Progress Friday

Hey peeps!

It's Friday and everyone in my household is going TGIF! Except that the boys are so excited they're using the walls to bounce off as if the house was one of those inflatable jumping castles, and they just won't shut up! I left them in the kitchen, bribed with cookies and chocolate milk, because the only time they're not talking/jumping around is when they're eating. So I might have 10 minutes tops to get this post done and uploaded. *sigh*

So, progress... Where do we start? I wrote a chapter this week that just went on and on and didn't seem to want to stop. :) The word total for this past 5 days is just a little under 9K! Woot - finally getting closer to my ideal writing goal.

But now my brain is fried, and I have to regroup and recover to be able to write the next chapter, all while I have to set my mind to "perk" mode so I can figure out the next sequence of scenes and all that's supposed to take place now.

So the first draft of Before The Morning sits in at just under 56K this Friday, ending the week at 80% completion! WOOT! I'm getting there!

Life-wise, I celebrate some progress today! Remember a while back I was complaining about my medication making me put on weight (and so I had to exercise daily and go on a diet, etc). Well, a little more than one week into the new customised eating plan a nutritionist has devised for me, I've lost close to 3 pounds and have just another 4 or so to lose. Whoo-hoo - go me! Lol.

And speaking of progress, I wonder what my bestie, author Angela Guillaume, has been up to this week. Drive by her blog if you get a chance.

And too, if we're friends on Facebook, drop by my profile later today for the Friday Tide-us-into-the-weekend hottie pic. :)

What have you all got planned this weekend? I'll be sitting down with some good reads - Lori Foster's When You Dare (that I'm about halfway through) and Susan Mallery's Only His (that I've been dying to read ever since I finished Only Yours last month *grin*). Plus I also have a beta read for a CP.

Have a lovely weekend, wherever you are in the world!

From Mauritius with love,

Zee

Progress Friday

Hey beautiful people

*sigh* It's been one of those weeks... you know, where everything just refuses to go right, no matter how hard you try to make it right? I got to that point where I look at my husband and wonder how on earth I haven't throttled him yet. I know he can't help it - he's who and what he is - but, damn, keeping a marriage and a love alive is damn hard sometimes! (note to self - never attempt to write a romance that takes place after marriage, because that'd be writing up a tragedy, and not a light romance!)

So that has coloured my week, not helped by the fact that the temps just shot up by like 10degreesC overnight, where we jumped from 15C nights and having to wear socks and snuggle under a quilt plus a blanket...to 29C nights where the mere touch of a sheet on your bare legs is enough to make you wanna jump out of your skin, and why on earth did you not think to clean up the fans before now so you're stuck in a sweltering house.

Now that brings on irritability, erratic sleeping, and lo and behold - your insomnia, brought on by your medication/treatment - decides now's the time to play peek-a-boo with you and you end up staring at the ceiling between 3-5AM. And no way you can get anything done in that time either, because, though you're not sleepy, your body is tired and your mind is begging for the rest. So guess what? You stare at the ceiling...and imagine further scenarios on your WIP...

...hoping to channel them during the day, but by then you're even more of a wreck - no, wait, a zombie! - and I never heard that zombies wrote good prose. Progress meter shows a measly step of 1,327 words this week... said words that came out like pulling wisdom teeth without anything-caine...and that I'll probably have to scrape next week when - hopefully!- I will be sleeping better and able to write.

Or else, I'll have to channel the zombie into writing, because this WIP needs to be finished.

Joy, oh joy! Not!

I hope you had better luck than me this week. And I hope my bestie and soul sister, author Angela Guillaume, had better luck too. Check out her blog later for her round-up of her week.

From Mauritius with love,

Zee

Progress Friday

Hey peeps

I know - this slot has been awol for the past 2 weeks. Reason? Let me stop being a total chicken and tell you the whole truth: I hadn't written a word in the past 2 weeks, and since I had no progress to show when I was supposed to be on deadline, I was ashamed of myself.

There you have it. Yes - I've heard it all (cut yourself some slack, take a breather, writers run into a funk sometimes), but none of that really helps when you're contemplating the fact that you are accountable for what is, inherently, your job. I'm an author and my job is to produce books, full stop.

I could try to explain my position the past 2 weeks. Week 1, my son was home on school break (plus there were 2 public holidays - whole family at home - and one of them was a personal celebration for us). In this case, forget about writing, unless you want to be downing Paracetamol tablets by the handful come tea time because writing and looking after a rambunctious 8-year-old equals the headache of the century.
So there, I had already lost my writing pace and groove, and that's the worst thing that can happen to me. When I lose my groove, it's hard to get back in, because I will be questioning myself and whether or not if what I'm writing is good, and will I ever be able to find the same pace and flow as before I was interrupted? That's my biggest Damocles' sword.

Week 2 saw me having a hospital appointment on Wednesday. And so what happens to me whenever I need to go meet my care team, I start getting worried... What if something has happened and I'm no longer in okay health? What if the doctors will have bad news? I'm a nervous wreck whenever I need to meet my doctors (and in case you didn't know, I'm a two-time breast cancer survivor. My second brush with the disease was less than a year ago). So there went the other week, and by the time the appointment came and went (with a clean bill of health for the past 4 months, thank goodness!), I was wiped and it took me the rest of the week to recover. So a cancer scare is my second Damocles sword.

Pair the two swords together, and you get me totally out of commission.

Until something happened to kick my arse and get me back in gear - my lovely publisher, Jill Noble, posted something on Facebook that had me glowing and basking with pride. It was this amazing , 5-star review by Just Erotic Romance Reviews for Walking The Edge.

This gave me faith, in myself and my ability to weave a story that would have readers (hopefully!) enthralled. I sat down and started writing again...

...and let me say the word count has been none too shabby this current week. About 8.4K added to the draft of Before The Morning, and this takes me across the half-way mark to end this week on the 55% line on the expected total word count! Woot!

Oh, and something else I wanted to share with you - my bestie (and she is like a sister to me!), author Angela Guillaume, kickstarted her writing blog this week. After a rev-up post on Monday, she hosted author Hope Tarr on Wednesday for the first of her Wednesday Interview slots. And today, she posts her own progress report. I'm curious to know what she's been up to writing-wise - join me to check out her Progress Friday post, over at her blog, angelaguillaume.blogspot.com

So that's it from me this week, beautiful people! Looking forward to a quiet weekend where I'll catch up on some (very late) crits for my CPs.

Oh, and if you're on Facebook, join me later today for the Friday/Weekend TideOver photo (hunky, yummy men... need I say more? *grin*)

From Mauritius with love,

Zee

Random Thoughts' Monday: What's cooking...?

Hey beautiful people

Start of another week... Sigh... You know I'm gonna ask where the past weekend went, innit? With both boys home, instead of leaving them to their own devices with the Playstation (and where they'll bash one another senseless in Tekken or Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat or what else other I'll-kill-you-while-you-kill-me-twice type of video game), so we hit the beach yesterday morning, probably our last stint to the coasts now that winter is coming in.

As for today... just put a dish of lamb tagine to slow-cook in the oven. It's a Moroccan dish - served with couscous - that features in my upcoming release, Walking The Edge. Reading all about it again through the edits last week made me crave the food once again and I set out to make it today. Well, yesterday, to be more precise - for you see, you have to cut and marinate the lamb with specific tagine spices overnight, before you'll combine the rest of the ingredients together after you've browned the marinated meat and place the dish in the oven to slow-cook over 2 hours (or a little more).

Making this dish, I couldn't help but realize how much the systematic and well-organized setup to prepare a tagine is also akin to balancing life and your many duties when you're an author. You cannot simply pull up and decide to do something - it all requires planning, like your tagine meat needs to be marinated overnight. You cannot just do something the way you and you alone want to - there are rules, a certain framework and order to follow, exactly like your recipe, its list of ingredients, and what to add first and how.
All in all, this dish has taken me 1 hour to put together and get it into the oven. Yet, looking at the instructions and the list of ingredients a mile long for tagine, you'd think you need to spend half a day in your kitchen to pull this together.

Life is like this too. You think it'll take a long, long time to get everything ironed out, but until you try, you won't know.

On Friday, I mentioned that I'm collaborating with my bestie Angela Guillaume on a story. We've given each other a deadline set in stone for that one - we have a plan, and we're doing it all ourselves. I now have until July 31 to pen down a 50K story. It sounds doable, or terribly daunting. I'm like, 6K a week? Isn't that madness? You gotta reckon that in the past, I wrote in one single block of time, uninterrupted. I could clock 3-4K words in one morning. But then I wrote only once a week - with my hectic schedule and to-do lists, I couldn't find a free block of time to write every so often. That's why I stalled with my WIPs too.

But I cannot do this now, not for this project! 6K a week, every week. How on earth...? And this got me thinking of the tagine recipe - where a little here and a little there break down the mile-long recipe page into something that's doable in steps, where one builds upon the other, and before you know it, you end up with a consistent whole.

That's what I'm aiming for in my writing now. A little everyday. I clocked down 1.1K this morning, and still found time to do my other tasks. Win-win on all fronts. This'll be my goal every working day now - 1K and slightly more everyday, to add up gradually to 50K come July 31.

My update for now, folks! What are you all up to this week?

From Mauritius with love,

Zee

Progress Friday

Hello beautiful people

Sorry I've been AWOL for the past 4 days. I received the first round of edits on Walking The Edge and it's been a consuming task to get the manuscript in tip top shape (and agree with Noble Romance Publishing's Style Guide). That's quite something - a pub house's style guide. Of course, there are some basic rules all houses follow - and the savvy author knows to already work those conditions into her story before submitting - but what some places agree on and refuse, others refuse and agree... and you're left with a rather 'unique' set of conditions and rules to which you have to abide.

That being said, I've learned tons in the past few days. My editor too is a darling, a woman with whom I've really connected (thank goodness! Lol), and she's really making the story sing. Already, after the first round of edits itself, I cannot believe how the story is reading so much better. Which goes to show that you always, always need another set of professional eyes on your ms.

What else has been going on? Well, taking in the 'big games' of the French Open. Roland Garros without big surprises this year too - well, maybe not on the Singles Women's side. Can you believe Maria Sharapova is out, knocked off by this amazing 'newcomer', Na Li, from China. On the Men's side, not any surprises. Waiting for the clash of the titans today, when Roger Federer plays against Novak Djokovic. Two of my favourite men on the tennis circuit - I have no idea who to support...

Other than that, I haven't gotten anything else done this past week. Edits are time consuming, especially when you're an anal perfectionist like me. Not to mention that I can only 'work' when my son is at school, since I turn into the 'teacher' when he comes home and I have to check his lessons and homework.

Add to it too that I was without power for most of yesterday, at - you guessed it! - exactly the time when my son was in school. Upgrade works on the specific power lines on our street alone, and then those stinking idiots pulled down our phone line and only botched it back in late yesterday evening. Thank goodness they connected the Internet line (though botched coz my connection is terribly slow today!) - we're still without our land line coz those stinking idiots (forgive me for repeating myself, because these jerks are really stinking idiots!) 'forgot' to connect the second line. Sheesh...

Now looking forward to a chill weekend. Got tons of books to read, and a new story to start too... Excited about that one, because it's a venture I'm doing with my bestie, author Angela Guillaume. Will tell you more soon, promise!

What have you planned this weekend?

From Mauritius with love,

Zee

Something dirty and underhanded...

Hey peeps

No Link Thursday article today, sorry. I actually need to air something out here. It is not my policy to dish about what is happening behind the scenes or in my private and professional life here, but this time I feel this is warranted.

It started with this comment Ms. Terran McGahae left yesterday on my post Heroines Across The ages in Writing:

Ms. Monodee, your continued use of TJ Killian's lessons, in part or in whole, is the 'theft' of intellectual property owned by T.J. Killian Enterprises.

It is in your best interest to cease and desist.

Sincerely,

Terran J. McGahae
Vice President

T.J. Killian Enterprises.

What actually happens is that I used to blog with Ms. Killian and other authors (namely Angela Guillaume, Sandra K. Marshall, Diana Castilleja) under the banner of the Royal Blush Authors, which was our group name. The blog was about writing advice, and had themed months. Every Monday, Ms. Blush, a Gossip Girl-like narrator (that I invented, wrote, and posted-as every Monday), announced the month's theme and the week's posts. T.J. Killian then posted weekly on Tuesdays, and I posted (under the handle of Z Aasiyah/Nolwynn as these were the pen names I used back then) on Thursdays. Ms. Guillaume, Ms. Marshall, & Ms. Castilleja posted once a month on Wednesdays. Fridays, every other fortnight, was reserved for an ongoing Free Read I personally wrote with the other authors' feedback about a chick-lit story character called Prudence Tempest.

You can find this blog here http://royalblushauthors.blogspot.com/ The blog had been deleted unbeknownst to everyone by Ms. Killian a few months ago but since I had admin priviledges as I wrote most of the material on it, I was able, as per Blogger's policy, to go through my Dashboard and undelete the blog. This is why you'll see it up today.

So yes, please - take a look at that blog. Each person's post is actually posted by the person who wrote it. You'll find which ones are Ms. Killian's, which ones are mine, which ones are for the other ladies who blogged with us. In case there is still doubt, look at our voices and see if they're in any way similar!

The issue - yes, I admit it - a lot of the Writing Wednesday posts here are actually posts I had written for the Royal Blush Authors blog. On that count, feel free to throw the tomatoes. When the blog was initially deleted, I still had copies of these articles on my hard drive, and figured I'd use them on here on days where I couldn't find more than 10 minutes to blog.

So yes, I did repost my old stuff. I apologize for this, and this only. I had actually asked a few friends about what to blog about writing-advice-wise before I started this blog, and most of them told me they'd have loved the old Royal Blush Authors type of advice I proposed, and when I told them I had the copies, they urged me to go ahead and share with the readership here (you can ask Rae Lori, Angela Guillaume, Sandra Marshall, and Rebecca Royce about this one).

I'm a reasonably calm and easygoing person. But when I am attacked, and wrongfuly at that too, I'm sorry but I cannot stay silent. I've let this happen in the past, when someone from Ms. Killian's entourage had called me all sorts of names on my Facebook profile (old name, Z Aasiyah Nolwynn), but this time, I really cannot stand by and watch someone try to destroy me.
In case you're wondering, Ms. Killian, who is in real life Ms. Lee Morris and the former owner of Eirelander Publishing (between March 2009 - August 2010), saw me resign from her company in my then-capacity of Senior Editor (Mainline) around the end of March 2010 because of a heavy workload that I could not juggle in collaboration with my own family life and my writing. Since that last communication, aka my resignantion email, I have not heard from Ms. Killian/Ms. Morris until her sister, Ms. McGahae, posted this comment on my blog yesterday.

I give big thanks to Angela Guillaume (the same gal I used to blog with at RBA), and Rae Lori, for their support in reiterating that these posts in question were my own since they had read them on the RBA blog.

Please go see for yourself - http://royalblushauthors.blogspot.com/

Sorry again for the mess - but I really cannot stand in the sidelines and watch this sort of thing happen.

From Mauritius with love,

Zee (Real name Zaynah Monodee - former pen names Aasiyah Qamar & Nolwynn Ardennes)

Random Thoughts' Monday: When madness dies down

Kiddo is back into school! Whoo-hoo! Can you see me jumping around my very empty house in joy? Lol. Yeah, I don't think I'm a bad mom, but being cooped up 15 hours a day for the past 19 days, with a kid who can talk the hind leg off a donkey after barely 60 seconds - yes, I welcome the sanity and the fact that he's out of the house (safely, in school!).
He didn't see it that way though - grumbled and sulked this morning when I woke him up, dragged his little self around as if it held the weight of the world on its wide-for-7-years shoulders. Kids, eh - our sunshine and our damnation at the same time! :)

It's unbelievable how much you can accomplish when you aren't interrupted by 'Mommy this' or Mommy that' every 25 seconds. Peeps, I'm writing again! I've clocked down 500 words so far this morning in between FB visits and checking email. Talk of multitasking! I even found a way to integrate an issue in a manner that so fits the ms, it seems untrue! All thanks to some quiet. Peeps - never underestimate the power of silence! As Enigma says - silence must be heard!

Channelled my non-existent Nigella Lawson over the weekend and starting a world tour of cooking. Thought of my Southern gal pals yesterday, Chicki Brown & Angela Guillaume, when I made chicken-fried steak and gravy ladled on mashed potatoes. Food turned out delicious, and cannot believe how cooking the meat this way makes it so tender and easy to eat. Kiddo, in true modern kid manner, actually made a 'burger' with his steak and bread, and would you believe it, asked if we had lettuce at home! I about fell out of my seat with the surprise, because he is absolutely self-allergic to anything vegetable!

The family madness continues. I barely had time to sit my bum down at home yesterday. Ever since Friday, the only thing I'm doing at home is sleeping. Today's not any better, since we have yet another dinner at yet another auntie's place. Oh well, at least it save me from having to cook (and by now you know cooking and me makes three - a total crowd!)

At my BIL's place on Saturday, got a chance to watch the DVD of Brooklyn's Finest. Really good movie, the realistic cop and crimeworld kind. Brilliant acting by the whole cast, though special mention to Richard Gere who portrays this alcoholic and disillusioned but honest to his deepest bone cop who refuses to take any sh*t, even from his bosses, 7 days before he is about to retire, ready to forego his pension and all his benefits just because he is honest! Other special mention to Don Cheadle, who plays an undercover cop but who finds himself with his loyalty actually veering toward the crime lord (played by Wesley Snipes) he has to bring under, because Snipes actually saved his life.
Really good movie - see it if you get the chance.

I pen off before I write my novel on here, :)

From Mauritius with love,

Zee