We got our 4th Nor’Easter in 2 weeks on Wednesday and this one had to be the worst of the lot.  It started off relatively tame, but then dumped snow over night to many people’s surprise.  We have an extra car here too, so Thursday started with digging my wife’s car out since we couldn’t fit on the driveway.  Not that I had to take my son to school.  He was off on Wednesday, which I expected.  Thursday was a second day off that I didn’t see coming and it almost made me cry.  We did have fun playing in the snow for two hours, but that was really draining and I barely had the energy to begin with.

The source of my exhaustion was that my main goal was to finish the first draft of War of Nytefall: Lost.  The original plan was to finish it Friday afternoon and rest until Sunday when I could start a final edit on War of Nytefall: Loyalty.  It’s going to be a rough job since my son starts his Spring Break on Thursday and then there’s Passover starting on Friday.  With all of this in mind, I factored in Wednesday being a snow day and worked hard accordingly.  I didn’t expect Thursday, which threw everything off and forced me to pull a longish night on Friday.  Some people around here kept talking to me as well, so I had to work with no back support and in a room that is starting to make me feel very drowsy.  I managed to get the first draft done though, but I do fear that I may have rushed the ending.  The last section is only a page that I had more planned for, but may work better as an ominous teaser.

Needless to say, those invisible anacondas (panic attacks) have been working overtime this week.  I’ve kept them at bay until I try to go to bed.  Then, they show up and I keep fearing that I’ll fall asleep and never wake up.  This fatigue and fear compounds itself over the week, which gets slightly undone by some extra sleep on the weekend.  Not that I’m getting that this time, so we’ll see how long I last next week.  Editing isn’t going to be a tough thing since I already went through it a few times.  This is to put my mind at ease and make sure I didn’t make any continuity mistakes with the second one.  That shouldn’t set off any really bad panic attacks and I’m going to minimize my news watching again.  I fell off that wagon because it felt so much was happening.

As far as the next release goes, I’m still aiming for early April.  My hope is for the 7th, but that’s the end of my son’s break and my birthday weekend.  Things might get a little shaky during that time, which is why I’m hoping to get more volunteers to help promote this book.  I put out a call for guest post volunteers last weekend, but I’ll probably have to do one on a weekday too.  Weekend traffic is very lacking.  I’m having trouble thinking up good topics since I used so much for my blog, so I have an option for a standard html if I can’t think of anything.  Feel free to volunteer here if you want.

That’s really it.  I’m gearing up for the Spring Break period, so I’m just trying to clear the big things off my plate.  My extended plan is to take the week after my son’s break to relax and recover (if people here will let me).  After that, I’ll be editing Quest of the Broken-Hearted and preparing to write War of Nytefall: Temptation.  At this rate, I might be able to finish this year’s releases and the final Dawn Addison story before my son hits summer break.  Considering he doesn’t have summer school this year, getting that far would be amazing.  Then, I can spend July and August with him and only having to worry about blog posts and some outlining.  I’d ask what could go wrong, but I think we’ve established that something will go south.

So, what are the goals?

1. Edit War of Nytefall: Loyalty
2. Prepare requested guest posts
3. Work a bit on June blog posts
4. Continue reading Dragonball Z.  Just got to the first two androids and waiting on the next volume to come in
5. Start playing Lego Indiana Jones with kid on his break
6. Brace self for Passover and lack of pizza
7. Maybe find a way to get a little extra sleep

A side thing: Shannon Thompson put up a really interesting post on Ageism in Publishing.  I really recommend reading it.  In fact, it got me wondering about the ages of authors when they finally made it.  This infographic came up, so take a look:

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