...What? They're cute.
See?
Normally, as a part-time writer, it would mean a break from the daily grind and interrupt-heavy work environment of my money-making profession, and thus a chance to devote entirely to writing and recapture the momentum often lost in the wake of the marathon that is NaNoWriMo.
Instead, I decided to play with my cats.
Actually, that's a gross understatement. November and December (the proverbial holiday season, even though not a month passes in this country without at least one holiday, lest the Hallmark mafia get angsty) involved buying my first house, moving into said house (oddly, less work than buying it) with girlfriend, proposing to girlfriend (now fianceé), all while still learning the ropes of the job I started in September.
That I got NaNoWriMo done at all is something of a minor miracle to me.
So looking at my week off for the holiday span between Christmas and New Year's, I decided to use it to unpack, prep the house, plan the proposal, and generally recoup and recover from the madness that was the last two months of 2011. A.J. Pendlebolt, Gnomish Investigator went entirely untouched.
I remain 51,000 words in and only just now scraping the surface of the key plot underpinning it all, which means editing this book will be a little like mowing the lawn of a guy who's been dead ten years. The first pass is just about finding the dirt underneath it all again, then we can focus on the intricate landscaping and cute little rose garden next to the bird bath and koi pond.
...What? I garden. Deal with it.
I had originally intended for A.J. to be sent, fully edited, to publishers in mid-March (on the ides, no less, in hopes it might somehow bring good luck, or a cross-dressing Gwyneth Paltrow. I would have accepted either).
Instead, it's looking likely that early July will be the send-off date. I'll have the whole of February and March to finish writing the thing (including a week-long vacation in March to crunch through the exciting bits near the end). After that, there's a standard month-long moratorium on edits to let the idea stew for a bit.
Editing will start late in April once work settles down near the end of the semester and wrap up in early June. Near the end of June, I have a week at the beach to do a final pass and add any finishing touches, then on July 1, I hope to be sending it off for publication.
More snippets will be coming as soon as I break ground on it again. I had originally intended to keep them coming all through December, but everything sort of exploded on me, as mentioned above.
Thanks for your patience! Once it gets cleaned up, I have no doubt A.J. will be well worth the wait :)
