Publication... at Last!

Good things come to those who wait. 

Of course, they don't always come. And bad things come to those who wait, too.

Good things come (eventually) to those who work at it. Yup, that saying functions better for me, and it gives me hope that no effort towards my goals is ever wasted. Now, as I'm working on my fourth novel in the YA fantasy series about a boy who can see inside, well, almost everything, the first book in the series has been picked up for publication.

Honestly, I hadn't tried to send the book out until this year, mainly because every time I read through it, I found a hundred more changes to make. Some writers urged me to self-publish, and I might have done so had I felt it was ready. I finally started sending it out this January, when I could read through it and just enjoy it, without restructuring, rewriting, and shredding.

I've made changes since then -- including changing the main character's name to Joshua (since the Maze Runner series had Thomas center-stage) -- and I've read through four sets of galleys, each one taking me a step closer to the final version. The editing is all over now, though. The book is final.

The thought of that is both daunting and exciting, but I'll explain all that in a future post.

Here's the cover:

Cover art courtesy of Black Rose Publishing

The book comes out August 9, but it's already available for pre-order (10% off) through the publisher at their website:

ORDER THE GHOST PORTAL

If you'd like a signed copy, you can pre-order those, too. Just post me your e-mail, write me at shakespeare824 at hotmail.com, or find me on Facebook (Cheryl Carvajal), and we'll make that happen.

More details to come... including a few excerpts... to stay tuned.

Wow, Have I Been Totally BUSY!!!

Just thought I'd update. I'm maintaining about eight jobs right now--most of them paying--and I am pretty much running around with my head cut off as a result.

But I'm happy. I'm happier than I've been since I moved. And I feel like progress is happening. I'm teaching again (love it!), I'm director of a non-profit arts organization downtown (love it!), I'm editing the sequel of a novel I edited last year (love both the book and the author!), and I'm preparing to throw myself into a book of my own, which, oddly enough, ALREADY HAS A PUBLISHER! EEEK!

I'll give you more details later, but my normally loud snarky voices have taken the week off and flown to Barbados. I just hope the only people they pester there don't speak any English (or Snark).

I'm sure the voices will be back, though, so I'm setting mirrors all around, hoping they might catch a glimpse of themselves and find their ugliness bad enough to run away forever.

OMG, I'm POSTING!

I believe my last post was in APRIL! I so suck! No, please don't comment that I don't suck, for I won't believe you. This is not the blog where people are supposed to be all nice to each other and say polite things. Nope, not the place. Give it to me honestly, or don't comment.

Fine, then, don't comment. Who said I wanted your comments anyway...

Besides, I'm posting, so nobody should complain. I'm sure you're so giddy that I'm here again that you almost spilled your coffee on your new pajama pants. And I'm only posting so that you can know why I'm such a non-posting goofball.

You see, I pretty much took four months off. Yup, May to August, to be precise, and now that I'm back on a roll and as busy as it is physically possible to be, I'm posting. Weird, huh? I had far more time during the summer, and I managed to accomplish absolutely nothing. Also weird.

Anyway, now that my kids are back in school, I find I have a TON of new work to do. These are my current jobs. I've put a dollar sign by those jobs which actually pay money, but don't believe for a moment that this is why I've added them to my weekly schedule. I'm a month in to most of them, and I'm a bit out of breath, but I finally feel like I have stuff to get up for in the morning, stuff that makes my heart beat wildly with excitement. I've also marked stuff that's new for this year. So, here's the list:

1. Director of the Bainbridge-Decatur County Center for the Arts (New)($): I was on the board last year, but everything shifted over the summer, and now I handle publicity for classes and art shows for a beautiful, historic Bainbridge Firehouse downtown which has been turned into an art gallery and meeting center.

2. College Instructor (New)($): I'm only teaching one class, but it's English, so it still gives me plenty of grading.

3. Director of Children's Choir: As I did last year, I'm directing 2- to 11-year-olds in my church's annual musical for Christmas.

4. Mother and Homework Helper: I'm on kid duty every afternoon, sometimes all afternoon and evening. The hardest part of this so far was getting my kids to realize they were back at school, and homework was a requirement.

5. Zumba instructor ($): I've cut down my classes a bit, but I still teach this two days a week. Many people want me to teach more, but I'm determined to leave my evenings free.

6. Author/Researcher of Spirits and Legends of the Chattahoochee Trace ($?): This is one of those projects that hopefully will pay off in a little bit, but I'll have to put in all the research and time and travel first, most likely. I'm excited about it, though, for I love research into legends and ghosts, especially when the research involves both.

7. Editor/Ghost Writer ($): I've done three of these projects over the last few months, and I just received another assignment. This latest one is just for editing, though, and I could not be more pleased. She's a great person and a great writer, and I am grateful not to be ghost writing, for that is a far harder task to undertake, as I have discovered through the past year. Editing is also great for my own writing, so this is good practice.

8. Organizer/Board Member for Women's Shelter: This is just starting up in our town, and we're busy collecting furniture and donations for it, organizing fundraisers, and, in my case, creating brochures for it, editing policies, and figuring out ways to get the whole thing going. I am by far not the most active board member, but that is only because the other ones are SOOOO hard working!

I'm also busy on other continuous projects--things like sewing for my kids and myself, painting and drawing, framing projects, and my continuous list of chores to keep the household going. I may very well have missed something, but I can edit this post (Thank God!).

So, what have all of you been up to?

Not Writing--Costuming

I just finished a mammoth short story (a long, long short story), and I was all set to begin work revising my mermaid novel (once I've read through and edited two novels for a fellow writer), when I got a FANTASTIC call.

The local theatre is doing ANNIE... and while there is no way I have the evening time to be in it (and thus didn't audition), they've asked me to do costumes!!!! Yippee! I haven't costumed a whole show in several years, and, though I like acting, my creativity is far better suited for costuming and writing plays.

I am SO excited! To those of you who like the snarkier tone of this blog, I am so sorry, but I have not been feeling snarky at all lately. Just happy. And now I have yet another activity to adore!

Hope your lives are filled with fun stuff, too! I promise I'll check in when I'm feeling snarky, too. If you are feeling that way, please feel free to share your snarky comments below...

Not Writing--EDITING

When I taught classes full time--which accounts for most of the last 18 years, even while rearing babies (yes, the term really is "rearing," an appropriate term for at least the first 2-3 years, when caring for the baby's rear is one of one's primary tasks)--I often used grading papers as an excuse to NOT write.

The excuse worked. Really well. Anybody would believe me. All I had to do is show my husband the ream of papers I'd brought home to dissect, and he'd shake his head sympathetically. And grading had to come first, too. After all, I got paid to grade papers. And writing, at least at this point, pays very little.

That knocked writing out all over the place. No way I can possibly do NaNoWriMo with all of this on my plate. Nightly quizzes, rough drafts, final projects, mini-essays. I was an English teacher, after all. Couldn't exactly run my papers through a scan-tron machine. (Any of you students and teachers should know what those are, the machines that read the sheets students fill little dots on. And they read tests zippingly, digesting and scoring 30 of them in a minute.)

I felt just like Cinderella, unable to go to the ball until I could get all my work done, find a suitable dress to wear, etc. So I sat around in my ashes, with my little purple pen out, grading away whole weekends at a time.

It was nice.

Only now I'm not teaching. And my house is pretty much all remodeled. Sure, I have a few excuses, but nothing nearly as good as grading. I've been reaching out, scrambling to find anything to keep from writing. After all, writing is a waste of time, isn't it? Hardly anybody ever sells a book, and even if they do it won't be successful, right?

I had to find some other way to fill the time. And now I have. I'm editing. For pay. This will be the third novel I've edited for money, though I have worked on many a friend's novel free of charge. Editing's a bit different from just being a beta reader. It's more in-depth, for it may be the last time anyone besides the author reads a book before it's published. Important stuff. Wouldn't want to miss a single typo or extra comma. What if characters close a door three times on a single page, but never open it? What if the ending is confusing?

And editing is FUN. No grade to assign at the end, and I know the author is serious enough to hire an editor, so I know my comments will have a positive effect on the final project. Nice. Rewarding. Time-consuming.

So I have finally found something to keep me from writing. I'm just sorry it's a temporary fix. In a few weeks, at the latest, I'll be done with the edit. I'll just have to find some other way to wallow in the ashes a bit more. Any ideas?