Category: Uncategorized

Novel Progress

6444 / 100000

No progress report last week, because I spent a lot of time re-writing Chapter 1 and posting my wordcounter bar with a decreased word count would feel too much like going backwards. I think spending a lot of time on the first chapter was worth it though — the early versions were so far off what I wanted that they likely would have thrown the whole trajectory of the story off. The version I ended up keeping (the 5th version) is far from perfect, but it’s close enough that I feel I can move on. (Yay!)

This …

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Novel Progress

3338 / 100000

April 1st – April 5th

Wordcount: 3338

This week’s word count is all on Chapter 1, which I am still tinkering with. The total wordcount is a bit deceptive, because I abandoned a couple partial drafts of Chapter 1, and haven’t counted those towards the total. I’m still working out details about the characters/setting/plot as I go, so I’m okay with the low wordcount. Hopefully things will eventually click into place and I can pick up the pace.

Badges Earned:


For sitting down and cranking out 500 words when I didn’t …

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It Begins…

Someone told me that April 1st was a bad day to start a novel, so I started today instead. I wrote one word :) My goal is to write one chapter a week, for however many chapters it takes for the book to be finished.

I’ve located a progress bar:

1 / 100000

Sadly, my one word is insufficient to show up on the progress meter.

Several other members of Codex are also writing novels at the moment, and as further motivation, I will be trying to earn badges, like the one shown below (unlike this sample, most of …

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Happy Equinox!

According to popular folklore, it is possible to balance a raw egg* on one end on the equinox. It was a trick my dad used to do sometimes when I was a kid. So if you have way too much time on your hands, you can spend today attempting to balance eggs on end :)

Happy Equinox!

* Okay, I’ll come clean. The egg in the picture is not raw, it’s an “empty egg” where the contents have been blown out through a little hole …

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Sweet Potato Casserole

Sweet Potato Casserole

Massively unhealthy side dish, or slightly unhealthy dessert?* Start with some healthy, nutritious sweet potatoes. Cook them. Mash them. Mix in: butter, milk, sugar, egg. Put mixture into a casserole dish. THEN, as if that is not enough, top the casserole with a mixture of pecans/flour/brown sugar/butter(yes, really, more butter).

And another picture, just to prove that there really are sweet potatoes under there:

Sweet Potato Casserole

…

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Beef Stew with Root Vegetables

Stew

Last night, I made a batch of stew, based on this recipe. Except the grocery store didn’t have rutabaga, so I substituted turnip. Also I forgot to get barley, so I substituted steel cut oats (and cut down on the flour, since the oats have plenty of starch to thicken the stew). Oh, and I tossed in a potato, since I had one. And some thyme. And I didn’t have beef broth handy, so I used half chicken broth and half water with dissolved beef …

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Custom Anthology!

So if you’ve been reading the blog, you know that I’ve been doing cover art for AnthologyBuilder.

A while ago, I put together an anthology, and today it arrived in the mail. I’m quite excited about it — fiction by Tina Connolly, Mary Robinette Kowal, Beth Wodzinski, Alethea Kontis, Melissa Mead, Cat Rambo, Nancy Fulda, Aliette de Bodard, Martha Wells, Jessica Reisman, and Samantha Henderson. And cover art by…me!

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