Celebrate the Small Things 10-6-16

This post is part of Lexa Cain's bloghop, Celebrate the Small Things. Head on over there to join up!

So what am I celebrating this week?

It was a long weekend last weekend so I've been paying catch-up the last three days to make up for the short week.  And I'm at a conference most of next week, so I doubt I'll have time to do much work then either.  Ahhhg!  So much to do!

But on the plus side, I only have eight more chapters to revise on my novel.  Okay, so they're the eight that probably need the most work…  I have great plans to get through the whole lot by Monday night so I can send the MS to my CPs.  Not sure I'm going to do it, but I'll do my best.

I just wish I hadn't also brought two huge work projects home with me as well…

Younger son is going on his first overnight tramp tomorrow, so it will be just me and Big at home since my partner is working 13-hour days all weekend.  And he's doing the 40-Hour Famine which isn't so fun.  I thought I might have a dinner party since I love cooking for people, but it didn't seem fair while he's starving himself for charity.

Anyway…  If this book is going to get finished, I can't be taking time out for dinner parties, can I?

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Loved: We Are The Ants

I read this over the weekend and just loved it.  It has the perfect mixture of speculative fiction and contemporary for me and leaves so much up to the reader, it makes you think.  I've had this book stuck in my head ever since I finished it, questions whirling through my mind.

Henry is a very likable protagonist.  Even when he makes truly questionable decisions, you never feel that he's doing something out of character.  He's flawed, and quite possibly extremely unstable, so everything he does makes perfect ensue within the context of his world.

And Diego… What a fantastically flawed and real character he is.  I was really rooting for things to work out between him and Henry almost as soon as the two of them met.  Even when I knew one or other of them would do something to fuck that up.  You can't have two people holding such big secrets without there being some fallout.

Overall this book is an exploration of grief and how different people deal with grief.  But it has so much more to it than that.  It's complex and deep and asks some big philosophical questions about the world we live in. But it's also stuffed full of very real people who it was a pleasure to spend a few hours with.

Do yourself favor and read it.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

There are a few things Henry Denton knows, and a few things he doesn’t.

Henry knows that his mom is struggling to keep the family together, and coping by chain-smoking cigarettes. He knows that his older brother is a college dropout with a pregnant girlfriend. He knows that he is slowly losing his grandmother to Alzheimer’s. And he knows that his boyfriend committed suicide last year.

What Henry doesn’t know is why the aliens chose to abduct him when he was thirteen, and he doesn’t know why they continue to steal him from his bed and take him aboard their ship. He doesn’t know why the world is going to end or why the aliens have offered him the opportunity to avert the impending disaster by pressing a big red button.

But they have. And they’ve only given him 144 days to make up his mind.

The question is whether Henry thinks the world is worth saving. That is, until he meets Diego Vega, an artist with a secret past who forces Henry to question his beliefs, his place in the universe, and whether any of it really matters. But before Henry can save the world, he’s got to figure out how to save himself, and the aliens haven’t given him a button for that.

Weekly Goals 6-6-16

I'm still deep in the revision trenches this week, so my goals are still all about that.  I've revised 25 chapters now, so have 15 more to go.  I've been managing a solid 2 - 3 chapters per day over the last week, but most of those chapters haven't required massive amounts of re-writing.

Some of the upcoming ones will…

But I feel like I'm getting there.  I have a plan, and as long as my characters are willing to come with me as I follow that plan, we should get to the end of the book within a week (which is my deadline).

So keep your fingers crossed for me that I don't come up against any major obstacles over the next 7 days.

Celebrate the Small Things 3-6-16

This post is part of Lexa Cain's bloghop, Celebrate the Small Things. Head on over there to join up!

So what am I celebrating this week?

LOOOOONG weekend!  Yes, this Monday is the day New Zealand celebrates the Queen's birthday so it is a 3-day weekend.  I am very much looking forward to having the extra day off.  Both the kids are going to Armageddon (which is kind of like ComicCon) with other kids' parents, so I will only have to deal with one kid at a time at home.  Which means much less fighting.

The weather is supposed to be nice too, and on Monday my youngest and I are heading up the coast to spend the day with my friend who lives at the beach.  Fingers crossed it warms up a little as well as staying sunny.  It's been cold the last couple of weeks.

So cold, I let my older son talk me into buying a onesie.  It's a pink flamingo onesie and utterly ridiculous looking, especially for me who never wears anything pink.  But damn is it warm!  I've been jumping into it as soon as I get home every night so I stay snug while I'm writing.

I hit the half-way mark on my revisions this morning which is good, but I'm still behind schedule.  Will have to work my little butt off for the next 10 days if I'm going to get this draft off to CPs before I leave for a conference on 14 June...  No TV for me!

What are you celebrating this week?