Pardon My Lateness

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I hope no one was alarmed by my sudden disappearance. I know, these days you never know what can happen to a person who is not paying attention. The watermelons in my garden might have ganged up on me, and killed me in a sugar rush. Or perhaps the bugs that ate my tomatoes might have held me hostage (for more tomatoes.)

In fact, I was my usual ditsy self and completely forgot that Dan had an appointment for his eyes — which means a ride mumble hour away (he has weird eyes and needs a specialist) — and hoped I’d go with him to help him stay awake on the drive and back (Besides, riding in cars is time together.)

I’d have put up one of two guest posts that arrived, IF — and this is a big if — I hadn’t been sick as a dog till way past 2 am last night. Which meant I didn’t sleep a ton. Which in turn meant I woke up and fed the cats and kind of stumbled out of the door in a haze.

I made good use of the time Dan was in with the doctor to figure out why Bowl of Red was not doing what I expected. As in to sketch the rest of the plot after it deviated from the plot.

<insert swear words here

Turns out it’s a lot more complex than I thought, so it’s going to take a little more work to finish. And honestly, we’re just back (okay, okay, we stopped for lunch on account of I was starving, okay?) And I’m seriously considering a short nap before I write some more, because I’m still stumbling around. BUT I know where the plot is going now which is a relief.

And beneath is the lovely cover for BOR (which hell or high water will be up for pre-order in six days, though it might not be available for another month) courtesy of the one, the only, the extraordinary Jack Wylder:

I call this one the boyz, the boyz, the shifter boyz…. are in a world of trouble and pain….

62 thoughts on “Pardon My Lateness”

  1. Why oh why is it when the plot goes wonky and the story gets all “that ain’t right,” that it never gets simpler? I just wanna finish the story and then spend ten years editing it!

    (grumble grumble cuss cuss)

      1. That fanfic thing I just finished was supposed to be short stories with the same characters in the same area. So each one has its own little file, which means I also know exactly when I started each of them.

        Chronologically, the last story is the second new idea I had. It started from, why does a character react in a particularly extreme way to a certain sort of thing? Well, it probably happened to them, and so they respond poorly to it. Story idea! Then one of the characters goes and does something I was not expecting, at all. What’s worse, it felt in character…

        Pretty much everything written after that ended up, either overtly or covertly, orbiting around answering why? Which is how a short story became 47000 words…

      1. I am not one of the people who Must Write but sometimes I do anyway, so it’s been a while… but the most story-upside-downing revelation I’ve had came in the form of “this character who showed up out of an in-universe fairytale is the opposite role from what he was trying to imply.”

        Well… actually it didn’t change all that much because (1) I wasn’t very far along yet and (2) it fit better that way. But it was a substantial perspective change. I could picture a muse giggling.

    1. LOL. It’s been SUCH a pain. Part of which was my getting healthy enough to write it.
      I read something I tried to read just before I moved and was terrified. it’s the first time something of mine is UTTERLY lifeless.

      1. That hurts. Have had it once or twice with an illo that kept dying. Ten years before I figured out what was wanted. And it was just a one-off commission.

        Glad it seems to be getting better.

      1. I would have been so much more anxious about the delays! Shifters is my favorite series. As long as it was just “Sonething new, going poor Mrs. Hoyt fits”, however, it was easy to feel sanguine: “We’ll get it when it’s ready….”

        But man. Mrs. Hobbit. Master of Observational Science 🙄

        1. I’ve been “champing at the bit” as it were for YEARS, but know that pushing is oft counterproductive. I wasn’t even aware of the rights issue until she said they had, amazingly, finally, reverted to her. Am I eager to read? HELLYEAH! I wanna know what “I” have been up to! And I plan to get it in electronic format to get it as fast as possible, then again in paperback, so I have hard-copy (and Ma, the Traditionalist can read it…) and well, if I (or “I”) am in it, DAMNRIGHT I am getting the hardcover if there be such. This is so very important that I will skip a meal here and there. Why, I’ll even take money out of the liquor budget for it if needs be.

  4. If Life was supposed to be easy, God would have stopped at monkeys and rabbits.

    The fact that we’re here proves He wants us to use our brainz.

  8. Judging a book by the cover; the plot just shifted all to hell and gone and a couple galaxies besides.

    1. Does the plot know you know where it’s going? Is it fine with that or does it have some surprises in store for you?

      Stay tuned and find out Shifter fans.

      1. I know where it’s going. It’s ragnarok for the all the shifter clans. Orvan is …. well… Orvan is. In the labyrinth, at that.
        AND Loki is a horse shifter.

        1. Orvan: It seems that what I thought was gonna be a simple walk-on bit has… evolved… into something more.
          $HOUSEMATE: Characters DO that, you know. (Yes he spoke in Capitals).
          Orvan: And it seems when the character the book is really about has… dreams/hallucination/visions… the guide… looks like.. me?
          $HOUSEMATE: That happens when someone sensible is needed. ($Housemate then went on to claim that evidently Sarah has no idea how ‘silly’ I am… despite all the carp? Silly? Naw, UNIVERSE is silly. Ox just notice.)

          Loki.. equine… ponies explained.

  9. Neat cover! Hrm, the astro chart in the background the only things not covered or mostly are Libra (scales) and…Taurus. I wonder how Libra figures in.

  10. Regarding Bowl of Red, I feel your pain. While writing a trilogy (which had started out as an intended single volume) one space war just…fizzled out. Then, just when I thought I’d finished writing the last space war in the story, I had another one pop up.

    Overall I’m really pleased with it, though. (This effort is why I needed to see your articles about covers again. It’s going up someday relatively soon.)

  11. There’s a reason I write code instead of fiction.

    Somehow I can’t explain the kitchen cabinet full of live iguanas or the 18 dimensional diagram with time loops that is the protagonists family “tree”. And the geology porn sprinkled in key places only turns on the mineral collectors.

    C++, Linux, and GNU Radio is easier to deal with than English.

          1. I thought I typed Mhos. waves paw at Otto Corrupt This is what happens when I have to do a security patch and the settings get reset. Grrrrrrrr.

            stomps off to undo the oh-so-helpful resets

  12. And, I would of course be buying anyway, but I have this Further Incentive to find out just “I” have been getting up (or down…) to.

    CoWorker1: He said I was a crazy! Crazier than a minotaur!
    Ox: That’s easy enough.
    CoWorker2: How?!
    Ox: We’re VERY down-to-earth.
    CoWorker1: –LAUGHS–
    CoWorker2: –bewildered, yet AGAIN– (Low Slearner…)

  15. Elmore Leonard, speaking at the Tucson Book Fair a year before he died, said that the most difficult part of writing a novel was picking the characters’ names…He spent a lot of time on it, but one time, he recounted, he couldn’t one of the characters to say anything–wrong name..So Elmore changed the name, after which he couldn’t get the character to shut up…

    1. I keep wondering if a character thereby is twice on the cover.
      This is NOT a complaint if that is the case.
      Because, if so, I suspect it is compensation (type: insufficient) for the stuff he goes through in the text.

      1. Either that, or one of the other LEOs who is a shifter. (Drawing a blank on the name, and there’s way too much blood in my caffeine stream.)

  17. I’ve been told that my stories are never predictable. I like it that way. It’s usually because I’m a total pantser, and the plot line is more of a wadded up slinky than a line.

    I wrote The Heart of the Castle for NaNoWriMo, but it was seriously blah and only 41,000 words. I had to come up with another 9000 words in order to make the 50k, so I decided to write the villains pov and it woke up with a vengeance. One of my favorites, now.

      1. “I flies by the seat of me skirt” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but I’ll accept the cultural variation.

  18. Heard it all before. Not gonna believe it until the manuscript is in my hot little hands, and not even then until I find the first typo.

    1. By deduction (or induction, Oh, HENRY!) a “manuscript” is not a manuscript until First Typo (or other error) is detected. Thus even an ABSOLUTE PERFECTIONIST MUST include at least one “error” for an Editor to Find And Pontificate Upon.

      1. Thus my firm conviction that my dear niece must really love me to insert so very many little tidbits into otherwise perfect copy just for me to find.

        1. I prefer typos to the time the MC mysteriously grew a third arm in chapter 15. Or the endless magazine of infinite bullets. Or when I forgot that modern biology exists. Or the incredible teleporting Mcguffin. Or the mysteriously disappearing plot device from chapter 17.

          I know that readers tend to fill in the blanks. That’s something that should happen in any good story. But sometimes…

  19. Waiting with patience (alright not so much, TAKE MY MONEY!!!, no just take your time to finishes from all I hear muses are tin plated bastards Glad all I write is Python/java/C). Although admittedly the meal referenced in Dinerese is not my cup of tea, Can I get a First Lady (not that kind people its spare ribs as in what Adam donated to Eve Sheesh…) to eat if I end up in Goldport? Worked at a joint that was a Deli/Diner we used the lingo for fun sometimes. Boss did say “Check the Ice” one time and I dutifully headed for the icemaker not knowing that bit of slang making he and his son laugh.

        1. All engineering schedules are Fairy Tales. The Reader often used ‘irrational estimating’ to evaluate a schedule. If the individual who generated it was inexperienced, the schedule was multiplied by pi. If moderately experienced, the schedule was multiplied by e. If experienced, the schedule was multiplied by sqrt(3). It proved to be a pretty accurate predictor.

          2. Reader I fear that even for “good” software schedules a likely multiplier of 2 (i.e. 100%) is often too little. This is particularly true if interaction with new hardware, or attempting something that has no clear existing analog. So your moderately experienced multiplier (e) is a minimal staring point. As one co-worker of mine said “If it is delivered on time and with no changes it is likely it could have been done more easily without a computer at all” 🙂 .

          3. I’d always used the rule of thumb that you took the estimate, doubled it, then incremented to the next unit of time: two weeks becomes four months, 10 minutes becomes 20 hours, and so on..

  20. Well, I had a good day, eventually, on the 19th. We had to moved two into dorms (same school). I was thinking it was going to rain and wanted to put the camper shell on the pickup, but put it off too long. Five heavy duty plastic boxes instead used. Beach wagon got all five into building in one trip. Didn’t rain until on the way back. “Fools, little children, [and me].”

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