Cool and quiet fish, that’s me…
It’s been a busy time. For the first year that I can remember, I find myself starting to get a little overwhelmed by all of the activity and bustle around the holidays.

Business trips, end of the year client deadlines, visits from grandparents, and the general craziness of life itself . . . and suddenly I want to go to bed at 9PM every night.

Sometimes, that’s exactly what I did.

Which is why I’ve been so quiet here and on Twitter and elsewhere.

Fortunately, things have calmed down a bit now. December is still hectic and busy . . . but I think I’ll make it from here on out.

Tea with Winterly
Woke up with Sophie this morning and came downstairs to find the air outside filling up with snow. Apart from a storm a few week’s back, we haven’t gotten very much this season. Yet.

But my baby daughter looked out at the whirling air and held out her hands, trying to touch the fat flakes as they drifted past the window. Later, we put out seeds and nuts for the squirrels.

The Winter Solstice is near. This is my favorite time of year, for so many reasons — not the least of which is how beautiful the world outside becomes. To me, there’s nothing lovelier than the face of Winter.

The squirrels got their treats today. And you might want to check back in here around teatime on December 21st. Winterly might have some more things to share in celebration of the solstice.

Just saying.

Filed Under “Yay.”
Good news last week. Matters of Mortology won the “Frightening Fiction” award at BookRix, after having been nominated as a wildcard along with the other finalists.

Most everyone said nice things, which made me very happy and grateful. And the judges were especially kind, both with their praise and their criticism.

You can read some of the community comments here. And, of course, you can get a copy of the book for your very own if you are so inclined.

Winning vs. “Winning”
Despite a few points where my word count seriously flatlined, I managed to complete my first NaNoWriMo.

What I enjoyed most (apart from the writing) was the friend connection, writing along with everyone else. It made me miss my old writer’s group a little bit.

I don’t know that it’s accurate or fair to say I “won” NaNoWriMo but I finished the two projects that I’d wanted to get done and made the 50k wordcount with a little bit of time to spare.

One project was an adaptation of my play The Red Boy. The other project was a push to finish a new short-ish story called The Cradle. That’s the one that’s got Jee in it, in case you were wondering.

So, I’m a little bit of a cheaterpants for the adaptation. Maybe next year I’ll start something from scratch.

They said it couldn’t be done, but…
…approximately ninety percent of my NaNoWriMo efforts were done on the iPad. About half the time, I used a wireless keyboard. But I also made good use of the onscreen keyboard as well. At no point was this a problem or impediment for me — if anything, it dramatically improved my ability to work. Anywhere.

And after a lot of trial and error with different software and methods for synchronizing, I decided Evernote was the only way to get a reliable sync between various devices (computer, iPhone, iPad). Although Scrivener is my preferred writing environment, the lack of an iPad version was a problem. And seeing data loss when I tested Dropbox as a hub for SimpleNote, I said phooey and went ahead with Evernote — which is probably what I should have done in the first place.

I still prefer Scrivener, though. Everything’s tucked safely away in there now, waiting for rewrites in January/February.

There’s been a lot of debate recently about whether or not the iPad is a consumption or creation device. From my perspective, both sides of that argument seem to be missing the point.

It’s both.

At least, mine is. Your results may vary. I tend to want to write no matter what I have to work with. I’ve been known to resort to post — it’s and the backs of business cards, when nothing else was at hand. One of the first sequences in Pantheon was written in crayon on a paper menu (and I’ll thank you to keep your smart-alec comments until after you’ve read it).

Just saying, you can write anywhere, with anything, if you’ve the mind to.

Coming Soon
Speaking of consumption, December is an Aurohn month — which is to say, a lot of my time will be spent getting things ready to be published.

At the top of the list is getting the 10th anniversary edition of Samantha Dunn’s Not by Accident ready for printing. As this is the first non-me book to come out from Aurohn Press, it’s pretty darn exciting. And Dunn’s memoir is outstanding. That she trusted us to bring it back into print is a genuine honor.

Time permitting, the iBook edition of Matters of Mortology will finally arrive as well. A lot of people have been asking for this one, so expect some special introductory pricing as a reward for your patience.

And I’m also laying the groundwork for both Assam & Darjeeling and Matters of Mortology to appear on a few other platforms like the Nook, Google Books, and more.

Stay tuned, more details to come.

The Cradle will Rock
When my daughter Julia found out that there was another Jee story in the works, she did her best to try and convince me it would be okay to let her read the first draft. I assured her that it wasn’t. My first drafts are pretty rough sometimes, and this one is no exception.

(I should say, this is not a sequel to Assam & Darjeeling by any stretch. It’s just that I know there’s more going on with Jee. And I want to tell those stories. This one has goats, for instance. And a lot of rain.)

That being said, I’m very happy with the story overall. It worked out pretty well and I’m looking forward to cleaning it up once it’s had a chance to hang and cure for a while. Not quite sure how I’ll share it with everyone once it’s finished. It’s definitely one I’m looking forward to reading aloud, so you can plan on it showing up in iTunes as either an addendum to the book or an episode of The Gospel of Thomas.

Speaking of which…
…I discovered this weekend that my Halloween episode got lost in the aether, apparently never showing up on iTunes or in the RSS feed. It’ll be fixed this weekend. And there’s a new one coming next week for the holidays — a sneak peek at a few pages from Pantheon, just to apologize for the technical problems.

From the Mailbag
This came in last week…

“My mother died very unexpectedly about three years ago. . . . Shortly after her death, I came across the Assam and Darjeeling podcast. At first I thought I was morbid for enjoying it so much, but as I listened I realized I was slowly working though saying good-bye to my mom. I have no idea how or why it happened, I’m just glad it did. When I think of where my mom is… what she’s doing… how she’s feeling… I almost always think of you and your book…”

Well. There’s no way to feel about that, except humble and grateful. And I am.

And finally…
Since it went on sale earlier this year, Assam & Darjeeling has sold about 145 copies (hardcover, softcover, and Kindle combined). While that’s not a staggering amount of books sold, over 3,000 people have downloaded the free PDF. As near as I can tell, the free audiobook version has seen about 24,000 downloads from all over the world (that’s a jump of ten thousand in the past month or so).

Lots of these people have written to me, to let me know what they thought of the book. Which pretty much makes my day, every single time.

I write for a lot of different reasons but, well, that e-mail from last week is about the best thing I could ever hope to do with one of my books.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. In the span of about a week, someone very kindly nominated Matters of Mortology for an award (and it won), someone wrote me the e-mail you see above, and someone else called me an amateur.

I don’t know that I’m a particularly masterful writer, in terms of using the language or doing particularly good things with the words themselves. I have a lot of quirks and idiosyncrasies, I wander down tangents and overwrite everything to death, I don’t follow a lot of the accepted rules of grammar or vocabulary (chiefly because I’m rather ignorant of most of them).

If I do manage to put the right words together in the right way once in a great while, it’s just dumb luck or the gods lending a hand. Hard, long effort can sometimes nudge a few of them into the right place as well.

What I hope is that, underneath it all, there’s something there. An idea, a character, an energy that might resonate with someone. I take it on faith that this will happen from time to time — if I am lucky, if I work very hard, if the gods are kind.

It’s coming up on the year’s end. This has been a good one for me and mine — we end it weighed down with unexpected kindness and undeserved generosity.

Like I said, humble and grateful.