First of all, congratulations to all the winners and runners-up of the Rainbow Awards. Elisa Rolle did a great job pulling it all together and raising a respectable amount of money for rainbow charities.
Lots of my friends did really well, and I think LA Witt essentially ended up owning most of the speculative fiction (including historical) categories. From the books I've read (as a reader, I was a judge only in YA and f/f this year), it's been a very, very strong field. Well done, everybody.
Since most of the books I wwrote during the eligibility period were co-written, I'm co-winner with LA Witt in the Best LGBT Erotica category with If It Flies/If It Fornicates. That pleases me because responses to those were really mixed, so it's a "no way in hell, REALLY?" kind of surprise.
We also have a couple of runners-up: Capture & Surrender was a runner-up in the Best LGBT Erotic Romance category, and Unhinge the Universe scored in the Best Gay Historical Romance category.
Bottom line: Market Garden did extremely well, and so did the co-written stuff.
No news on the job front in real life, which does pre-occupy my brain quite a bit. My company is still getting sold, and the sale to two other buyers has fallen through, but there's apparently somebody else interested. Aledgedly, there will be some kind of development this week. Or maybe not. Essentially, we've been in a holding pattern for about six months now, so I'm applying for stuff that suits me to plot my escape. I'm ... not good with holding patterns.
In positive news, I've done quite a bit of research and additional brainstorming on Suckerpunch, even though I haven't really added any more words to a bit I started a couple weeks ago. Ever since co-writing Payoff, the third in the Tristan/Jared story, I haven't really written at all. I have, however, banged my head a lot against our cop novel, which is a 97k beast so far and requires some minor tweaking. I don't seem to have a lot of brain juice for editing or writing at the moment, so it's been slow and painful, and slow, and slow, and slow. Maybe I just need a holiday - or know whether I'll have a job next month. I guess either of those will do. Mostly, I'm keeping my head down and am grateful when I make any kind of progress in anything. It's the usual kind of mindset, the whole "will I ever write again" - despite empirical proof that I've always written again after such a slump and usually better than before. Writers are moody creatures. Ignore me. It'll get better eventually - it always does, and my brain is being an idjit. I'm just haunted by worries/concerns over Scorpion, I guess, and whether I screwed it all up. The phase between writing and getting stuff published is terrifying - I'd forgotten just how bad it is.
However, being free from the relentless "I can't, I have to write" pressure means I get to spend more time with friends and my partner, so that's definitely a good thing. I do hope we'll get snow soon. Today was the first time that I had to break out my big green woollen coat AND the fleece, so I'm hopeful. Also, obviously, trains got cancelled, and the whole city is shrouded in semi-frozen, low-hanging fog.
I'm amusing myself a little with an idea for a paranormal series that won't sell worth a damn. Maybe I'll make that my new ambition - only breed bunnies that I know won't sell. I'll reframe it as "my little eccentricities" rather than "my secondary career". There's Suckerpunch first, though. The characters are talking to me some of the time at least, and I have the general plot arch, and I like the idea. That, and edits, should quite happily carry me over into the next year.
Lots of my friends did really well, and I think LA Witt essentially ended up owning most of the speculative fiction (including historical) categories. From the books I've read (as a reader, I was a judge only in YA and f/f this year), it's been a very, very strong field. Well done, everybody.
Since most of the books I wwrote during the eligibility period were co-written, I'm co-winner with LA Witt in the Best LGBT Erotica category with If It Flies/If It Fornicates. That pleases me because responses to those were really mixed, so it's a "no way in hell, REALLY?" kind of surprise.
We also have a couple of runners-up: Capture & Surrender was a runner-up in the Best LGBT Erotic Romance category, and Unhinge the Universe scored in the Best Gay Historical Romance category.
Bottom line: Market Garden did extremely well, and so did the co-written stuff.
No news on the job front in real life, which does pre-occupy my brain quite a bit. My company is still getting sold, and the sale to two other buyers has fallen through, but there's apparently somebody else interested. Aledgedly, there will be some kind of development this week. Or maybe not. Essentially, we've been in a holding pattern for about six months now, so I'm applying for stuff that suits me to plot my escape. I'm ... not good with holding patterns.
In positive news, I've done quite a bit of research and additional brainstorming on Suckerpunch, even though I haven't really added any more words to a bit I started a couple weeks ago. Ever since co-writing Payoff, the third in the Tristan/Jared story, I haven't really written at all. I have, however, banged my head a lot against our cop novel, which is a 97k beast so far and requires some minor tweaking. I don't seem to have a lot of brain juice for editing or writing at the moment, so it's been slow and painful, and slow, and slow, and slow. Maybe I just need a holiday - or know whether I'll have a job next month. I guess either of those will do. Mostly, I'm keeping my head down and am grateful when I make any kind of progress in anything. It's the usual kind of mindset, the whole "will I ever write again" - despite empirical proof that I've always written again after such a slump and usually better than before. Writers are moody creatures. Ignore me. It'll get better eventually - it always does, and my brain is being an idjit. I'm just haunted by worries/concerns over Scorpion, I guess, and whether I screwed it all up. The phase between writing and getting stuff published is terrifying - I'd forgotten just how bad it is.
However, being free from the relentless "I can't, I have to write" pressure means I get to spend more time with friends and my partner, so that's definitely a good thing. I do hope we'll get snow soon. Today was the first time that I had to break out my big green woollen coat AND the fleece, so I'm hopeful. Also, obviously, trains got cancelled, and the whole city is shrouded in semi-frozen, low-hanging fog.
I'm amusing myself a little with an idea for a paranormal series that won't sell worth a damn. Maybe I'll make that my new ambition - only breed bunnies that I know won't sell. I'll reframe it as "my little eccentricities" rather than "my secondary career". There's Suckerpunch first, though. The characters are talking to me some of the time at least, and I have the general plot arch, and I like the idea. That, and edits, should quite happily carry me over into the next year.
"It's the usual kind of mindset, the whole "will I ever write again" - despite empirical proof that I've always written again after such a slump "
ReplyDeleteI wonder if it's something in the air. I'm in the same place at the moment, which is endlessly frustrating, and I've had several creative friends from other fields tell me they feel the same in the past couple of weeks...
I assume it's Mercury retrograde or something...
ReplyDelete