editing the second draft of my novel. AND I've been able to give my aching, burning, taut-as-wires wrists a VERY thorough R-and-R period first. BL2 is all that the first Borderlands was, times ten, in my opinion. More of all that you love and lots of things you didn't know you'd love, but once you see them, you're hooked.

Also today: the Mechromancer was released, which is a fifth class for BL2. It may not seem like much, but it's a class designed for people who can't shoot straight - JUST LIKE ME! I was over the moon when I heard about it and I'm VERY excited to get to play it soon. It's a double- excitement BL2 October for me!

Borderlands2 - Gaige the Necromancer and DeathTrap

October 10 - HK from The Terminator is REAL!

I love scale models. I also love scifi. I'm no good at one, but getting better at the other. When you combine the two, I'm in heaven. Somewhere out there, someone who's also really, really good at that one thing decided to build a REAL FLYING HK from the Terminator movies! Watch the video below and be amazed… the best part is right at the end - the thing has LIGHTS!

October 11 - That cheque is for HOW much??

As some of you know, I used to spend a good part of my day cashing cheques for people as a living. I've seen a LOT of different kind of cheques, both good and bad, large and small.

However, I've NEVER heard of ANY cheque as large as the one recently received by Allen Smith, a 22-year old college student in the USA. It was a regular monthly cheque, received as assistance for his tuition costs.

The one this month was for… 690 MILLION US DOLLARS.

The best part? He returned it ASAP.

Obviously, there's no bank in the USA( or likely anywhere else )that would be able to cash that cheque. Considering the hoops I had to go through when cashing cheuqes of somewhat smaller amounts than that, I think he realized right away there was nothing he could do but take a picture of himself posing with it, then do the right thing.

However, you still have to wonder: how could something like that get PRINTED in the first place?

October 12 - Almost Tragedy Averted in 2012

A year ago today, I almost lost my mother to blood clots. And overwork, on my part.

You can have a look at my blog entry for that week - it's the day highlighted all in Red.

It was a watershed day for me, in several ways. First and by far most importantly, I realized how close( and how easily )I almost lost my mother. I'm close to all my immediate family and to have one of them taken from me due to the simple fact I wasn't close enough to get her to the hospital for a 'non-emergency' that turned out to be anything BUT… was shocking.

Second, I realized how insidious my job at MMart had become. That I was so INCREDIBLY fortunate to have my mother's emergency happen on the SINGLE day off I had in over a month showed how overworked I was. It was then that I realized I had to leave MMart, ASAP, to keep not only MYSELF healthy, but my FAMILY.

Thirdly, and I didn't realize this until earlier this year: without my mother, I wouldn't have been able to write my first novel as quickly, efficiently or as well as I did. PERIOD. If I do manage to make a career out of writing, it will because of the massive support and belief in me that she's given.

So every year, my family and I will celebrate 'MomsGiving', to celebrate and give thanks that my mother is still with us today, when all the odds then said she shouldn't have been.

Love ya, Mom. :-)

October 13 - Lucky Day! My Novel is SUBMITTED!

I finished the second draft of my novel today, at 5:05pm PST and submitted it to Harper-Voyager 30 minutes after that. Eleven days of working 12-14 hours a day culminated tonight in my relieved happiness. It's my first novel and first submission for possible publication, so while they're looking for ebooks only, it's still a start on the road to becoming a published author.

However, I'm not going in all starry-eyed: some authors have posted that the call for submissions by Harper-Voyager isn't a good idea in some ways. I'm well aware that I'm inexperienced, that I don't know the publishing business all that well. I have friends that do and I'll be sure to check with them if I do end up getting my novel accepted by this publisher, at any level. So we'll see what happens in less than three months, which is how long the published had posted that it would take to get back to people.

Though it's the size of a phone book, it's MUCH better reading!

In the meantime, here's why I think my second draft is MUCH better than the first:

- I finished it ON TIME! ( and I finished the first one EARLY! )
- I'm HAPPY with it, from prologue to ending
- I'm STILL enjoying reading it, despite being the one who WROTE it!
- It's TWICE as good a story as the first; all the bits tie tightly together now
- I spent 12-14hrs a day for 10 days editing and I enjoyed every MINUTE of it
- I submitted it to a publisher, the FIRST of my works that I can say that about!
- The characters are now so well-developed that they practically wrote themselves
- While I was editing it, ideas flowed so fast that I now have TWO MORE books sketched out!
- I added 15 pages, cut over twice that and still ended up with a smooth story flow
- I don't feel that I have to do a THIRD draft QUITE yet, as this is as good as I can make it without seeking professional help( editorial or possibly psychiatric, if I try ). ;-)

Now I'm going to take a break from writing for a while, and just job hunt.

Not excluding writing jobs, either. :-)

SPECIAL MENTION:

Immediately after I submitted my novel, I spent a few hours attending an online tournament celebrating the 2nd Anniversary of AoN with my friends. I was knocked out early, which is actually when the fun REALLY started: I spent the rest of the tourney being an Announcer Extraordinaire - I was on fire, verbally! So many witty observations came out of my keyboard that I was laughing continuously by the end and so was everyone else. I had an amazing time and I think I helped everyone else to really enjoy themselves too, which is what it's all about. Wonderful!

October 14 - Stepping out

The people upstairs woke me before 8am today( a Sunday )but I didn't mind.

It's probably the last time they'll do that. They've been thumping and crashing since Friday, the sweet sounds of boxes and furniture being moved out of the apartment. They were at it until well after 12am last night, but I didn't care… the sounds of them leaving lulled me to sleep with a smile, for a change.

Speaking of leaving, Felix Baumgartner jumped out of a balloon gondola today from the edge of space today, 39km up…. and survived without a scratch! I watched it live at around 11am today… or tried to. 

Watch that first step...

The feed from the sponsor's website never actually WENT live, so I was flipping back from the TV to my FBook news feed, which is where I heard he'd jumped… AND later on landed safely. So much for technology being able to take on history-making events live without fail. Ah well… at least I knew it was happening AS it was happening, which is something. 

Up next for Felix? Settling down and not scaring his girlfriend with any more hazards like today's. I think that’s a good plan, as it'd be hard to top the last one!

Wow, am I tired… I haven't been this worn out since, well… since I was working 60-hour weeks at MMart this time last year -there's symmetry for you, eh? I imagine I'll still be getting up at 7am for the forseeable future, as it's just too hard to sleep past that around here, regardless. But I think for the next while I'll try to take a few more naps, just to try to get some balance back in my energy levels. See you all next week!