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    •               Ardyth DeBruyn is a native Oregonian with a restless nature and a degree in Anthropology. She is the author of the "Dark Lord Academy Series" and several other books.

Nanowrimo Fallout, Umbrellas, and Disaster

Columbia River Gorge, writing

Well, it was a rather harrowing Nanowrimo.  I struggled every day of the month to keep up on the word count.  Usually I don’t have much trouble with Nanowrimo, but MAAV apparently decided it was going to challenge me for every word.  I’ve hit 50K, and I’m pleased to be a Nanowrimo winner, but the novel is a mess.  It’s going to take a couple of months to sort out, but I’m still hopeful of making a June release date for the book.  At least I can be proud of myself for sticking it out this year instead of switching novels when it get hard.

One thing that might change that is ironically if I find my muse for the books.  I’ve decided if I ever find my groove while writing MAAV, I’ve decided I plan to ride it as long as I can and draft OHAV (book 3) until it floats away again.  So I hope for that, and I believe Nanowrimo even has a camp in March, which I might try redrafting whatever I need for that.

In a moment of un-Oregonian-ness I bought myself a new umbrella.  In general, the “real” Oregonians don’t use them.  Usually the rain is more mist or drizzle on and off, plus they’re awkward and annoying.  Umbrellas are for foreigners, and by foreigners, I mean people who are not from Oregon or Washington (the state).  You wear a waterproof coat and just dash from the car to the store and back again.  If hiking, you button up your coat and put up the hood and get only reasonably damp.

But, I want to keep up with my walk all winter long, and I hate having my head all bundled up in my waterproof coat, it makes me itchy.  Plus, despite being out in the middle of nowhere, my walk is wide and paved, keeping my feet dry (if it were an actual mountain trail, I wouldn’t bother and plan to just get wet feet as well as the rest of me). So, not getting soaked on my walk won out over my Oregon pride.

I’m the one crazy lady for miles, just me and my umbrella in the middle of nowhere… I haven’t yet run into a park ranger for a while, but they’re the only people I ever see out there, with their hoods of their waterproof jackets up like true Oregonians, as they ride their small cart/car thingy through the drizzle to pick up the trash at Starvation Creek.   I can hardly wait to bump into them, while I walk along twirling my splendid, and very large umbrella.

Now that Nano is over, I’m taking a short break from MAAV and focusing on getting Disaster out!  I’m hoping to release on December 12th, in both hard copy and kindle. I’m going to try out select for a couple months so I can try out the free promotion feature, but when I do giveaways I’ll have epub versions available too, as soon as I figure out my formatting.  I’ve gotten a bit rusty in the year since I did ASFV, and so I have to relearn my html all over again.  Ah well.

I’m really excited to be getting Disaster out before Christmas!  Both my illustrator (Leo DeBruyn) and my editor (Word Vagabond Editing) have been fantastic.

7 Comments

7 Comments

  1. Marva  •  Dec 3, 2012 @1:06 pm

    Oh, the humanity! An Oregonian with an umbrella (yeah, I’ve got three of those short fold-ups which are easy to carry when not unfurled).

    You may not need the HTML this year. Amazon is sucking up DOC files for Kindle releases much better than before. Oh, right. You have illos so not so easy after all. I do have a bunny logo in my print version of Bad Spelling. You should buy a copy at Amazon (I’ll refund your purchase price) so 1) I get a ranking boost and 2) somebody has bought a copy other than me.

    Again, congrats on finishing up the Nano.

  2. Ardyth  •  Dec 3, 2012 @1:45 pm

    Hah! This one just has a rat logo, so I could try it with word… but I’m not real handy with the table of contents so I was going to try to use mobipocket creator and see how that went.

  3. Kelly Hashway  •  Dec 4, 2012 @4:37 am

    Congrats on finishing NaNo and your upcoming release!

  4. Grace Tierney  •  Dec 4, 2012 @4:54 am

    It rains a fair bit in my part of the world too (Ireland) and I walk daily, despite the weather. But I’ve got wind to battle too and umbrellas don’t like wind. Solution? A waterproof hat (waxed like a barbour jacket) – getting one with a peak keeps most of the rain off my glasses too. Seriously, this works.

    I love your cover illustrations by the way – witty.

    Grace (who also won Nano this year)

  5. Ardyth  •  Dec 4, 2012 @1:37 pm

    Thanks, Kelly and Grace!

    And I like the idea of a waterproof hat. So far though, all our wind seems to be in summer and fall… I haven’t had a full year here yet, so I’ll see how windy it gets the rest of winter and early spring.

  6. Lindy Moone  •  Dec 5, 2012 @4:59 am

    Hey there, Ardyth! I’ve just snuck over from the “What did you blog about today” forum on CC. (I am “Lindymoon” over there.) This is a not-so-stealthy reconnaissance of other authors’ blogs and websites, looking for inspiration for planning my own. I love your blog. The look of it, the content, everything — except that when I tried to subscribe, it spit out gobbledygook. Maybe I did something wrong…

    I was interested to see Carol Ervin listed as a friend. I recently reviewed her book for Amazon (loved it) and she had me do a wacky guest post for her blog. It was great fun.

    Regarding umbrellas: I used to live in Washington State (on Fox Island, near Tacoma), and had no umbrella there. Now I live in (mostly sunny) Turkey… and I have one. (Umbrella, not turkey.) Don’t use it, but I have one!

    Just downloaded your book sample for my Kindle. It’s on my “buy myself for Christmas” list.

    I’ll be back… but you can always find me on CC, too.
    –Lindy

  7. Ardyth  •  Dec 6, 2012 @8:21 pm

    Ack! Okay, I’ll take a look at my subscription thingy and see if I can fix that sigh. I’m not very tech savvy. I know Carol Ervin from critting one of her books (not the one that’s published) and it was awesome. All my friends are CC people who I know from exchanging crits and whose stuff I love. I have a few I need to add but haven’t gotten around to it. I’ll have to look you up on CC.

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