Besides a stint of Left 4 Dead 2 on Tuesday night (zomgZOMBIESdiediedie), I’ve been consumed with revisions on one of my larger projects, codename: Fever. These are good revisions, polish revisions, which means no hair pulling or the reorganizing scenes. Just plucking a word here, moving a line there, tightening and cutting off the fat. Removing the superfluous.

Which has been fun. It has given me a chance to dive back in and get reacquainted with my characters. It’s also given me a chance to refocus. For a while I had been distracted by life and reality and numerous other things. My agent needs the revisions done sooner rather than later, which is great–it gives me a hard and fast deadline to work towards, which I thrive in. It allows me to easily cut out the distractions as well.

I even carry my iBook around in hopes of getting a moment to edit. Like last night. I had to pick up my daughter from her gymnastics. I got there early and had a few minutes to wait, so I popped open my iBook and revised by the dashboard light. I only got in about 15 minutes, but it was 15 minutes I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Today is going to be more of the same until I get these revisions done–hopefully wrapping them up next week.

And then it will be on to project: Violet once again.

Wow. Where have the last few weeks gone? It’s been a very exciting, very crazy, very sad time.

For most of the last few weeks things have been going swimmingly well, so much so that I feel like each day I’ve been climbing clouds. Of course, I can’t talk about any of it openly, but there have been some great days, some touching emails, and just a general excitement in my spirit–which is a nice change. Could part of it be the fact that Spring has arrived? Possibly, but I doubt it.

See, Old Man Winter came back on Monday and hit South-Western Ontario with snow and ice and hail. But it didn’t get me down; I was still navigating the recent cloud cover I’d entered.

Work on FEVER has been going  well. I’ve finalized a synopsis and tweaked the manuscript and such. It’s done for now.

Which brings me to working on my YA project. VIOLET has been on the backburner since I went to Seattle a few weeks ago. Time for a swap. Now that FEVER is pretty much done, and I’m waiting to work on CYPHER and WINTERGLASS, I can bring VIOLET to the forefront and start dropping words on the draft again. I’m looking forward to seeing what misadventures she can get into as the draft progresses. And with so many people waving pom poms for me to work on it, how can I not?

But there have been some downers this week as well. My wife’s grandfather passed away on Monday night. It wasn’t unexpected as he’d taken a turn for the worse lately, but the reality of it all is not easy. His death also brings back a lot of the emotions and the sense of loss that I experienced when my grandma passed away a few months ago.  On top of that, another close person in the family fell ill on the Monday and was rushed to the hospital. He’s still there and not looking like he’ll be able to come home for some time.

So that’s where the treading clouds comes in.

I’ve been trying to stay positive and work through a lot of potentially exciting things while other things are collapsing around me. I thnk it’s possible; I just have to see what happens over the next few weeks.

Maybe I can stop treading and start climbing again.

The weekend:

Friday night was spent watching Coraline in digital. And it was awesome. Kudos to Henry Selick and his talented team at LAIKA. The level of detail in this stop-motion production was truly breathtaking. And Henry Selick did a superb job of adapting and tweaking Neil Gaiman’s source material. I can’t wait for Coraline to come out on DVD so I can watch, watch, and re-watch a film that will surely become a modern day classic similar to The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Saturday was spent running around on errands, making homemade lasagna, and cleaning the house. Later that night we had friends come over for a visit and dinner. Wow, was there a lot of food. I can’t believe how fast our friends’ (and our own) kids are growing up. Liz and Jay have a 14-month-old boy who I thought was born a few months ago. Crazy, that thing called time.

Which brings us to Sunday. First we had my Dad come over for a visit and breakfast, and then when he left, we got ready to head to a birthday party–a 1st birthday no less. And again, I thought Julie and Brent’s boy was born month’s ago, but nope, he’s turning 1 and running around their home like a whirling dervish. Good times were had by all, with lots of food, conversation, and of course, a grand assortment of alcoholic beverages. Yum!

After getting home and putting the kiddies to bed, I finished reading a chapter of a friend’s WIP in order to get ready for our crit group meeting later that night.

The entire weekend was a blur. I’m sitting here at the day job wondering where it went. But spirits are high (today anyway), and I’m eager to dive back into the WIP, if only to distract me from other projects, like FEVER and its sequels.

Not much to report really. Been busy with life and day jobbery, writing and getting caught up on too many things to mention, and falling behind on too many others. As you can see, I haven’t even posted pics from the vacation that I got back from–oh, two weeks ago. My spirits lately soar and plummet way too fast to keep track of. And my tattoo is itching like mad.

Other than that, I’ve been trying to work on the YA WIP, and had to do a full chapter 2 white page rewrite as I wasn’t going in the direction I needed to. I think it’s moving along nicely now, but ugh, the time wasted. I don’t have it to waste right now. But such is writing. ‘Tis hard.

Especially when I’m thinking about A FEVER IN CLOCKWORK, and my characters that are trapped in limbo between FEVER and Book 2 (have title, though I will not annouce it yet), while I write a new book in a totally different vein. I hate this. I feel like I’m not being faithful to my characters in the first series while I wait for some things to hopefully work out. I want to write Book 2 now, but I have to wait, no matter how hard that is. It’s not like the world or characters are going anywhere, but I worry that my mind might. Oh well, I shall work on VIOLET until things change.

I am, however, finally getting out to see Coraline tonight. It opened the night I left for my vacation and since I’ve been back, things have been no less than chaotic. So yes, right, Coraline goodness shall be enjoyed–and in digital no less. Unfortunately it looks like I missed the digital 3D boat.

That’s it, that’s all. Nothing too exciting at the mo’.