Happy Reading!

I spent most of the day curled up under an electric blanket and a purring Anubis cat because Colorado’s weather decided to drop 40 degrees and bring 7 inches of snow to the Front Range. Factor in a spiffy new bout of the common cold and pure exhaustion, I was happy for a day in a nice warm bed.

About an hour ago, I managed to pull myself away from blanket solace in an effort to clean up the office/living room as I continue on the mass purge of household contents. A purging that I foolishly started during November. So far, I’ve made a decent chunk of change for 30+ books and 15 music CDs. I found a home for around 30 YA books and will be helping make the holidays happier for a 12 year old girl. I’m also sending a lot of bead working items and fabric to her. In the grand scheme of things, I’ve recycled an unbelievable of paper and put a rather embarrassing amount of stuff in the local landfill.

My old office is now mostly cleared out thanks to purging – I still have two disassembled beds and a desk in there that need to be moved. Unfortunately, the rooms for the beds are still “congested” and I need help moving the desk once the beds are gone. Tomorrow begins work on the scariest room in the house – the storage room. I haven’t been able to set foot in there since September 2008 or so…I think. Most of the content are actually boxes of fabric and the intent to donate a lot of the fabric and sell the rest is the motivation for starting that room this week. Part of my brain thinks I should do the easier rooms first and forget about donate fabric but that would be the easy way out, a way to procrastinate. This procrastination is why I haven’t really been in that room for years. No more procrastination.

I was suppose to go somewhere tomorrow evening but may end up opting out. I really do not feel well. I have to keep stopping the cleaning process every 5-10 minutes because I feel nauseated and dizzy. How I am getting anything done is a mystery to me. Being put into a social situation for several hours is highly unappealing. I might feel differently tomorrow but, for right now, I am thinking there is no way in hell I will survive social interaction.

I went to shovel snow from my walk this afternoon. Much to my surprise and happiness, someone was kind enough to shovel it for me. No idea as to who did such a wonderful thing for me but I am most grateful. I loathe shoveling snow so much so that I let the sun do most of the work as I live in a south facing house.

I finished the edits to The Soul of Winter on Wednesday while at the final NaNoWriMo write-in. I plan to start formatting it and get it ready for publishing this coming week. While most of my week involves household purging, I’ve set aside a day for work on my books and apply some more advertising avenues for my editing business.

My goals for December are as follows:
- Get all the content written during NaNoWriMo organized and placed in their perspective work files
- Get the whole house purged and reorganized
- Get a few more editing clients
- Get The Soul of Winter ready to publish in January
- Do more work on Reaper’s Moon, A Hundred Flames and Midnight Red.
- Read the remaining 33 books to get to the yearly goal of 500 books read.

As she lays still
Surprise in her eyes
An extinguishing flame
Strip her down
To love every inch
As she struggles to fight
Fight the feelings that will be
Be the last she will remember
Express love with a tight grip
As she wheezes out a plea
Delve deeper between her thighs
Share a kiss on her lips
Locked in screams, trapped
As she lays flopping
Under the force of forever love
Arousing the passion further
Never meant for it to go this far
True love has no boundaries
In the end, in the end of ends
Show her what her love has meant
With an even tighter grip
Preserving her here, now and eternity
Like the summer rose pressed
Pressed between a book’s pages
Expel life to keep her true
To show her what love means
Even as she turns blue

Neither wrath nor Djinn
I stand at the the end
Life has passed me by
As I lay down to die
But breath granted anew
I rise like sweet dew
To greet new night
In full moonlight

Icy white against Night
Shattered as stars twinkling
Idle words leave paved
Under foot uncounted
And yet, yet
It is nowhere
Only noted discord
Coiled, waiting to pounce

For today, I find myself having to say a certain mantra over and over again. November is for writing, December is for salvaging and editing.

Word Sprints are fantastic for word count but highly questionable on usability and that fact drives editor me insane. Since yesterday consisted of non stop word sprints, editor me is throwing a giant hissy fit. Wanted to spend today sorting through the first 20,000 words to figure out where everything was, were everything goes as the work covers several different novels and projects.

November is for writing, December is for salvaging and editing.

While apparently capable of 7,000+ words a day, I don’t plan to write that much again per day if I can help it. I will confess that it makes 2,000 words per day seem easy-peasy. Not intimidated by 2,000 words anymore.

Today’s game plan to put down another 2,000 words so I can hang onto my lead for a time when writing isn’t an option later on in the month. Thanksgiving and the day after are the most likely culprits. I also need to figure out what to post for New Poetry Wednesday. A whole lot to choose from but not sure that any are ready for their public debut.

November is for writing, December is for salvaging and editing.

At the end of my 50 minute crazy word sprint action, Anubis decided to come visit. I have an aromatherapy candle burning on the desk – the scent is suppose to help clear the mind and inspire creativity (it seems to help) – and Anubis jumped up on the desk then sniffed the flame. That’s right. He sniffed the flame. He backed off and ran away so fast that he was just a blur of ink and claws. (He’s fine. I think he lightly burned the tip of a whisker but he’ll recover.) Has my four year old cat never seen fire before? It baffles the mind. It ranks right up there with yesterday with a four foot tall stuffed duck had his hair standing on end. He was running around and hissing like the duck was alive and invading the territory. My cat – afraid of stuffed animals and sniffer of fire.

I should get back to the other writing even though I’ve been pretty much writing everything and anything but what I set out to originally write. I’ve only put down 1200 words or so toward Reaper’s Moon and another 1000 to Midnight Red. Twisted Fortunes has picked up a respectable 2000 words and The Yoder Girl picked up 500 words this morning. The rest of my current 13,334 word count has gone toward A Hundred Flames, general poetry and the tarot-inspired poetry project.

Crumbling Babylon
Wish it could be turned
Turned back into the illusion
It once cringed to
But I have changed
The woven tales, shredding
Threadbare in approach
Fear to be the ghost
Looking on, looking through
Wonder if it has taken residence
In heart when I was looking
Looking for Atlantis
Everything so buried
Sands of time cruel
To seekers who have no business
Searching for ill begotten reasons
Yet I look out of need
For an exorcism
My Babylon, my Atlantis
Cleave answers sought
Tightly to their dented armor

Embroiled, buried under the words
Words written in the past
Cannot remember the torture
Pressed into their ink yet
It is there to taunt as if
I have never grown or left
Even with it splashed across
Fraying yellowed pages
Want to think it is nothing
None to convincing
Have to stop falling,
Falling into the past
Where I die with every pass
Leave it on the page
The proper place and
Not a swimming pool
Blood, ink, and tears
Fantastic currents
But not to swim upstream