I entered and won in 2015.
I entered and had to drop out in 2017 because my dog became extremely ill.
I'm entering yet again. This time, I got over 10,000 words in on day 2.
But so much shit happened right before this entry...
A little primer: I am one month behind on my book. The spooky anthology that I planned on releasing at the end of October. Last month, that is. Then this happened...
My poor mother. She woke me up around 8:36 in the morning, crying. She cannot verbalize her needs half the time, so I had to guess her condition. Her foot was reddened and so I thought it was that maybe she dropped something heavy on it by accident? I mistakenly treated it with an ice pack. By next evening, the blister took over. That's when I realized it was a burn. Unfortunately, she burned off the entire top half of her foot, while everyone was still asleep in the house. She tried to wash her foot in the tub, but used scalding water instead. People with Alzheimer's do not react quickly and get confused.
I just wasted the last 2 weeks changing gauze, keeping area clean and dry, applying antibacterial stuff, handing out pain reliever, hearing about how much it all hurts, and making trips to the doctor. Every. Day. For 2 weeks. I have never seen a blister so damn big! I coulda sold tickets to that show, it was a marvel of the world! It covered the entire foot right up to the toes! I do have a photo, but I'll spare you the yuk. I mean, goddammit. My reason for being this overprotective is to avoid infection. Most hospitals are covered in MRSA staph infections, so any unnecessary trip there would be a bad idea, especially for old people with so & so immune systems.
I swear to god, there is like a freakin' crisis in this household every-single-month. Old people (the confused ones) are EXACTLY like children, in that they get themselves into trouble. Actually, both of them, now that I think about it. And I, I am like a part-time nurse that doesn't get paid at all. And I have to hear all the time "Why don't you work?" Well I do, but you guys don't pay me. Sheesh.
Then the house began to fall apart.
Also, since my last post, right before the burn incident the kitchen window had a mysterious leak that appeared on rainy days. Then it rained inside my kitchen, because another leak formed all the way above in the attic crawl space. Guess who, had to clean that whole mess?! See, leaks are bad in this part of the country where we get monster snow blizzards. I mean, all that snow on the roof has to melt and go somewhere. So I had to arrange for someone to tar the roof, (after many phone calls, 'cuz some people didn't have the space in their appt. calendar) as I babysat my poor mother. It's a huge juggling act since someone has to stay with her, and someone else has to tend to the repairmen.
Sometimes you hafta laugh, because what the hell else you gonna do?
There. My legit reasons for never quite finishing my books. I call these 'distractions' but they are more like moderate emergencies.
Every month brings a new fresh hell, while life
laughs in my tired face. Terrific.
 |
| What I look like by the time I extinguish the flames and bet back to writing. |
Troubles aside, I was able to get my print book cover finished, and the second as well. See, this book is gonna run in a series, for 4 books. I guess that's progress:
Bad news though. I found out CreateSpace is no longer accepting new accounts. That is because Amazon wants to kill it, phasing it out quickly by year's end. Everyone now has to do it directly from Kindle itself, with existing CS accounts getting notice that they're being migrated over to Amazon. Lots of people complaining about that, because the book cover upload function seems to not be accurate? Man, that's gonna suck a whole lot of ass if that's true. I hope they get that fixed by the time I upload.
Slightly better news. If I complete my book before NanoWriMo is over, I can go ahead and enlist my Beta Reader army. I will be hitting up people on my Instagram, but if you wanna reach me over any other social media, I'm totally up for it. Thing is, I'm gonna be a #horror writer, and not many beta readers exist for this genre. Ditto on Facebook groups.
Pretty good news! As soon as I get 5-10 decent reviews (not necessarily stellar; I set that bar low) I'm gonna release the ebook for free until end of November. Pretty sweet, right??
Everybody loves FREE shit!
NanoWrimo 2018 participation
So here are a few screenshots of my NanoWriMo 2018 progress so far. It's only day 2, so not too shabby for me.I did this shitty drawing on MS Paint for the novel's image upload:
Now here are all my NanoWriMo entries thus far:
Day 2 - My achievements, including word count thus far:
I certainly hope many of you are entering this year! So yeah, we'll see how far it goes this year. I've been up all night preparing food for the next 3 days, so already I'm pretty damn tired. I'll continue updating my progress, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, pray to god the house doesn't get smothered by an asteroid, or Big Foot out of nowhere kicks my fat ass, thereby distracting me yet again - stupid micro-emergencies!
