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.

So I’m sitting here watching Ghostbusters and I thought I’d take a moment from trying to not cross the streams to do some random updatery. It’s been a very hectic week with the day job–a week where it came and went in a blink, and so I didn’t have much time to blog or keep up with other things.

On Sunday I’m off to Seattle for a week on business. I’m already missing my girls and I haven’t even packed yet. But at least I get to visit friends while I’m there which is always a plus. Work will keep me busy too, so the time will go by quickly.

The 2009 Hugo Award Nominees were listed the other day. My congrats go out to everyone nominated. It’s always cool to see friends and acquaintances nominated, and with WorldCon in Montreal this year (yes, I will be in attendance), it’ll prove to be quite the conference and awards ceremony.

Work on VIOLET has been put temporarily on hold while I finalize a couple synopses for a series I was working on. I need to wrap that up before I can get back into the current WIP.

Hopefully I can get some reading done next week as well. The long 5-hour flights will help with that.

Time to watch Stay Puft go pop.

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’.

It’s been a while since I gave a general updatery kind of post, so here it is. Last night I met up with Karin for sushi and a movie, and talk of books and words and process, and life and movies and how one can never quite get enough spicy tuna uramaki. The uramaki was fantastic, the tempura was tasty, and the conversation was inspiring. Karin rocks. She is much smarter than me, and really knows how to get my ass moving on my projects. I will forever be in her debt. I have repaid her already by writing her into VIOLET as a corpse. She is honoured, I’m sure.

But yes, she’s read the opening bits of VIOLET and has listened to me spout on about the direction of the book, the underlying themes, and where I need to take the project. She even knows how it ends. But all in all, she has helped me clear the gauze away from my face. I can see my intentions clearly now, whereas I had started to sabotage my instincts with it. I’m looking forward to plowing ahead now.

I’m very excited about this project and wish I could talk more openly about it, but I can’t, not yet.

After sushi and tea we headed out to see Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. I’m not going to go into a huge review of it, but what I will say is that if you enjoyed the first two movies, you’ll enjoy this one. It’s fast-paced, holds no punches, and has some great fights and cool sets and effects. Besides, Rhona Mitra is a fine addition to the franchise.

Got up just after 5AM this morning to work on VIOLET. I made some decent headway, especially in the land o’ voice as it can sometimes (read: always) be tough to get the voice right for a new protagonist in the first chapter of a new book. But I think Violet is slowly rearing her head, and she’s feisty and dark, and full of spunk. I also wrote around 950 words in about 90 minutes and 2 cups of coffee, so all in all a great morning.

Until I went to drive into work. Yikes! When I went downstairs to write it had not started to snow yet, but when I finished and got ready for work, the snow had arrived. So I drove Charlotte to the bus stop and then continued on into work. My regular 1 hour drive took 2. Not fun, but at least I stopped for a tasty latte on my way in which kept me toasty.  Here are a couple of pics taken through my windshiled:

On the way into work, I was reminded by the news that it was 10 years ago this week that Mayor Mel Lastman called in the army to clear snow for the good folks of Toronto. This reminded me of a wonderful spoof report done by Rick Mercer called Snow in Toronto.