24 July 2011

Heat Wave........

Smokin' Hot.......And By That I Mean The Weather.......

Pennsylvania, along with much of the United States, has been in the midst of a hellish (and rather prolonged, I'd say) heat wave.  Temperatures have surpassed the hundred degree mark, which alone is a bit hot for my tastes, but not unbearable.  But the humidity has been wretched!  It's been sticky, grouchy, hateful weather......
Which made yesterday the perfect day for lounging in the pool and watching your children hurl themselves down tall water slides!  Yes, the boys enjoyed their wrestling picnic a great deal.  It was hot enough that even I donned my swim gear and found my way to the cool-(ish) pool water.  Maybe yesterday was unbearably hot, but I just didn't notice....well, not too much.  I soaked up my share of vitamin D yesterday, and it felt fantastic.

I think it's cooler today...Oh, let it be! 

I've returned my attentions to writing this week, and completed nearly a chapter in Her Dark Baron.  It's progress since Wednesday, and I'll take it.  For two days, I stared at the page like an idiot or nodded off each time I attempted to put pencil to paper.  Then, as if nothing had been wrong, the words poured out of me again.  I've decided to blame the heat. 

I received the cover art proof for the novella yesterday, and the lovely and talented Elaina is adding her final creative magic to take it to the next level!  I'm so excited I could burst....really. 

There are five (or maybe six) chapters to go in the novella, and I plan to finish one chapter a week.  That puts the finish line near August 28 - September 4.  It seems strange to be so near the end of another (however smaller) project this quickly.  My critique partner(s) will have only a short reprieve before I'm in need of services again. 

Another great idea is in the wings for a novella, and it comes from an unlikely source - my husband.  He likes horror novels, which are something I simply don't have much of a taste for, and that made his interesting idea all the more so.  Anyway, I've decided to see what I can make of it.  I also wrote the prologue for my next novel, which remains untitled, and probably will remain so for a time.  It's going to be a rather large project, I think. 

I hope everyone from ROW80 is creative and productive this week! ~ Nadja

16 comments:

  1. Well done, Nadja. Good luck with the chapters. :)

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  2. you're doing well there - that heat sounds horrendous - 100 is too hot even if it's dry for this Brit - but humidity ugh

    all the best for next week

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  3. You are smokin'! (pun intended...get it? Smokin' hot?) hahaha, I laugh at myself sometimes. It's hot here too and its a great excuse for me to stay inside and edit. You sound like you've got a lot done yourself. Hooray!

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  4. Thanks for the cheers! Claudia....love the pun...I laugh at myself all the time.
    It is good weather for air conditioning...that's for sure.
    Hope you all are doing great! I'm off to enjoy dinner with family...(the best part is, I don't have to cook!!) I'll be visiting around later. See you then. Nadja

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  5. Sounds like you're doing great! How exciting to get a new idea on the heels of finishing - or being close to finishing - a current one.

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  6. Sounds like you are making progress despite the heat. It's skipped us here on the west coast, for once. Have fun exploring the new idea.

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  7. We are having the heat, too. Whew!

    My husband often gives me ideas, too. But, yet, he has never read one of my books. He says he'll get around to it one of these days.

    Good luck with your goals! :-)

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  8. You are a writing Machine!! Keep up the good work. :)

    If only I could do as well. *sigh*

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  9. Kate....with a two year old and a new arrival...I'd say you were the machine! I'd be exhausted if I was still chasing little ones. Heck, I'd be exhausted if I were only expecting a little one. As a matter of fact, I think I'm growing tired just contemplating it.....
    ~ Nadja

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  10. Man, I hate those days of staring at the page, but I like to think that just means things are percolating on a back burner for something big to come.

    Congratulations on pushing past the blank page and the heat. I'm in north central Florida, so the heat and humidity is status quo around here. I spend a lot of time sedentary--it helps the thought process, I like to say!

    Nancy

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  11. I'm in central Indiana, so I feel ya on the heat wave. It's been brutal, and I've had to be out in it for various reasons. Ugh.

    That being said, I'm glad writing is an activity that can be done in AC. Still, it does tend to take the brain a bit to get going after being heat-sapped. Grats on being able to push past it.

    Also, getting artwork in is always exciting. For whatever reason, it just makes things seem more real and official-like.

    Keep those ideas stacked up! It's always better to have too many than too few :-).

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  12. Yes...pushing past the blank page...Now, if only my two youngest sons, (6 1/2 & 8) would cease trying to destroy one another, I would get some writing accomplished.
    Sheesh! ~ Nadja

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  14. Um, long info dump as requested from the comment over at my site. Feel free to copy/paste/repost this as you see fit and let me know if you have any question. This is related to the issue I encountered with Nook pagination and how it relates to a TOC:

    I didn't do a manual TOC... So long as you make use of headings in your conversion, the formats do it for you. Thus, the TOC issue was separate from the pagination. The chapter headings weren't all showing up, so we just had to clean up the hierarchy formatting in the source file. There was no pagination attached to them, since you just tell your ereader to "jump to." That all works just fine now.

    If you're going the ebook route, I would suggest not doing a TOC and just letting the ereader doo it for you. If you use a POD service for print books, you can constrain the pagination in your source file so that you could pop in a TOC in that version if you wanted. The pages in the PDF source reflect what will actually be printed, unlike an ebook where pagination is malleable according to the reader/settings.

    The smaller-but-no-less-annoying issue is that the page numbers that a Nook displays just don't relate to actual clicks. I was displaying a lot of text on screen in my novel (We chose to go with pretty narrow side margins to try to maximize screen usage, figuring folks might like fewer clicks per word, but it's a minor thing). The end result is that we sometimes get where a "background page cut" happens twice on one "click page." So the Nook goes from like 7 to 9. On a Kindle it's not an issue because it's percent and "locations."

    As of now, I know of no fix for the Nook issue as changing font settings on the user end means that what's displayed on screen per click can vary widely. It becomes a bit of an issue in non-fiction since how do you cite an excerpt for reference? In fiction, it shouldn't be an issue unless you're doing like a chose-your-own adventure book or something (Remember those? I loved them!)

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  15. Sorry for the long comment, but ah, I think you asked for it? :-)

    If you want an example, feel free to look up "The Binder's Daughter" (my book) on either B&N or Amazon. We have free samples enabled, and I believe the pagination issue even shows up on the Kindle/Nook for PC viewing stuffs.

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  16. Thank you for the information. I like hearing about the issue before I encounter it. At least now, when I see it (for my POD version) I'll remember this and not flail my arms over my head and threaten to put my foot through the computer screen. (One hopes, anyway).
    I added manual page breaks through my OO tool bar, and I hope this will prevent the problem you encountered in the e-book version. I may, however, have the issue in my POD version as I did not add a 'header', I simply topped the next page after the manual page break with the chapter heading. We'll see.
    I'm off to have a look-see at 'The Binder's Daughter'.
    Again, thanks for putting in the extra typing to put me 'in-the-know'. ~ Nadja

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