Originally published at Cassie Alexander. You can comment here or there.

Okay, okay, so I sound like the call from the Ring…but having your first book come out is pretty huge!

Check out my spiffy new website! We’re (the royal we, because it’s late and I’m tired) still getting settled in, but I loooove it so far. It’s very classy! Unlike me! Ha ;). (Did I mention that it’s late?)

I spent most of today doing edits to Shapeshifted. It’s a pretty good distraction from getting too focused on the perpetual countdown to Nightshifted outness. (I’m not saying I’ll be outside the bookstore the moment it opens on Tues. But I’m also not saying I won’t be.)

I’ve been kind of in a rapid-cycle DABDA each time I flip over a page. I read my editor’s note, I’m all, “But but but…” in denial, then I’m angry — at myself, not her — and then I bargain about the easiest way to fix things instead of the right way, and then I get sad that I have to do it the right way after all, and finally I actually accept that I have to do the edit and do it. Same cycle, each page. (In my small defense, I’ve already done all the easy pages.) It’s becoming a better book though. I don’t know how else I’d manage to tell a decent story. As much as I wish I could write things perfectly the first time through, getting edited, first by Daniel, and then my agent and editor, is a necessary part of the process. At least until such a time as I can just beam my stories into reader’s heads.

Oh, and as alllllways happens when I’m working on something really hard — my brain’s been coughing up skads of notes on everything but Shapeshifted, in a desperate effort to get out of the hard work. I now know the plots for the next three books in the series, and have some ideas for some one off novellas, back stories on current characters. Which is awesome, if not awesomely timed.

I’m gonna be swamped this weekend, so this might be my final post until the big day. If so, trust that I’m still counting down in my mind! :D

Originally published at Cassie Alexander. You can comment here or there.

Out of the 5.8 lbs of editing yesterday, 1.8 of those lbs were Moonshifted edits, which I've set aside for now....so out of the remaining 4 lbs of paper, I'm down to 1.8 lbs of Shapeshifted to go. I pulled out all the pages with no comments, and then did all the pages with light copy-edit type things. Now I've just got an inchish stack of papers that have notes that require actual thought on them, plus the bullet list of todos my editor sent with the package. So I've made significant progress overall, but the hardest work is yet to come.

We decided in email that edits would be emailed back by the 25th. Which is ten days from now. During those ten days I have:

six nights of work

one wedding

one best friend's graduation party

my own anniversary

a trip to Wiscon (it's due my 2nd day at Wiscon)

two promotional articles still due

one debut novel releasing

and five goldeeeeen rinnnnngssss!

I wish so hard that I didn't have to go to work so much this week. But I don't have any time to take off right now (thanks back injury in Dec, muttermutter) and I know we're busy because they called to see if I could come in extra tonight (no way, no how, sorry.) It's all doable, but at the outer edges of doable. Although I understand all the reasons publishing doesn't come with a firm schedule, I would like it sooooo much better if it did. (It would have made more sense for me to do all this stuff last week while at Blue Heaven, but I reallllly wanted to get ahead in Deadshifted and feel writerly. It was worth it at the time, although I might change my mind in a week. ;))

Anyhow. I'm only still up whinging because I need to get used to staying up so I don't die tomorrow night at work. Bedtime now, and we'll see how things go :D. Technically, it's only a week till Nightshifted comes out now, in my timezone! :D

Originally published at Cassie Alexander. You can comment here or there.

Hey everyone! The Clarion West Write-a-thon is starting soon! The Write-a-thon goes along with the Clarion West workshop every summer, it's when people challenge themselves to public writing goals and support Clarion West :D.

I graduated from Clarion West awhile back. Nightshifted -- my book that is coming out in oh-god-eight-days! -- is the first book I wrote after attending. Coincidence? I think not!

I participate every year, and you can too!

Here's where you sign up -- and here's my page by way of example.

We're trying to get 200 participants this year, which I think is totally doable. This year I'll be working on Deadshifted, trying to get a final draft done during the six weeks of the Write-a-thon, and I'll be running sponsorship contest things over here on my blog. I want to write a flash piece turning everyone who sponsors me into a disease. (It'll be sort of sexy, cute, or gross, depending on how I feel that day, ha ;)). Instructions on that will follow.

For now, if you're interested in challenging yourself to write this summer with a group of likeminded people, sign up! :D

Originally published at Cassie Alexander. You can comment here or there.

Home now, finally. Traveling yesterday was overly long -- but on the plane i figured out a ton of pacing and plot for Deadshifted, which is awesome. I need to restructure what I've got but I know what to do now, which is always good :D.

Got a chance to look at all the edits and proofing I have to do. I weighed it -- it's 5.8 lbs of paper total. Dang.

Exhibit a) with lifesized cat:

I need to do Shapeshifted edits asap, so the second I'm done and my editor agrees, it can get out the door to Germany for translating. But Moonshifted pageproofs have to be done by June 7th, for production. And did I mention Nightshifted's out in 9 days...and I work six out of the next eight days?

These guys (who hang out on my husband's desk) think that that's a hoot.

Ha ;). Really, it is, and everything's gonna be fine.(...she tells herself so she doesn't scream in panic and suddenly question her life choices).

In pleasantly distracting news, Nightshifted got a review from All Things Urban Fantasy! :D

My body's still on East Coast time, so I'm signing off now, but I've got tomorrow off at least, so I'll dive on in and report a new lbs of paper left to go tomorrow night :D.

Originally published at Cassie Alexander. You can comment here or there.

Yesterday was one of those balking days -- where I had to pause think about if I needed to push through, or if I was writing the wrong thing. I wrote a k, and then things felt weird -- I realized that the tenor of things was wrong. I was ramping up into the action too fast -- I love to escalate things (as those of you reading Nightshifted in eleven days will find out!) but I was going waaaay too fast for this book, and skipping some of the emotional resonance.

So I had to ponder where I was going to slow down, and what I was going to rewrite. And I had this one thread which was going to wind up being unbearably sad and I couldn't even write it it hurt so bad...so I had to figure out a way to fix that so that it was more poignant and less carve-my-heart-out-with-a-dull-butter-knife.

And then there was a job for Nurse Cassie which went fine but ate up some of yesterday, and some of today too, although I have to say that hospitals in North Carolina are very very nice. It's all research, hey ;).

Back at the beach house now, skipping dinner to write more, and trying to get the words I already have right. I feel really good about this book now -- I just want it to be perfect, because it's going to have such a huge pay off.

I've got Shapeshifted edits, and Moonshifted page proofs waiting back home for me, so today and tomorrow might be my last writing days for awhile (also what with Nightshifted coming out. Eleven days!). But I feel like I'm in Deadshifted solidly now, which is fantastic.

Originally published at Cassie Alexander. You can comment here or there.

Thank you for all your kind comments over on LJ. I appreciate it very much.

Today was a good day to take off.

I'd wound up doing 4k yesterday and getting to 20k in Deadshifted overall.

After finding out my best friend's other best friend had been murdered last night, I honestly wasn't feeling much like writing much today. So I went to breakfast alone this morning, and then got up and poked at things, but mostly started talking to people, and then Jenn Reese, Ian Tregillis, and I went with Tobias Buckell for him to get a freelanceiversary tattoo.

It wound up being good for me. One on one talking with other cool people is the remedy for a lot of things as it turns out. Some other people had some parallel experiences with sudden loss that were good to hear. And just to be out living and being alive, as trite as it sounds, was a good distraction to have.

It isn't that I don't want to think about it, it's just that thinking about it still feels sickening. As a writer I can imagine what her last minutes of life must have been like so clearly it hurts. I don't want to really think about it without my posse of local friends who knew her around -- and who'd get the second, smaller punch, that it happened in your hometown, some place I have always, always felt safe at. Now, I freaking want to move away.

Anyhow. I don't want to be the goth while I'm here. And I'm not sure where to assign things yet. I'm reallllllly good at compartmentalizing. I'm realllllly good at forging on. I see bad stuff all the time at work. This is different, because it's someone I know, but I'm tough. For good or for bad, I'm tough. (I work on the hardest floor in the hardest hospital, heh.) [I'm only now realizing, with the help of therapy, that I'm oftentimes far tougher than I have to be -- that frequently the kind of tough that was required of me at prior times in my life and as a kid was vastly unfair, and that sometimes it's good to admit that you're not tough, at least to the right people in certain situations. See also: asking for help, and admitting ignorance.] So I'm okay now, for now. There's a lot of opportunities to feel alone-not-alone here. Which is good. There's people to listen, but also space to breathe.

And so Toby got his awesome tattoo, and we all went out to dinner, and then came home, and there was more hanging out, and this is probably the most social I've been in a month, and my throat's sore from all the talking now.

I'm gonna go to bed now and crash out. I believe tomorrow will be another writing day. But it's OK if it's not.

Originally published at Cassie Alexander. You can comment here or there.

Hey, guess what, this episode of Cassie's blog is not for you if you don't like to cuss.

I just found out a friend of mine was stabbed to death by a random homeless dude in my hometown downtown.

What the fuck. Seriously. What. The. Fuck.

Seriously mentally ill people, why do you make it so hard for me to love you? I try to treat you with compassion and respect. And you're all like the fucking scorpions in the fable.

My hometown has a ton of homeless people. They get shipped in from all around the state. Because we're compassionate and willing to take care of people. I really hope they trace things back and figure out which municipality gave this man a bus ticket so that he could come to my home and stab my friend.

This guy has a record as long as my arm. He's been in and out of state hospitals. He's been jailed for assault.

Why is he out?

I realize all the complications there are in mental health care. Believe me. More than fucking most. I get that. I honestly do.

And I get that some things are acts of random violence. Maybe. Not really. Not when they happen to friends of mine.

I'll always remember in nursing school when we were at a board and care facility and this guy fixated on another girl in my class. He kept yelling at her that she was a murderer, this tall blonde volleyball player looking chick. He wound up laying in wait for her and punching her in the face.

He got verbally reprimanded. But nothing changed. They didn't even revoke his subsequent smoke break.

I think about that a lot, now, as a nurse. It was a good lesson to get. (While simultaneously being glad it happened to somebody else.) I know it's so much easier to go along with people who are ill, to not try to rehabilitate them. And I do believe that people should be able to refuse meds, I do, because I realize society is not perfect and if we start forcing pills on people we'll be at the top of a slippery fucking slope.

But I wish we were doing more. Better. With more funding. More people taking things more seriously. I like to think I put myself out a lot there as a nurse, even when I'm off duty, to make eye contact and smile, to nod and have conversations. To make people feel like people, whenever, whereever I can.

I don't want to live my life in some sort of gated, forget about the people who need us most shell.

But my friend getting stabbed? That is some bullshit.

This is also why mentally ill people are not magic. Same thing for homeless people. If your book has one of these characters in it, where somehow being unfit for society = fairy dust, I will put it down. Or throw it across the room, with violence, and tell everyone I know that it sucks.

I'm not sure what the answer is. I doubt there is one. I'm just mad and I need to vent, and sometimes that's what this blog is for.

No one should die, stabbed to death in the middle of the street in daylight by a stranger. It fucking sucks.

Originally published at Cassie Alexander. You can comment here or there.

Wrote 4.2k today! 16.2k total. If I have another good day, I'll be able to send Daniel another chunk :D. He saw the first 9k, and says my roll is legit ;). (I was pretty sure it was legit, but after a few false starts, a headpat is nice.)

Things are lovely here. I wrote in the morning and walked on the beach, wrote more, went to dinner, and then wrote even after that, and then we made some pina coladas and we all wound up in the hot tub talking and telling stories. I'm listening to the ocean outside now while people debate the merits of assorted comic books. I'm pretty sure this is heaven ;). (Although I do miss my husband...and Desmo ;))

Still on track for 30k this week here, though I'm still hoping that I can do even more than that....we'll see :D.

Originally published at Cassie Alexander. You can comment here or there.

Arrived successfully late last night. Did 4k of Deadshifted on the plane -- I'd have done more, too, if the person next to me on the longest leg had been a little less chatty ;).

I've done 3k today. I'm up to 12 k that I like now. There's been some hanging out today, and some getting the lay of the land here, plus hitting a grocery store. I think I should be a leeetle social tonight, and then get to bed early for a good start tomorrow. Still on track to be at 30k by the end of the week :D.

Originally published at Cassie Alexander. You can comment here or there.

I think I'm almost caught up on promotional stuff and life stuff! (If I'm not, don't tell me!)

Seriously, the past few days have been a whirlwind of me trying to shove everything in. I rocked a PM shift on Weds, but after such a long Monday night my back was shot by the end of it. They wanted us to transfer the patient to a new bed at the end, and I almost cried. (Luckily, we staffed up nightshift, and they did it because they're awesome.)

Then I came home, crashed out, and got up early yesterday for exciting shopping, hanging out, and phone calls! I went up to SF with Rachel Swirsky, to see our friend Katie Sparrow, both of them Nebula nominees this year, and Vylar Kaftan who was a Nebula nominee last year -- I looked up at one point in time while we were all writing, and thought, "Wow, there is a ton of writing brainpower in this room right now." We ate awesome Thai food down the street from Katie's place, and then I managed to get into and out of the parking space at her incredibly narrow garage without having a heart attack or scraping off a side mirror ;).

Luckily some of the combined writing mojo rubbed off on me! Ha ;). Seriously, I reentered the Deadshifted arena, and as of this morning I'm up to 5k I really like, this is it, unless Daniel says otherwise. Awhile back I decided to gut things and start over, and I did, and it's so much better for it. It's really hard to give into that process, but that's where all the goodness is. I think there's a direct correlation to between awesomeness of future text and a willingness to scrap everything. (I know, I know, I'm supposed to be outlining. But I also needed to feel like a Real Writer, and it's been awhile because of all the life-crazy. I have to keep my brain happy first.)

One of the phone calls yesterday was a marketing biz one, so i had to spend some time last night and today organizing things and double checking links to share with peoples. But I really do think I'm caught up. If you wanted an interview or a review copy, let me know, I actually have room on my plate. Today's call was website stuff (yay, Steph!) and I can't wait until my new site goes up, it's gonna be amazing!

Now I just have to do packing, and make sure I'm taking everything I'll need for the next week of writing productivity with me at Blue Heaven. It's like I'm going to writing summer camp, only it's going to be awesome!

Because I'm all about the goals and I think that I'm gonna be able to just write while I'm there (please, pretty please), I have an insane plan to do...at least 3k a day while I'm there. But hopefully 5k. I want to write flat out the whole time. I know I can do 5k in a day, because that one day I did 6...so why not dream big? I think i do know enough of the plot to get me out to 30k. So it's possible. It'll start tomorrow -- I'll be writing at the airport, and on the plane! :D

xoxo,

next time from North Carolina!

hyper-Cassie