Tag: 12 in 12

His Wings Week Two

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Let’s see if I can do this…

Turns out my issue with this story may be that I had a migraine coming on. Migraines are caused (for me) by a special kind of stress. They aren’t tension headaches and haven’t been diagnosed so the fact that I am vertical may mean they’re a different kind of brain malfunction.

Diagnosing brain malfunctions has always been difficult and I’ve watched others go through the steps only to be told by doctors there’s nothing wrong with them.

Even though they have multiple grand mal seizures in front of witnesses, pass out on a weekly basis, or have a different sort of episode where they go blank, their personality changes, witnesses say there was something ‘not right’ about how they moved and so on.

But no, there was nothing medically wrong with them. Even though six months to two years later like magic they are diagnosed with something that explains all of their symptoms because it was finally caught on a machine.

… I’d really like to get fixed, but it’s actually less stressful and seems more productive to figure out the triggers and then just avoid them.

I’ve trained myself to write down symptoms when I get like this, to try to help things out. And because before I started that each time it came over me I was completely surprised. Now I’ve got a little awareness and I know before there are holes in my vision and half my face goes numb.

I’ve been the only one looking after me so long that I can keep working through the symptoms but over the past couple years have stopped. No one is going to thank me for working through this agony and it just draws it out.

So now each time it happens I make a choice based on what’s going on. I should have called into my day job today but I’m going in anyhow.

Partly because my pills are in my locker. Mainly because with 87 days to my last day, I’m trying to train people to do my job.

Is it train or trane? Oh poop, there’s no autocorrect or spell check.

The drop off of word count ahould have been my first clue. Struggling to find my words while talking shouls have been the second.

A friend has a theory that I have temporal lobe epilepsy effecting my brocas area that results in my hypergraphia. Basically my word/language centre gets electrocute every once in a while.

The fact that I kept getting distracted by other work would have been the third clue. If I didn’t want to write the story a game or the internet ahould have distracted me. Not marketing and cover design such and so forth.

So… I’m a broken bunny. His Wings goes live April 8th and is currently just shy of 20k words.

The long and the short of this is that my move being three months off (The stress of living through those months and realizing just how unhappy I’ve been by myself, not the act of the move) caused an episode of some sort.

Its hard to tell through text, and what with the inability to express emotion given how exhausted I am, but I’m super pissed this is happening. I’d much rather be writing. Just getting to the good part!

His Wings Week 1

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

This is going about as I expected… it is only day three, but I also only have 300 words on His Wings. Yeah, I decided to start over so I technically went into the negative. There’s been something like 6000 words on Crop though. So I guess I have that going for me.

I had removed Crop and Harvest from my plan, they were just going to be spare books, but if I finished Crop in January I’m certainly not going to count this month as failed.

I also have a three-day weekend coming up and I plan to hit His Wings hard. I can write over half a book in three days, if I set goals and keep focused.

So… that’s not happening, but I’m still going to give it my best shot!

His Wings

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

As this is an obligation piece, it’s no surprise that His Wings is my January project. It’s an obligation because I have a trilogy planned, but His Grace is actually my worst selling book.

Yeah.

But, I have the trilogy planned out and I’m going to finish the damned thing. It could be that, because I have the trilogy planned, people are waiting for all the books to come out.

I have this one all plotted out, but came to hesitating at a m/m/f threesome for some bloody reason. Mind you, I don’t usually do threesomes. I think this would be the third I’ve ever written and the book requires two or three threesome scenes.

This may be my most challenging project because my heart isn’t quite in it. I want to see the trilogy through but I don’t feel like anyone cares about the book so I’m not as interested.

His Grace ends in a happy-for-right-now way too, so I could have walked away for a year like I did with Masked Intentions but I don’t want to drag it out like that.

D.o.t.A. may end up being my August book forever more. Which is fine, I don’t have a plan for that series really. Most of the books are stand alone.

Anyhow, going into this month, His Wings has a word count of about 9,000. Three chapters are complete, seventeen more to go which will total a minimum of 51k more words.

I have January 1st off, then work until Thursday and gave three days off in a row. I was supposed to have the 1st and 2nd off but the schedule was messed up. I had to fix it myself because everyone at work was perfectly okay with paying me an extra day.

Yeah… I get paid for stats.

But I had planned that day to get a handle on His Wings and if they wanted me to work an extra day they should have checked with me first.

So, I’ve got four days off in the first six of the year. I’m hoping to have His Wings complete by next Sunday because I need to dive into two more edits and one read through for Beth.

Not to mention the cover work I’ve been ignoring.

Lots of work to do again, not enough hours to do it in.

Contract Sealed Week 4

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Here it is week four of the second month and only yesterday did I get back to other work.

Editing Seed.

I also did a rough draft for my plans in 2018 for publishing. It’s a lot to do but my cats believe in me.

No, they don’t, actually. They don’t even believe I can keep the apartment warm.

Here I am at a bus stop in -26 looking like a crazy person, typing on my phone with bare hands. I’m in a sheltered area though so only my feet and legs are cold.

Okay, I have to stop filling an update with random stuff and get back to writing Crop because that’s all I can think about suddenly.

Contract Sealed Week 3

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Going through Contract Sealed, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. The book was written over a year or so and meanders all over.

This coming from an author whose books have sometimes been described as “pretty clean for someone without an editor.”

Ugh.

Anyhow, it’s on my list and at least it’s complete.

I changed my schedule today. Normally I work late but that late shift combined with tomorrow’s early shift would have resulted in about 2hrs of sleep… if my upstairs neighbour shut up long enough for me to call asleep. So I changed it.

But now I’m all sorts of confused. Regular schedules help me distinguish days of the week and this is not the shift for me.

What have I been doing with my time?

Playing games, cleaning, and doing puzzles. I feel like the laziest bum in the world doing it, but I know pushing through for the writing wouldn’t help me any in the long run. I need to take my time and accept my limitations.

January is still set to be His Wings. This is an obligated book and cannot be moved no matter how many times my muses toss up The Visitors world and try to distract me.

That and February set for His Halo. Get that trilogy done and dealt with. No one seems interested in it. Angels aren’t popular? Maybe.

Maybe I just suck.

Definitely need sleep and rest still. Maybe if I did some editing I’d feel a little better.

Or maybe if looking at anything to do with my writing didn’t make me want to cry…

Monday was the first day that wasn’t overwhelming since the beginning of November. I almost felt good leaving work. Yesterday I might have gotten something writing related done if it wasn’t for one of my winter traditions.

Cleaning and organizing my home. Thanks to a slip Monday afternoon, my legs hurt from pulled muscles and I had to take my time. Which meant it took all day but I feel better for having cleaned. Maybe this weekend I’ll feel good enough to do some editing or some such.

Haven’t heard back from my betas about Fragments yet which isn’t helping my “woe is me” attitude. I’m really sick of being this low, but kicking my own ass into gear doesn’t work when all my energy is going toward getting out of bed in the morning.

Anyhow. Come January if I’ve not heard from my betas I’ll do another read edit or two and go forward with that.

Still haven’t helped Beth with her rebranding. Well, now I really feel like a bum.

Contract Sealed Week 2

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

The past week has been a bit of a struggle to get myself to work on something. This weekend I almost took two days off. On Sunday I set up free days for His Grace and I found out that Contract Taken didn’t even make the list of books for the year. Basically had a fifty-fifty chance and still failed.

I did not feel good about myself or my writing. For about six hours I felt like there was no point in even continuing.

Then I remembered it was December.

I chose such a short project for this month because I know I end up in a fragile state. I certainly wasn’t going to do anything rash. The only risky thing I do in December is buy scratch tickets.

I don’t even drink in December, it’s too dangerous with the wringer that work puts me through and the whole being alone thing. I know the holidays are hard and I won’t take that risk.

Monday when I got home from work there was a package waiting for me. A reader had sent me four care packages. That definitely cheered me right up.

I suck, but at least some people love me. This was the first thing I’ve received. Well, and private messages. Those are the new fanmail, right?

Okay, so it didn’t just cheer me right up. I was absolutely elated and told everyone I know. I only ever have bad news.

Bit by bat, ghosted by long term boyfriend, dead computer three times, no water for three weeks, leaking ceiling, mold the landlord won’t fix, raccoons, three noisy neighbours, bedbugs, and now ants.

In the last year.

It’s been a run of bad luck and situational that I haven’t been able to fix given my income. Couldn’t even afford hot chocolate.

And then I found it in the box…

Actually, my first order of business was making apple cider. I was a little disappointed when I discovered I can’t afford to buy more in Canada. Hopefully the prices will go down. Or they’ll go on sale or I’ll find it in a grocery store somewhere.

As I mentioned before, this past week has been… difficult. But not in a usual way.

I’m physically in quite a bit of pain. A cluster of events have left me with an all over ache. But mentally it’s… It’s weird

I can feel that manic energy starting and I can’t recall the last time I felt like this. I don’t know if it’s the events, or adding vitamin D to my diet. Or maybe it’s just because the iron is finally going back to where I need it to be.

Oh yeah, over the last week I’ve been given a bottle of my favourite wine and hooked up with a console for a great price. And then the package showed up on my doorstop.

The survivor of psychological abuse in me is really certain something is going to go horribly wrong. It always does when things go well. That’s the way my life has worked for three decades.

Gifted a computer, the pipes break for almost a month.

Come to think of it, things have been off kilter since I accepted a plane ticket back in September and not necessarily in a bad way.

Well, not in a bad way for all things but writing. It’s been a tough couple of months for sales. Which was part of why I felt like such trash on Sunday when I didn’t even make the list.

Beth says she felt like this too. She ended up walking away/ignoring all things about her books and it worked itself out. When she tried to do something about it, nothing would happen and she got frustrated.

I’m going to do something similar, but I will still be writing. I will edit and publish as I can. But otherwise, I’m going to just stop.

Stop looking at the reports that keep upsetting me. Stop trying to market all over, because it’s not helping. Stop looking for reviews or reviewers. Just stop.

I’ll gather my ego back up and once I feel better and more able, I will jump back in the middle of marketing and all the rest. Until then, I will focus on me and what I like to do.

Writing, editing, and cover making.

Contract Sealed Week 1

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

Done. Thank goodness. I know, I know. It’s only six days in and it was five or six chapters. At my rate of course it’s done.

You just haven’t been inside my head around December before, especially when I’m having problems at work.

I had a tension headache until Sunday. Might have had one of my episodes, but it wasn’t as bad as usual. Normally I check out mentally and I’m basically just this hull of a person.

If that sounds familiar to you, don’t worry, I’m aware of what it could mean. But try to get a doctor to check it. They won’t unless you go while in an episode and even then they won’t get the equipment in time to check and they act like you’re lying or something.

To which I’d end up staring mutely at them because my words fail me.

Why is that important? Well, if I was about to have an episode it explains my weird writing experiences just before. I was forgetting words and bumbling all kinds of stuff. I’d think “I’ve” and spell ‘ivory’ and there were a couple times where I thought one thing and something else entirely came out.

It’s possible that I wrote what I heard on the television instead of what I wanted to write. For me, writing is rarely about the images anymore. It’s a narration inside my own head, like I’m taking down the words of someone else. So writing what I hear on my shows instead of what I want wouldn’t be overly surprising.

The first couple of days was a struggle. One chapter over three days, this too is expected of an episode.

I think I wrote a total of six chapters. Approximately 20,000 words. Most of those were yesterday.

Normally after an episode, the words will die for a few days to a week. It can be so bad that speaking hurts in an all over way like I’m holding in the written word. Once that passes I see a sudden surge where I spend a day writing something like 23k words. I’ll stay with a manic word count for a bit then level right off.

But it’s December. Work will leave me hollowed out, emotionally and mentally exhausted. My workload has more than quadrupled but I have the same amount of time to do it. They say there’s a balance to those hours but… come on.

I’m hoping to get Boxing Day off. I’m also hoping to finish Contract Given this month. It’s a project that is outside of the others. I know I’m not supposed to be writing, but it’s a novella and I’m not going to use that for a project month. It’d be cheating.

December is the only month that I thought I might need a break. But when you go from 50k to 20k words in six days, yeah, you need that break.

I’m taking this weekend off writing and have no idea what I’m going to do with myself. Besides do the cleansing of the apartment that I always do in December. This time I’m going to wash walls and ceiling too, to get rid of the mold and hopefully the ants and to assess whether the ceiling is actually going to come down or if it’s just plaster cracking.

Five more months and I am moving…

Anyhow, officially done.

2 of 12 complete

Word count approximately 107,000 or about 53,500 per project.

Total writing days: 16

Or about 6,688 words a day.

Contract Sealed

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

There’s no internet. Why is there no internet?

There was a mobile outage for my carrier yesterday and it seems I no longer have data. I will probably have to go into the store and fix it there.

This is only a problem because I’ve been streaming music on my phone. My mp3 player is dead and I don’t know if I have my portable battery with me. I must… I think.

I need music. I’m super frustrated. Partly from work which obviously has not gotten better.

In fact, it’s evolved into ignoring me. The only time what I say is acknowledged is when the one who is causing the problems does the exact opposite of what I say.

The boss witnessed one of these events and I’d discuss the second with him except it’s my understanding that his boss will be there when I get in

Oh, and her boss too.

House is on fire. His boss doesn’t care about the dirty dishes so much as she does the meal being done on time.

I’m also frustrated with a certain service. I’ve been trying to figure out how to pay a bill for several weeks and today realized it’s overdue. But it was a futile and frustrating exercise because their site is not user friendly.

This isn’t some small site either. This is a million or probably billion dollar company. I filed three complaints this morning for each step of the way where I hit a wall. I tried to be polite but oh my gosh.

I also know corporate reads things like that. Especially when one of the complaints asked for a rating and I gave them the worst I could.

I need some sort of relief.

Anyhow.

Yesterday I tried writing. Just a random thing. It was godawful and difficult to get the words out. That frustration is still riding my nerves. It was so bad on Wednesday that the person working opposite me asked if I believed in the use of marijuana.

I do, actually. But it’s still not legal and the THC keeps me from dreaming or writing for up to a week. It makes me feel really raw and vulnerable after, and not in the fun sort of way.

He’s a good guy, the one who suggested it. He was just trying to help out and was witness to a meltdown because of things being done the exact opposite of what I needed to happen. And he had been told to help me by the boss (who I didn’t give a choice to) only to be pulled from me by the one who is pretending I don’t exist. He came back to me, super confused but also helpful.

“Who do I listen to in that case?”

“Me. Anyone can do what she wanted, she can pull another body. You’re the only one who can help me, so you listen to me.”

See my problem? I want to talk about one thing but I’m entirely focused on something else despite trying to refocus.

It’s going to be a long project this month. Only six chapters long too.

Damn it.

All right, let’s try this again.

It’s December 1st. That means I can open my advent each day (no, it’s not wine or that mythical edible advent) but also that a new writing project starts today. The project for December is Contract Sealed.

And you might be asking, “Aya, how many m/m books do you plan on writing on this adventure of yours?”

And my answer is: shush.

Technically speaking there are only two more. Contract Sealed and Contract Delivered.

His Wings deals with it a bit.

I know with the second Contracted trilogy I’m going to get backlash. The straight guy going gay is a cliche and blah blah blah.

Except Nate doesn’t go gay. He labels himself as a straight man who sometimes has sex with his best friend. He only ever agrees to the sex because he wanted the everything else of a Master/slave relationship.

That’s kind of why I like Nathaniel. He’s not willing to discuss his sexuality and is clearly a creature of upbringing. When he was growing up you couldn’t be both rich elite and gay. You absolutely had to be heterosexual and sexuality was very black and white. So he insists on it.

He’s not homophobic, just afraid of what would happen if he was labelled as anything but heterosexual. Let’s recall that how others viewed him was literally life or death until just before his thirtieth birthday.

And it’s not really that he’s bisexual. He’s not interested in men. He’s only interested in Mr. Wrightworth.

Let’s face it, who wouldn’t be interested in the sadist turned daddy?

In Contract Sealed Nate comes to terms with service, and is collared by Mr. Wrightworth. Collaring is supposed to be long-term, almost like marriage. It’s a commitment. But they make it even though they know their relationship has to end at the end of the year.

Though, if we look at the whole series I can’t help but argue that Nate is still submitted to Mr. Wrightworth.

Month two:

Book: Contract Sealed

Status: 14 1/2 chapters written between January and October.

Claimed Week Two

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I finished Contract Claimed on November 11th at about noon. It wasn’t until I headed out for my passport photo that I realized the actual date, and that I missed a ceremony happening near me that I was supposed to go to. I can’t keep the days of the week straight, numbers are apparently beyond me. For some reason I thought Sunday was the 11th.

I’m disappointed in myself for forgetting.

After finishing, I took two full days off writing. If I finish early in the morning it’s technically two and a half because the days off start in the morning. But I think I need to shift the days off to my next weekend off. Monday, what with the day job, was a real struggle for me to get through.

I’ve made an amendment to the plan. It’s now write a book, read a book. The read a book isn’t strictly enforced because I may not always have time. These are indie books and likely always free.

I’m a broke author on the verge of starving artist, but all books will be downloaded legally so that the author gets that little nudge.

So, Sunday I read a book. And I hated it. That’s all I’ll say at this point. If I encounter a book I love I will, of course, go on about it and such. I’m all about spreading the good news.

Yesterday I went back to work. It’s all editing at the moment, as Fragments and Seed are both completed and are up next for publication.

Technically speaking, after that I can laze about for the next eleven months or so. I never promised publishing all the books I write in that twelve month period.

I doubt I’d make it more than a week before I started editing again, however.

I had planned on publishing Fragments in about two weeks, but life got in the way.

If this constant exhaustion could go away faster, that’d be fantastic. It’s my own fault for forgetting my iron supplement. About four more weeks before I see results. Ugh.

Besides editing, I’m going to be taking some time to help Beth out. She wants to rebrand, I think the word is. Come December I’ll be writing again.

Given the fact that it’s Christmas, and the busiest and most exhausting month of the year for the day job, I am planning at this point to write Contract Sealed, or more of finish it. I think there are four to six chapters left to write. It is not a full book by far and is within my rules for the year long run.

But four to six chapters in a month that last year reduced me to tears and a catatonic state once I left work isn’t asking too much of myself. I still have about sixteen days to change my mind but short of my workplace burning down, and my no longer having a job, that is my plan.

I can officially say:

Goal: 12 books written in 12 months

Current: 1 book written in 1 month.

Word count: (I’ll add this in once I have access to a computer)

Woo!

… But I know I’ll be cursing myself when I start editing.

Claimed Week One

Posted on by Aya DeAniege

I swear, work knew I was going to update Wednesdays and changed my schedule to mess with me.

Also, because someone is doing it right now: who the hell puts their feet on a bus seat? What are you, an animal?

Of course not, because animals have more sense than that.

I even commented and the feet stayed. He just gave me this smug, lazy look. If the bus gets in an accident, I’m going to sue him for kicking me in the head.

Sleep deprivation makes me crazy… I know this, but I’m still upset with this guy. It’s happening more and more and they’re so rude about it, like I’m trying to encroach on their rights.

So, I haven’t really slept right since the beginning of October and it’s seriously messing with my head. Four noise complaints and nothing is happening so I’ve taken to blasting my music during the day. Partly to keep me awake and partly because I know the upstairs neighbour can hear it because it wakes him up and he starts whining about it.

Don’t mess with my sleep and I won’t mess with yours.

Or, you know, get a job.

Ugh, now I’m focused around that. Which is probably why my word count has dropped over the last two days. I’m so frustrated that I circle around one little event and can’t get the other words out.

So. Contract Claimed. Where am I at? Well, I don’t know the exact number but it’s about 47,000 words. About the halfway point too, possibly past that.

I’ve had some early morning shifts and empty buses. On those trips, I pulled out my tablet and wrote 3-4k words on the way to work.

For comparison sake, when writing a Coffee and Blood book, I can write between 3 and 5 thousand words in a day. The 5 is really pushing it now, so I tend to get between 1000 and 1500 per trip.

The issue with doing it this way is that my early shifts end next Monday, and I can’t use the tablet if I have my bag in my lap. Meaning that I can’t use the tablet if someone is sitting beside me.

Or has their dirty feet on the seat.

I’ve been making some pretty good headway with Contract Claimed given the fact that I have had one day off the day job in the last seven. That day I wrote about 19k words.

I watch something on the television and have taken to putting Sims on my computer with a vagrant who just drifts about. That way I can’t wander the internet because the tablet is slow in doing that and having Word loaded. Keeps me a little more focused.

I’ve also been playing music in the mornings as I have coffee, rather than sit in silence. I have to, though, otherwise I have to listen to the apartment above me having sex for thirty seconds and then fighting for an hour.

The music does help me focus, though, so there’s that.

However.

I’m having trouble distinguishing words. I keep mixing up the theres, my vocabulary has dropped and there’s a lot of wincing when reading Contract Claimed over word choice and repetition. The scary part is that I know it’s wrong, but I can’t remember enough words to know how to change it.

Sleep is really important.

Which is why I filed three noise complaints in the last week and started beating on my ceiling. Got called a fucking cunt. Because I want to sleep.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this godawful, because I removed all those people from my life. Now it’s turning me into a ragefilled, petty person.

Six more months and I can move. My next ‘roommates,’ however temporary they may be, are just about the quietest people I have ever met. I will sleep for a week straight.

In the meantime, all I can (apparently) do is hope my upstairs neighbour overdoses or forgets to pay his rent again, so he gets evicted.

Or breaks up with his girlfriend.

Something, anything. I just want to be able to sleep and then think again.

I am projected to finish Contract Claimed in the next seven days, of which I have three days off. But due to the neighbours it is definitely a rough draft and will need a major overhaul before being published.

Which is fine, because it’s not being re-published until after the second trilogy is completed.

That leads me to December’s (likely) book.

December is the busiest month of the year for my day job. I’m worried about setting myself up for failure by working on His Wings as I will be mentally and emotionally exhausted (not to mention the trouble sleeping). I’ve been bouncing around the idea of completing Contract Sealed instead. It’s almost done. I might be able to finish it in a week, allowing me to do a good job at the day job while maintaining my goal.

Basically the jist of this all is: I’m ahead on my word count and well on the way to finishing book 1/12.