Mini Writer's Retreat

I had that most rare and lovely of experiences this week: my husband left town. For four days.

Four blissful, productive days.

Now, I'm not saying I don't love my husband or that I didn't miss him. But as a work-from-home, childless person, having all that free time with no interruptions, no cleaning, no cooking… it was amazing.

I dubbed it my writer's retreat, and at the outset of it, I decided I was going to write 10k words while he was gone.

…

…

**crickets**

Of course, that didn't happen. But what did happen is I wrote when I had words in my head. I read. I watched a couple movies. I slept at weird hours. I took time to get my head in what I was doing.

You know. I retreated.

It was definitely what I needed. He comes home today, and I am soooo ready to see him, but I really enjoyed my time by myself to just be.

What would you do if you had four days to yourself?
 -Jeanette.

PS – In other news, Unacceptable Risk received its first review today! Bitten by Paranormal Romance gave it FIVE HOWLS!!!! I might be howling myself…

Unacceptable Risk: Ten Weeks and Counting!

Excitement abounds over here in the Grey house. The cover, blurb and excerpt for Unacceptable Risk are now live on the Samhain web site!

Equally awesome, it was featured on The Galaxy Express over the weekend as part of a look at upcoming cyberpunk romances.

In support of the release, I'm working on putting together a small blog tour in mid-December, which will involve ebook giveaways, so keep your eyes peeled!

The Writer's Life: So What Do You *Do* With All That Time?

Whenever I talk to my mother, invariably the topic comes around to the fact that I'm currently not working full time and (with my husband's blessing and generous financial support) am dedicating myself fully to this writing thing. And her main response is always, "So what do you do with all that time?"

If she only knew.

Writing full time sounds great, and it is (holy crap, but it really, really is), but especially once things start happening with publishing, there are all these little things that need to get done. I am so, so blessed to have four pieces under contract right now (3 shorts and 1 novella), but man. There's just all this stuff.

For example, yesterday I didn't manage to write a single word on my manuscript, but I sure did manage to kill some time. Things I crossed off on my to-do list include:

• Proofing the galley and blurb for Bug Boy (my short story for Dreamspinner's upcoming Higher Learning anthology)
• Writing long and short blurbs for A Gift of Trust (a Christmas story that will be releasing in December)
• Cold-emailing blogs asking to guest blog in support of Unacceptable Risk
• Keeping up with all the author blogs, book review sites, and writer discussion lists I stalk
• Editing a short for a critique partner
• Editing my own short story so I could send it to a critique partner
• Scouring the internet for calls for submission so I can hopefully keep getting my work out there.

It may not look like a ton, but especially since I'm new to all of this (and terrified of people) all the blurb-writing and editing and cold-emailing seem to take forever, and it's super easy to have a day just fly by.

All that said, I'm really not complaining. I love this life. But seriously, Mom. There is never any lack of things to do.

Unacceptable Risk Has a Cover!!!

My cyberpunk romance, Unacceptable Risk (coming December 2011 from Samhain Press) now has a cover!!!

So what do you think? Personally, I couldn't be more thrilled.

Purgatory Is An Unedited Manuscript

Anyone who follows my ranting and moaning on Twitter knows that I've spent the better part of a week now looking at edits for Unacceptable Risk, ignoring edits for Unacceptable Risk, procrastinating in order to avoid looking at edits for Unacceptable Risk, and occasionally, in rare fits of productivity actually working on edits for Unacceptable Risk.

(Unacceptable Risk being the new m/f cyberpunk romance I contracted with Samhain Publishing, coming to an eReader near you this winter!)

A lot of this hand-wringing has involved going through little stylistic issues. Do I really need the 'that' in that sentence? Is a 'dangling modifier' really just an opportunity for a TWSS joke? Could I start any more sentences with conjunctions?

Some of it is content. My editor wanted to see some adjustments to one of the character arcs, and while I completely agree with her analysis and suggestions, actually making the changes has given me heart palpitations. Will the new stuff suck? Will it stick out like a sore thumb? Am I overthinking everything?

And some of it ... some of it is just plain sitting there shaking my head at myself. Everything that seemed brilliant six months ago is a lot easier to look at now with a healthy dose of bitchbrow. I still love the story, but did I really not notice that I started six sentences in a row with the same basic phrasing? Did I not see that I used the word 'back' five times in two paragraphs?

Seriously.

Anyway, the good news is that I'm mostly done. I still need to take one last pass through to make sure the edits flow and I haven't made too many new problems while trying to solve old ones.

But I will be so, so, so excited to leave the purgatory of editing to return to the welcome, familiar hell of writing from scratch.

In the Eye of the Beholder: Seeing Cyberpunk

I spent a bunch of my week trying to nail down descriptions of the characters in Unacceptable Risk in order to communicate them to the cover art designers. One of the identifying features of the main character, Plix, is that she has an optical implant in one eye, which allows her to record everything she sees and analyze it on the fly.

Just thought I'd share a couple of the cooler images I found poking around the internet looking for illustrations. Neither of these ended up being quite right, but they're still neat.

Have you seen me lately?

I'm currently listening to the Counting Crows and trying to decide how to start this blog. In the end, I'm just diving in.

Because dude, there is a lot of exciting stuff going on right now.

My first novella, a M/M romance called Letting Go, is slated to be released from Dreamspinner Press in June. It's a story about grief, family, priorities and opening yourself up to love.

In addition, I just got my signed contract back from my next novella, Unacceptable Risk, which will be released by Samhain Press in Winter 2011. It's a M/F cyberpunk romance story, complete with a self-sacrificing heroine, a patient but lonely hero, shadowy corporations, cybernetics and lots of tech. I can't wait to share it with you!

Thanks for stopping by and checking out the new blog. I'm hoping to share news about my writing and maybe some snippets of what I've been working on when I can.

Until next time,

XOXO
 -Jeanette.