Delayed Post and yearly plan

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Hi guys, the post won’t go up till this afternoon.  I have a doctor’s appointment in a little over an hour and need to get ready.

I’m hoping very hard the appointment will tell me this is nothing, and I feel sure that’s what they’ll say.  Which means I feel stupid about having slept VERY badly.

So, because I slept very badly and can’t think of anything to write about, I’ll give you the plan for this year:

Right now I’m closing in on finishing Darkship Revenge.  Yes, I know it’s taken forever, but that’s because the more you interrupt a novel, the harder it is to keep it together.  And this novel got interrupted by year from hell… five times, and I’ve had to reconstruct lost parts three times.  I’m now just making sure everything hangs together before I send it to Toni.

After that I’m doing the novel with Kevin Anderson, the one I’ve been researching in the background for three months.  I can never remember the title, because it’s long and complicated, but it’s something like “Lewis and Clark and the magical territories of the West.”  At any rate, enough to give you a general idea.  And after that, G-d willing and their telling me it’s nothing today, I’ll be doing Guardian (all I have right now is a couple of chapters.)  Because in my head that’s tangled with Dark Fate, I’ll be doing a lot of that on this blog then.

When Guardian is in, I’ll be doing the Dragons trilogy, the one I’ve excerpted here before.  That will get flung at Baen for good or ill.  If they want it, it’s theirs.  If they don’t, it goes out indie, probably mid-summer.

I’m going to try to finally finish The Brave And The Free to go indie the fourth of July.  No promises, as I can’t be sure of my health.  BUT I’m going to do my d*mndest.  Now that I’m no longer depressed, it should be possible (worst novel to write while depressed, since it takes place in a total police state.)

I also have, newly reverted, all of the furniture refinishing mysteries, and TRULY I can do one of those in a week (it’s how they were all written) so I’m going to try to release them all (Jack Wylder made AMAZING covers for them) and then do the fourth “A Well Inlaid Death”.

Also reverted, and edited, but needing my go-over is the entire magical British Empire Trilogy.  I’ll be working on that and the mysteries in the evenings, in lieu of a life, though I still want to take date night with my husband and probably “reading Sunday” once a week.

To the long suffering fans of the Musketeer mysteries, Musketeer’s Confessor is almost done, and would have been out in December, if I hadn’t collapsed in the shower and then entered a roller coaster of doctor’s appointments (most of it to tell me I’m healthy, except there is a thingy in my brainy.  Apparently.  Two thingies actually, which seems like an embarrassment of riches.)  I need to write the final third and do a thorough edit.  As I said, thank G-d I don’t have a life, and the boys seem to be settling into lives of their own, in which they don’t need much of our time.  At least they seem to be so after the holidays.  No promise on date, but I’ll try to get it into your hands ASAP.

The same for Rogue Magic and Elf’s blood and probably Witch’s Daughter, all of which are substantially written.  Witch’s Daughter, like Darkship Revenge got impacted because of a move just in the MIDDLE of it.  But once I have the Baen work in, I’ll return to it and it should be a quick run through, though a little awkward, since it’s a YA.

There’s two secret projects, which you’ll know about when I tell you they’re done.  I suppose they’re both, if you squint, mil sf, but the first is a reprise of the first world I ever created and which I couldn’t sell, because it was too weird for words.  Weird is easier when you have craft.

There’s also collaborations with two sons, the biological elder, and the adopted (at thirty or so) eldest.  The first is “Harry Potter in Space” and the first book is The Curse of the Gypsy Child.  The second is Signals in the Storm, a military fantasy.  It was started at Liberty con three years ago, and then both of our lives got weird.  But it is a priority now.  Both will be flung at Baen and if not accepted brought out indie.  (Though I might offer them to Wordfire first.)

I’ll be — G-d willing — attending three cons, and hopefully at Denver comicon.  The first con is CoSine in Colorado Springs, at the end of January, then there’s Liberty con and I hope Dragon con, which will be a first.

Now go on, yell at me about crazy schedule.  Oh, yeah, to leave room for fiction, I’m ONLY doing three new articles here a week, the rest will be guest posts or excerpts or other, lighter stuff.  Hope that’s okay.  I mean three columns a week is more than professional columnists do, right?

Oh, yeah, I’m hoping to do something with PJM again, which means I need to send them a proposal.

Now let the yelling begin.  And keep your fingers crossed this brainy thingy is nothing, or the schedule gets upended again.

 

 

74 thoughts on “Delayed Post and yearly plan”

  3. Are you going to do the Orphan Kittens Rescue series you mentioned? and are the Elise Hyatt novels going to be E-book only, or some paperback or print-on-demand? My E. Hyatt fan hasn’t been in for a while, but I think she mentioned being a hard copy only holdout.
    Prayers prayers prayers on the doctor’s appointment.

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      1. Given some of the recent scandals I am afraid that, at least until the incoming Trump Administration has time to pull corks from some Department of Education asses, hazing kitties is right out.

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  4. Yeah. You know, I’ll bet utter silence would really get to her. Then we could all jump out and yell “SURPRISE!” Because, you know, internet, so we don’t have to worry about whether she’s carrying.

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              1. With Dragons (like Sarah), there’s no such thing as “out of range”. :twisted:

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                  1. Don’t know any “person” that Sarah thinks is “too cute to shoot/kill”. :twisted:

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                    3. Nor does the wallaby pretend to be. The wallaby survives by fancy footwork and cunningly surrounding self with people Sarah isn’t inclined to risk taking collateral damage.

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                    1. We have our version of Thunderbird, Kokko, here. Same word is also used for a big bonfire, the mythological bird is a huge eagle made of iron and fire.

                      Well, anyway, he might not take kindly to dragons on his turf. :P

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                    2. Kokko? Nice guy but it does help if dragons ask his permission to operate in his territory. :grin:

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    2. I hope the appointment turns out well for you, and I definitely hope we both make it to Libertycon. I am registered, I just need to figure out if the rest if my schedule will accomodate.

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      1. Sarah’s a Dragon so She’ll be able to find out where you live even if She doesn’t already know. :evil:

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  7. Always remember: tip your doctor a nice shiny quarter. Make it clear you appreciate his hard work and dedication even if the government wants to reduce him to serfdom.

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  8. 2015 AND 2016
    Remember the whole kerfuffle over Through Fire.
    Remember the clusterfisk of 2015 Libertycon.
    And of course the endless rounds of health issues, both yours and kin.
    In other words, Sarah plans and God Laughs.
    Through all the trials and tribulations sure to come, and come they surely will, do remember that we have your back.
    And other select parts, soon to be offered at auction on EBay.

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  9. Damn, Sarah. I don’t have health issues, and your schedule would beat my ass every day of the week and twice on Sundays. #RESPECT! (but take care of yourself first. I understand the desire to get the work done — have three novels to finish myself — but we also need Sarah around, hale and hearty, to keep us entertained with both your writing and your laying of the wood to Liberal Sacred Cows)

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  10. * Raises (metaphorical, atm) glass to ‘crazy’ lady with ‘insane’ schedule.

    * Looks at map, somewhere in a little-known ACME branch office, “What kind of route is this? I thought I was going to Goldpeak or something like that? Oh.. not for a while. Alright… well.. LibertyCon again? No, no problem with that at all, better than the Halifax. No, nothing against the city, but swimming out to HMCS Halifax was rather much. You bet I haven’t forgotten that one. ‘Other duties as assigned.’ can cover way too much. That project, too. No, I prefer to not speak of it again.”

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  11. “I can’t be sure of my health.”

    Pfui. What a wuss. I am always sure of my health (which, admittedly, is not the same as being always right abut my health.)

    It looks like some of us had better get busy reloading our e-purses.

    One touch of advice: if you do write a longer blog post after your doctor visit, save it for tomorrow

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      1. Life and experience lead me to expect the most probable diagnosis will be “Reply hazy try again.”

        Any comment (or, given Sarah as blogowner has the capacity, an update) to this post will likely be sufficient.

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        1. Dran it. I first read that as blo gowner, and was wondering just what a blo gown was? Sometimes I should wake up before reading comments here. Although a blo gown might be kind of nice, blowing in the wind?

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                1. Dancing boys in luminescent shimmering blo gowns, concealing their blowguns. You know, if we keep this up, we’ll end up with a whole new story!

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                    1. The real mystery is how long we can keep this thread going, but… I suspect you’re right, those blowguns would end up in a mystery, probably right out of history, with a bit of hersteria in the wings. And in the modern age of electronics, no doubt there would be trans-istories… hum, I think I broke that one. How about a resistory, instead? The fog is getting pretty thick, maybe we’ll have pea soup (a Japanese friend asked me to explain why fog gets called pea soup recently, and I found it quite difficult. Why do we call fog pea soup, anyway? We should call it the sweet mist-story of life, instead!) Thanks, Orvan!

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                    3. … no doubt there would be trans-istories….

                      I seem to be at a bit of a bipolar junction about this, though I admit you have fielded quite an effect. I hope I do not come across as vacuous, but what I’ve seen so far in this space is quite a charge.

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    2. Or she could ask for a link to my blog post for tomorrow about how do you write womanly women characters and use that either for here or for MGC. Not that I’m hinting or anything.

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  13. I sympathize on the brainy thing having had a few concussions myself. Anything that interrupts normal brain activity is extremely irritating (to say the least). Part of the reason I don’t do drugs. I like being able to think right.

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      1. Thanks for bringing up an excellent point, Em. Too often we are inclined to correlate “not doing drugs” with “thinking right” and yet our current political and intellectual elite clearly demonstrates that “thinking right” is not within their capabilities regardless of whether they abstain, do drugs, or engage in spirit cooking.

        Thinking right is a matter of intellectual self-discipline which is generally (insert clause re: bipolar, schizophrenic,, etc. conditions) facilitated by eschewal from drugs but for which refraining from drug use is no necessary condition.

        Records of this nation’s Founders show them to have consumed copious quantities of alcohol and yet they were quite arguably the clearest thinkers to have gathered in a single place in the last 500 years. Alexander Hamilton at his drunkest thought more productively than Barack Obama at his most sober, and I would put money on Sam Adams fresh from his brewery against the entirety of Harvard’s present faculty.

        Sound thinking begins with sound principles.

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    2. While some folks do indeed have medical need for pharmaceutical augmentation, there are also those who seem to toss strangely random bits into the machinery. And both (perhaps together) remind me of some old single panel cartoon of a teacher addressing a class…

      “The test scores reveal that none of you are taking mind-expanding drugs.”

      If that wasn’t the caption/text, it’s close enough.

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      1. Nah, it’s the edit down to short thing: it takes far too much time to be concise compared to just letting all the words flow out.
        I may resemble this remark.

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  15. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to give Amazon more money to send to you (less their digital carrying charges, of course).

    I shouldn’t need to point out that first priority is to take care of yourself, though, in order to maximize the time over which you can provide reading material. I guess I’m just selfish that way.

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  18. You’ve mentioned being on thyroid supplementation? As one also hypothyroid keep in mind that one sign of getting too much is insomnia. It’s one of my cues to tweak the dose (another is migraines which can point to either too much OR too little). In our family we tweak seasonally, and the endo says that lots of his patients do.

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