Category: The Blog

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

This is still one of my favorite little stories that I ever wrote, dedicated again for this day.

What a Pretty Day

(it’s a feel good happy ending story)

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

That Man picked up the monsters a bit early from school today so they could come get me at the airport. Only one of them actually gave me a hug, and she was asleep! 🙁 They made up for it, though, over dinner. They had a good week, although each of them were in trouble for talking in class and had to walk extra laps at recess.

I had to buy another book at the airport. I finished Poison Study in Memphis while waiting for my next plane. There were parts of Poison Study that I really loved. Although it fell apart a little for me at the end, it was still a really good read. The book in the hopper now is The Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen. Excellent so far. I even found time to work on Ann’s synopsis! Go, Ann!

I’ve already made a pot of Caribou Coffee which I’m huddled around while I pet my personal laptop and try to catch up on e-mail and blogs.

I’m tired, though, and work starts up bright and early tomorrow. I’m so tired I actually thought I read “wolfshitter” in an e-mail instead of “wolfshifter,” which I thought was hysterical.

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

That’s a techie joke that came up in today’s meetings with our vendor. See, I’m here with a very technical guy from my company, meeting a mixture of very techy guys, sales guys, and the base system guys at our vendor. I can more easily talk shop with the latter group of guys than the techy ones. (And yes, other than the secretary at the check-in desk, I’m the only female in this group.)

They got to talking about “pojo” today — plain old java objects — and wars — web archive, a way the java code is compiled — and although I knew roughly what those things are, the topics flying through the air were way more than I could follow. So I made a comment to the (relatively bored) back-end system guy sitting beside me that they were having a pojo war and I was sure glad I wasn’t involved.

Today was the think-so-hard-your-brain-hurts day. Yesterday was the oooh-I’m-getting-so-many-ideas-my-brain-hurts day. I stayed up late last night capturing my thoughts/summaries for my boss and re-drawing a bunch of business diagrams. I didn’t even crack a book open, let alone think about my own book files. That’s okay. The analytical side of my brain is firing on all cylinders and I’ll just have to ride it out. This is my life, and as odd as it may sound, I do get all fired up about these aspects of the Evil Day Job too. (Or else, I obviously wouldn’t be here.)

So in the end, I am in the pojo war, whether I admit it or not.

It’s been a terrific trip. We’ve learned a lot, shared a lot, and met up with people I’ve occasionally seen over the years. The only thing that would make this trip better would be if I could immediately go up to the home office and share everything in person with my coworkers. While I do love telecommuting from home, it’s times like these that I wish I could sit down with my coworkers and friends so they could see the spark in my eye while I diagram a bunch of stuff for them.

Oh, well. They’ll just have to hear the spark in my voice over the phone.

Tomorrow, I’m homeward bound.

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

Boy oh boy, 4 a.m. was a loooong time ago. However, I had a pretty relaxing afternoon here in the hotel. I unpacked, checked e-mail (thank you for free wi-fi!), and even finished Omega Games. Yay!! Now I must not start my other book, or I’ll have it finished too fast and won’t have anything for the plane ride home. (Gee that’d be too bad if I had to buy ANOTHER book at the airport…considering I almost bought two in Memphis even though I do have a spare.)

The flight was uneventful for the most part. A little bumpy on the leg from Springfield to Memphis, and packed, every seat full. I hooked up with my coworker in Memphis — although we work “together” I don’t really know him well since I telecommute from home, so that was rather hilarious. He asked if I wanted him to put me down as a driver on the rental car and I about passed out. I really hate to drive in strange places.

We even got our preliminary “game plan” stuff out of the way for tomorrow, so the rest of the evening is mine to iron for tomorrow and simply enjoy the quiet. I already checked in with the monsters. Evidently Princess Monster dropped Littlest Monster on her head twice. Not sure how that happened…but everyone is okay and already fighting over who gets to sleep in the big bed with daddy, and who has to sleep on the floor. I can hear all the bickering already…actually…no.

QUIET. That’s what that noise, or rather the lack thereof, is. What a wondrous thing.

My eyes are killing me, so I might not try to write anything tonight. May just laze around a bit and hit the sack early.

Have a great week, everyone!

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

I’m getting ready to leave extremely dark and early in the morning for our vendor in Birmingham. I need to get to the airport around 5:30 a.m., and it’s about a 30 minute drive…so we won’t try to fit in our traditional breakfast at IHOP. I’m going to try and carry on one small bag and my EDJ laptop. I’ve studied all the new restrictions, so hopefully I didn’t pack anything illegal. The only question, really, is whether the plane I’m catching to Memphis will be big enough to allow carry on baggage. (I’ve been on a few of those crop dusters that make you check everything planeside.)

I’m not taking my personal laptop this time, so I don’t know how much I’ll be able to check in. I’m hoping the hotel has free wi-fi so I can at least check my e-mail regularly. With agent e-queries in progress, I’ll be gnawing my fingers to the knuckle if I can’t check in and see if any news is unfolding in my inbox!

The hardest part of this whole trip…is picking my plane books. I’m pretty sure it’ll be Omega Games by S.L. Viehl on the way down…and Twilight Fall on the way home. I’ve been saving them for a special occasion.

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

Shocking I know. We’ve all been slightly under the weather. I wouldn’t say I’ve been sick exactly, but I’ve only had 3 cups of coffee today instead of 3 gallons as usual. Okay, maybe not gallons, but my favorite Caribou hasn’t been tasting that great.

I’ve been trying to get back to the dark and early schedule, and while I did make it several days…I’ve been too out of it to get much done. Last night and tonight I just let myself read. I finished both BloodAngel and Lord of Bones by Justine Musk. Pretty good reads, athough I did have a few quibbles. I would definitely read another set in this world if there’s one in the works (couldn’t tell from her website, and Uninvited looks like a different series).

To make matters worse about feeling out of it, I have a work trip coming up. I leave very, very early Sunday morning for a few days in Birmingham. I think it’ll be an interesting trip, but I’ve only rarely ever gone there without my dear friend Wanda. What will I do without a nice long trip to Barnes & Noble for reading material on the flight back? (It’s sort of a joke–no matter how many books I bring, I always think I need to buy another book or two to tie me over.) I’ll be packing very, very light–hoping to carry on one small bag and laptop only–so I don’t know how many books I’ll be able to squirrel away.

I can’t share a Friday Snippet this week. I have a section I could share from my background work on the Mayan story this week, but it gives away some key elements of my worldbuilding. Maybe next week I’ll have a less crucial section I could share. Wanda has given me some invaluable first-hand information about swimming in a cenote that I can’t wait to use.

Have you read a really good book lately? Anything going on in your neck of the woods?

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

[Edited to Add: Sorry, the formatting got all messed up. That’s what I get for writing it in a Word doc and trying to post it.]

In talking with Debra about Laurell K. Hamilton

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

Alright, I cheated a little. I actually had TWO copies to give away. So the winners of the signed S.L. Viehl Omega Games giveaway are:

Teresa Warner, who e-mailed me to enter, and

Ann!

Congratulations, winners. I will get your prizes mailed out hopefully this week, although I suck at getting stuff to the post office. Just ask Bethanie.

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

I had a nice post all written up and my computer wonked out and all I got was garbage. Hopefully this post will go through better.

I have three projects in the queue this month. I’m not going to set priority–I’ll take whatever work I can get on any of them. All are in the worldbuilding, plotting, building stage, although I’m hoping to work back toward 1K a day new words, either in backstory or world bible.

• Mayan urban fantasy
• ANTs, the followup to Letters
• Given in Fire, the other Keldari novella

I’m working back toward the dark and early routine now that the monsters are back in school; however, worldbuilding doesn’t always go well that early in the morning. I’ll write possible scenes, backstory, etc. as needed, with the goal of hitting full speed in October on a formal first draft. I hope that will be the Mayan story, but it’s big, real big, and I might not be ready to. We’ll see what I can get pulled together.

What are your goals for this month?

Originally published at Joely Sue Burkhart. You can comment here or there.

I hope you’re having a terrific holiday weekend–if you’re in America. I’m praying Gustav leaves New Orleans and Mississippi as unscathed as possible.

Writing wise, it was a pretty productive week, although I didn’t generate “new words.” I’m in two separate writing stages now: submission and building.

The submission stage for Letters is going well, if only I’d quit reading it over and over and over…and tweaking it! Just a word here or there… I did make a small necessary adjustment to my synopsis–a huge opportunity to tie the title to the big dark moment/climax at the end on which I failed to capitalize–and realized I’d missed a perfectly good opportunity to play with “teacher’s pet,” which I quickly fixed. Now it’s sit back, wait, and print packages as needed.

As for building, I made incredible progress on the Mayan story this weekend. Of all people, I actually got a lot of help from That Man. Shocking, I know. But his favorite show, Prison Break, is coming back on soon, and it’s been on my mind. I could write up a whole long post on the incredible twists and turns of that show. Not an episode goes by that I don’t exclaim, “I hate this show!” I’m exhausted after watching it. Yet every single character is a study in gray areas, and the action is intense. One week, the villain tries to kill one of the stars–the next week, he’s the only person who can give them what they need. Literally, the “good guys” change from week to week, and you can never discount anyone.

I want to put some of that intricate ambiguity in the Mayan story. Who are the “bad guys” and who can Jaid trust? Very few, actually. I also realized that I need more characters. NSR was strictly romance and played with a rather small cast. Only 3 POV characters, too. That’s not nearly enough to carry this new story.

I was making casting calls like crazy, saving pictures for people I don’t even know yet, other than the image captured my imagination, but I was quickly getting overwhelmed. I have so many “camps” of characters–and the threads were too muddled. I’ve tried just about every writing software package out there, and many other organizational tools, but nothing works for me.

I finally set up a new private wordpress blog just for this project, and it’s actually working pretty well. I created a category for each character, and as I gathered an image or made a decision about him/her, I captured it in a blog entry. What makes this story incredibly complex is all the backstory. NSR is backstory, plus I added tons for Jaid’s father today. His story about how he met Gilly, Jaid’s mother, and became friends with Sam Gerard, could almost make its own story.

Really, my vision for this story has changed so much. NSR was just the tip of the iceberg, and as I gather new data for the bigger picture, I realize how much I limited myself in that first draft.

This time, I’m busting right through that ceiling and going for the very tip top of the ceiba tree.

This month is my writing birthday. I’ll turn five years old the last week of September. So 9/1 has always been a sort of “new year” for me. I plan to get busy writing new words tomorrow (well today, because it’s nearly 1 a.m.), even though it’ll all be backstory from 20+ years ago. Cool stuff that will give me the depth I need and set up my version of the “Company.”

I’ll post stated goals for September next.