13...is the magic number...

Hard at Work...

Some people fear the number 13.  I don't.  Not today at least.  There are 13 more Mondays that I will have to get out of bed at the absolute butt crack of dawn to drive in to Clemson for work before summer break.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate my job.  But I do hate that it isn't in Greenville, the city that I love, the city that I moved back from the UK to be a part of, the city that has the most beautiful skyline I've ever seen, even at ten minutes to seven in the morning when the sun glints off the windows of the SunTrust building...

The last post I made here talked about how I entered Proud Racer: An American Greyhound in Yorkshire in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.  Well, didn't even make it past the first round of cuts, but that's okay, really.  Mostly.  Yeah, okay, it sucked, but it wasn't at all a surprise.  If for no other reason, my Proud Racer books are hard to categorize because I didn't write them with a specific reading level in mind.  My niece, Mary Catherine, has read them and loves them and she's 10, but to be fair her reading level is much higher than her age.

And I don't say that because I'm her favourite Auntie.  Not.One.Bit.

Right now the #WIP (because I'm hip like that and on Twitter and What.Not.) or Work In Progress is more Everquest fan fiction.  I am looking at it as good practice for "real writing" but I'm finding it to be escapism bordering on addiction, if I'm honest.  The four guys that I played EQ with were amazing, and it was, to quote the man that breathed life into Sathlir Clawsharp (one of my characters), a perfect storm that all of us got together and started playing together.  I miss it.  I miss us.  But the characters in the WIP are not the guys I played with all those nights.  They have transcended those human operators and I fall more in love with each of them with every scene that gets written.

Why can't I do this for a living?  Ugh.

Right, enough of that.  The point is that I'm writing, and I'm looking forward to Camp Nanowrimo in April and...August?  and then Nanowrimo proper in November.  I'll be writing with the ABNA in mind this time, so maybe come next January I'll be ready to submit a better manuscript and better pitch.

Anyway, ♪13...13 is the magic number...yes it is....♪ (apologies to Schoolhouse Rock...)