It can't come soon enough, if you ask me.
 
Christmas was lovely, especially with a surprise snowfall decorating the world around me, but the crud came along and smacked me. I wasn't well enough to celebrate with family and...well, even more family, all of whom I love and cherish, so that was disappointing. We've been invited to a New Year's Eve celebration with friends but there's no indication I'll feel better by then, so *pooh*.
 
​(Isn't it cute how there's a little snowcap on my backyard pot? I found it a little less cute when, two days later, it was still so cold that the little snowcap had become a snow hard hat.)
 
Oh, you mustn't mind me. I'm in a grumpy mood.
 
Marshalling what little energy I have, I decided to see what the great writers do when they feel ill. It turns out, they simply keep on writing. Surly Muse says so, right here, and SM has never lied to me before. Lucy Flint kind of says so, here, and she's much more adorable than me, so I believe her. Writers Who Kill offer their thoughts here, but the comments that follow are more interesting than the post. Hey, I may be sick, but I'm not dead. I read the comments.
 
Me, I'm going back to the sofa. If I feel better soon, I'm going to binge-watch Crazyhead on Netflix. The Good Witch says it's like an off-kilter Buffy but British. Sounds good to me.
 
​See you next year.

But I really did tell you so, and fairly recently.. There is a holiday for everything, I said, and December 16th was National Ugly Sweater Day. When that day came last Saturday, the giant brains at Starbucks decided they wanted to commemorate the event. If you entered one of their coffee houses and bought a Fruitcake Frappuccino during NUSD, your drink came dressed for winter.
 
The concept tickled me so much I decided I had to have one. Apparently, I'm one of the sixteen people in the Western world who admits that they enjoy fruitcake. (If you're wondering, I think Costco sells a terrific fruitcake. Glynn, who feels he should detest fruitcake but doesn't, really, ate his share of the treat when I brought one home a few weeks ago.)  So, fruitcake-love was the first reason. Secondly, none of my previous Frappuccinos have ever come to the Pick-Up Window wearing any kind of apparel. No sweaters, no jackets, not even Mom jeans. Venturing out on that freezing Saturday -- not the best of weather conditions for a cold drink -- I waited excitedly until my order was complete. The not-very-good cell phone photo to the left is proof that such wonders as a Fruitcake Frappuccino actually existed, for however little time.
 
While I was at the Starbucks, I didn't see anyone else order the drink. If I had...well, I'd have pretended not to notice, but I would have. Oh, yes.
 
Maura Judkis, from the Washington Post, was not a fan of Starbucks ingenuity, but that's because she dislikes fruitcake in all of its forms. If you're wondering why the Washington Post would send a fruit cake-hater to review a fruitcake-based beverage, I can't say. Perhaps all of the WP journalists hate fruitcake. With a story this big, this important, somebody had to do the write-up. They sent their best man and, as so often happens, their best man was a woman. Maura Judkis probably viewed this article as a major feather in her cap.
 
That's what I care to believe, anyway.
 
If you'd like a less negative review, you should know I enjoyed my Fruitcake Frappuccino...except for one thing. When I tried to suck its deliciousness up my straw, the straw would clog. It clogged with bits of fruit, and bits of nut, and bits of cake-something. This occurred with very single suck of the straw. It became annoying fairly quickly. It took me a rather long time to finish the drink -- and I intended to finish it, because: deliciousness -- and I took that time, even knowing that this might mean I'd be unable to finish the 30-step novel outline thing I wrote about last week.
 
Okay, so that's not true. You, me, Glynn and the Good Witch all knew I wouldn't finish the outline by the end of this week. It's tough stuff, this outline. So many of its 30-steps are bizarrely random! After I post this blog, I need to move onto Step 22. Step 22, if you're wondering, is: The hero is forced to incapacitate a friend. But there is no reason why my hero would do this. She's on a train steaming through the middle of nowhere, destined for the fairly empty lands of North Dakota, and her only friends are those people who she's just met. Nice people who don't deserve to be incapacitated.
 
I have no idea of what to do next. *sigh* But if I'm going to get this outline completed before 2017, I'd best roll up my sleeves and get to work. With company coming for Christmas, I know I'll be even busier soon. I'm just pleased that National Pfeffernusse Day is just around the corner. Everyone enjoys National Pfeffernusse Day!
 
​May your holidays be merry.

Even if the rich and famous happily use co-authors to extend their brand – I’m looking at you, Janet Evanovich, Clive Cussler, and Wilbur Smith – that’s not true for most of the writers I know. My gang would prefer to sit in front of their word processor all Lone Wolf-style because that’s the way they are. Also, finding, keeping, and not killing a writing partner can be a struggle.
 
It was certainly a struggle when Glynn and I decided to try writing together. He wanted me to use his ideas, I wanted him to use my ideas, and there were times when I wondered if we’d ever make it work. We did, and one of the reasons we did was, he recognized the smell of bitter almonds and refused to drink his tea one morning.
 
I kid. It was hot chocolate.
 
Then, one magical day, everything clicked. We decided that I’d do most of the plotting, he’d do most of the first draft from that plotting, and the pages started to flow. Over time, our working methods have changed. These days, he does a big piece of the plotting and I do an increasing amount of the first draft. We’re happy working together. We prefer working together.
 
That’s how I feel, anyway. That’s what he told me, too, after I promised not to serve him any more hot chocolate.
 
Except for small bits here and there, we’ve only written as a team for the last few years. This changed a week ago. Glynn is presently unavailable for our current projects so I’m trying something different. I’m using Christine Frazier’s 30-step NaNoWriMo outline to write a mail order bride novella. It is so not going smoothly. 

If you follow that link, you’ll see the 30 steps a would-be writer is to take. Fill in a little something for each of the steps, you’re ready to begin your story. When I talked about this last week, I believed I could do this easily by…well, by today…and I’d be starting my actual story tomorrow. Then you and I could watch to see if I could actually get the novella done in thirty days. I’d have to complete a step each day but it felt do-able. If completing the steps in time is anything like completing the outline in time, I’m in trouble.
 
If I can wrap up this blog before noon, I should have time to fill in my scenario for Step Ten. Yes, it’s taken me six days to go through steps 1-9. This is partially because I truly don’t consider any one step before I’m ready to write it; that’s part of the “fun”. It’s also because the outline wasn’t directed toward reality-based historical romance writers. When she did this project, Christine studied The Hunger Games, Twilight, and Harry Potter. You’d be correct to assume there’s a heavy science fiction/fantasy element in those stories. That’s not so much the case when someone is writing a mail order bride story that is trying to be mostly/kinda historically correct.
 
For example: With step two, my heroine was to go on an everyday errand and “show her special skill”. I don’t know many people with special skills. I mean, Glynn can curl his tongue in this weird tubular-way, but that doesn’t seem all that special. I have difficulty relating to people who have extraordinary abilities, since my own talents are rather ordinary, so I went back and forth over this for a couple of hours. Tiring of the challenge, I thought, Maybe I’ll just make her a vampire!, which was actually a rather enticing idea, so I pondered over that concept for a while, as well.
 
I decided I couldn’t do it, even if a blood-hungry storyline totally fit with the title I’m using on the story. No, I promised to use this damnable outline to create a traditional mail order bride story and that’s what I’m going to do. You want to know what I filled in as my heroine’s special skill? She’s good with animals. Bam!
 
If things continue at the present rate, I’ll need two more weeks just to finish my rough outline and approach the story’s start line. I’m determined to get there, so I guess we’ll see. Step by step…inch by inch…. 

I’ve had better Wednesdays. Some kind of bug has crawled inside of me, encouraging me to spend too much of my morning in the bathroom. Now it appears the ol’ brain doesn’t seem to be functioning at its highest level.  Before sitting down to type this, I drove a staple into the pad of my thumb. That’s the bad news. The good news is, my “broken” stapler appears to be working again.
 
(This is a photo from Frankenstein's Daughter. Not me, even if it's kind of how I feel right now.)
 
Last week, I wrote about NNWMo, and how I wouldn’t be participating in such madness. Glynn and I are in the middle of two long-term stories (the Third Brother and our mystery novel) and we weren’t going to NNWMo anything, much less our current babies. Then, as often happens during the holidays, Glynn had to step away from the keyboard to help earn our living. He asked me not to work on our current projects without him, but I have to do something. It didn’t take me long to think of what that “something” might be. 
 
I’ve had a story title in mind for many, many months now. Glynn isn’t a fan of the title, even if it amuses him. He thinks it's silly, he knows I only want to write the story so that title exists in the world somewhere, and he'd prefer if we focused on our current projects. After all, we still have the last Brothers to plot and write, then a new mystery series to start. "It's not as if we don't have enough on our writing plate," he actually told me, not so long ago, and that's as true as it is awkwardly-stated. But, with my partner distracted for the entirety of December and for at least the first half of January, this is the perfect opportunity to do something with that title.  Something quick, something different, just to see what happens. A writing project that would take… oh, approximately a month.
 
If you’re thinking the NNWMo folks can count me among their number, don’t. This wouldn’t be a novel, it would be a novella.  15,000 words, tops. Very doable in thirty or forty days, I think, unless life gets in the way. (Life has been getting in the way a lot lately.) I do have one problem. My novella may have a title, but it lacks a storyline. This particular title would seem to require a unique storyline, and I’m coming up empty.
 
Fortunately for me, Christine Frazier has come to my rescue.
 
CF is quite likely a Girl Genius, and she created a bestseller-inspired point-by-point outline for the use of anyone who wants to pound out a novel quickly. (It was directed toward her audience of NNWMO fans, but I don’t see what I shouldn’t use it. If you’re curious, you’ll find it here.) I’d tell you more, if Christine Frazier had replied to the email I sent her a couple of days ago. She didn’t – Girl Geniuses can be very busy – so we’ll have to go on without her.
 
I glanced at her outline, thought it would be a weird challenge for any writer, and did nothing with it. Glynn says he didn't see how it would work with a mail order bride story, I say you never know until you try. Now I think (maybe) I’m ready. Over the next seven days, I’m going to see if I can fill in some kind of plot to fit her parameters. There are thirty steps and I intend to squeeze my tale into each and every one of them.
 
Starting tomorrow. Today, I’m going back to bed.