Anybody who's ever tried to get a book through any kind of online system by themselves knows my pain, I'm sure. It's a catastrophe waiting to happen. And that's assuming you've actually done all of your stuff right. Did you forget you added a page? Haha, good luck with that. Was your title a little off center on the cover? You're probably better just recreating it.

So this epic horror got me thinking. I'd love to hear some of your horror stories, about what's happened in your publishing adventures. We'll call it shared learning. I'll tell you what all went wrong with mine, and then you can tell me about your disfigured creatures from beyond.

I did the added page thing this time, and you never realize how accustomed to having things on the right facing page until they're suddenly on the left. Also, if you go back to my home page you'll see the cover for The Mystery of Raven's Moor. It looks blueish to me. It's a purpley kind of blue, but it's still more blue than freaking purple. The cover came in purple. Like wrap a Plantagenet baby in it purple. And then my kid picked it up, started reading it, and found a missed typo.

Yeah. No worries, right? I had plenty of time to add that to the schedule...

So, tell me about your horrors, and come back Friday and we'll talk about a different kind of horror. 

I have utterly no clue what I said I was going to do this month. I think it was said with the full understanding that if I hadn't mentioned Golden Fleece Press yet, it was already hovering in my work folder and therefor whatever I thought was going to happen was more or less slated for failure.

It's hard to say I failed last month, when I sit back and look at everything I actually did. Did I do the stuff I said I was going to do? Well...no. I'm pretty sure I did nearly none of it. 

Whatevs. It's a new month full of new beginnings. I opened a publishing company last week! Arguably with a crap-ton of help and the coolest business partner in the universe, but I digress.  So. Goals for this new month.

• Ignore the faintly horrifying number of blogs I am responsible for upkeep on and ACTUALLY DO THEM. I know, this one might be a little difficult. Still, moonbeams and stardust and all that jazz.
• Edits. For the thing that's my placeholder in this whirlwind snowball of doom. I have months, but given everything else I need months so...
• I am doing Camp Nano. Because you all know I am crazy and I said I wouldn't, but you all knew that was a lie. You did, come on, admit it. I'm writing content for projects to be announced later and I know for a fact at least one of them is going to be utterly unhelpful in the way that means a 25k word project decides to be ten books. So. I've got that to look forward to. 
• Plan out a blog tour. Because my professional life isn't full to the gills already.

Right. So. There's my July, mixed in with my birthday and my kid's birthday and two visits from my parents and one national holiday and...

I wonder if there's a floor on my attic. That seems like a legitimate place to hide.

--Cross posted from Tumblr


They make a fun noise as they rush past.

I know, it's a ridiculously over-used joke by writers. But it's another Monday, and pretty much everything I said I was going to do last week didn't happen. And the continued medical shenanigans going on in my life are a tailor made excuse for that, sure. That doesn't mean I should be using that.

So, last week I made some sort of vague promise about how I was going to blog about something involving writing this week. Which is a little difficult, as I haven't really managed to do much of that lately.

Hello Topic, so lovely of you to join us. Better late than never.

As you might know, I tried to write a ridiculous amount for the first part of Camp Nano this year, and while I didn't make the goal I set, I did manage to get through the first draft for two separate books and start the third. 

It's not like this is the first time I've had to stop a project in the middle and go back later. And I'm going back much quicker than I generally manage. Sometimes it's years before I pick a project back up again. I feel like the disconnect is always huge once I stop, whether it's for three weeks or a year. 

And much as I'm trying not to think about it right now, a lot's happened in my personal life since I stopped writing that book.

If this was LiveJournal I'd be hitting that little 'I'm lost' button. So I'm kicking it back to you.

What do you do when you've left a project for a while and it's time to go back?