NaNoWriMo: Rough Start

I figured I’d try doing National Novel Writing Month to get some momentum on my next project. I spent a week or two at the end of October figuring out the characters, doing some preliminary worldbuilding, and getting most of the plot figured out.

The writing was a little slow this week, for some reason, but I’d gotten 3000 or so words done by the time I went to bed yesterday. Then as I was lying there not sleeping, I realized the book might work better if I simplified the central concept.

That meant throwing out a lot of the backstory, as well as everything I’d already written. On the bright side, 3000 words isn’t really that much, and I’m feeling a lot more excited about the new, streamlined idea for the book.

This  isn’t under contract with a publisher yet. I’d been working on a pitch to send to my agent, but that’s gotta be scrapped and redone now. I think I’ll try writing a chapter or two first to get a better feel for the book before I try again to get a pitch we can use to hopefully sell this thing.

I won’t go into detail for now, except to say that it would be a standalone fantasy, and I think most of y’all will be excited about it.

Anyone else attempting NaNo this year? Like anything else, it’s an approach that works for some people but not for others. I’ve had mixed results in the past. And with all the extra stress of this month, I refuse to beat myself up for not being on track with word count.

Surgery and Recovery

It’s been six days since the surgeon opened up my hand to try to restore movement to the pinky. At that point, the Dupuytren’s contracture had progressed to where I only had about 30° of movement. (Click the link for a lovely photo.)

This was causing trouble with things like reaching into a pocket or putting on a glove. It was also messing with my typing. When I finally met with the surgeon, he said I should have come in before it got to this point. Earlier on in the progression, they can do less invasive procedures to help. At this point, there wasn’t much to try except for surgery.

Me in surgical gown and mask, with insulin pump.

The surgeon said things went pretty well. He was able to get the fingers pretty much straight, though they may not stay perfectly straight as they heal. I was bandaged up and put in a splint to try to hold the finger straight as much as possible.

I went back after two days, so he could remove the initial splint and take a look. He also removed the drains, the little plastic straw-like things. This was around the point that I went into shock for a few minutes. Felt like I was going to throw up, broke out in sweat. Fun stuff!

Once I recovered, I got my first real look at the incision and stitches. Just in time for Halloween season. We switched to a remoldable splint that I could take off to do stretches and therapy.

I go in on Wednesday to get half the stitches out. Eventually we will start cutting back on how much I have to wear the splint. I’ll probably have it on for overnight for a while yet, though. Everything seems to be healing fairly well so far. He doesn’t think I’ll get full movement back, but I’m pushing to get as close as possible.

I am able to drive and do most things I need to do, but not everything. I’m doing this blog post on my phone using voice dictation, which is a pain. And I really want to be able to start typing and working on book stuff. I’ve also had to stop most of my exercise routine for now.

Mostly, I’m just bored and frustrated and ready to be doing stuff again. It’s giving me a lot more sympathy for how frustrated Amy used to get when she was recovering from her knee surgeries.

The worst part? I was all ready to tell people I had a lightning bolt scar because I stopped a killing curse with my bare hand. But with everything JK Rowling has been going on about lately, I really don’t feel like doing a lot of Harry Potter references. Any other suggestions for good lightning bolt scar stories?

Kickstarter Rewards Status

As of this afternoon, almost all of the Kickstarter rewards for Goblin Queen have been mailed out!

There are only 8 people left for me to take care of, and I’m waiting on them to check and respond to their email. In most cases, these are folks who didn’t complete the Kickstarter survey, so I don’t know where to actually send their rewards.

I also have a bunch of donated copies to mail out. I’ve sent the first three, but the bulk of those may end up waiting until post-surgery.

Having signed and mailed 300+ books, all I’ll say is that I’m very much looking forward to letting my publisher worry about distribution for whatever book I write next 🙂

Updates: Goblin Queen and Hand Surgery

Let’s start with the book stuff. Happily, the bulk orders for Goblin Queen were printed and shipped more quickly than the proof copies. These twelve boxes arrived last week from IngramSpark, and since then I’ve also received the order from Amazon.

12 boxes of books

So I’ve been spending most of my free time signing and shipping books. As of this afternoon, I’ve gotten a little over half of the backer rewards dropped off at the post office. My goal is to get the rest of them done before October 12, because…

…on the morning of October 12, I’m going in for surgery to try to fix the Dupuytren’s contracture in my right hand. This has been developing for years in both hands, but it’s still relatively minor in the left. The right, on the other hand (heh), well, at this point I can only extend the pinky about 30 degrees from the palm.

We’d originally planned on me getting this taken care of back in 2019, but other family medical issues took priority. At this point, the surgeon doesn’t think I’ll get full motion back, but hopefully I’ll get most of it. If nothing else, after I’ve healed from the surgery, I should be able to type more easily, put gloves on, reach into my pocket, etc — all things that have become increasingly annoying in recent months.

I’ve also been playing with a pitch for my next book. I’m still pulling the details together, especially the ending, but the plan is to do a standalone contemporary fantasy. No goblins at this time, but a lot can change between the pitch and the finished book 🙂

And now I suppose I should get back to signing and packing these books…

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