Too early to tell . . .

. . . but even so. . . .

In the past two days I've gotten two inquiries about writing work. Meaning, two different places contacting me to see if I'd be interested in writing for them.

Completely out of the blue.

One is a place I've worked for in the past. The other is one I've never worked for.

It's possible they won't lead anywhere, either or both. Who knows? Life is like that. But it's always nice to have people request you rather than having to chase the work. And to have it happen twice in two days?

Yeah, I'm in a good mood. :)

Soon the leaves will turn . . .

Okay, I know it’s been a while again. Sorry. I’ve put up a meme on LJ but that’s not real content. Amusing, though, at least from those who did respond.

So what’s been going in my life lately? Not a lot, actually. Well, not a lot beyond the usual.

The wife and kids are all doing well. We’re all over our respective colds and such, which is good. The wife’s been to the doctor and things are looking okay—not as good as they could but far better than they might have. My daughter is in full toddler mode, very willful, but she’s still a sweetie. My son has at least one tooth now, if not more—it’s hard to tell, both because they push up before breaking through and because he’s likely to bite your fingers if you try feeling around for them. :)

He’s also crawling! I guess that is big news. We thought he was last week, when he kept winding up several feet from where he’d been set down, but now it’s definite. He’s mobile. Which is scary. He’s also very focused, just like his big sister, so he’ll go after something and if you move it he’ll just look around until he’s figured out where you put it and go after it again.

Last night while watching TV (we watched the premiere of Jericho—interesting and well-done, we’ll definitely give it a shot—and the season premiere of CSI: NY) he was on the floor at one point, playing. Then he decided to see what we were doing so he crawled over to the couch, pulled himself up to a standing position, and grinned at me.

Oy.

Work is fine—quietly busy, which is not a bad thing. I keep forgetting to stand up—I’ll be at my desk for a few hours (some of the longer projects can take a day or even two, as opposed to covers and jackets, which only take a few minutes each) and then get up and my legs will buckle. Not fun. I finally got a new monitor last week—the last one in our department to do so, by quite a ways—and got my computer replaced yesterday, so now I have a spiffy 20-inch flat-screen and a brand new quad G5. Nice.

The house is good and we’ve been leaving a few windows open lately to take advantage of the nice weather. I need to take care of little jobs (the radiator cover, the chair railing, and now the banister rails as well) now that the weather’s turning, before it gets too cold—I don’t relish the idea of painting in snow again. I got the car back—took it to a local mechanic a neighbor recommended and was well-pleased—and running smoothly, which is a good thing since we’ve already had one expedition to NJ and have another this coming weekend.

My other news is that I finally got the contracts on my next two projects, so I can talk about them. I’d already had them lined up but I don’t like to discuss anything until it’s completely locked in. Now it is.

I’m writing a second StarCraft novel, the follow-up to Queen of Blades. And after that I’m doing a WarCraft novel. The titles aren’t final yet, sorry. I’ll announce them when they are.

Between those and my third Warhammer novel I’m going to be busy through the start of next year, maybe until early spring. I’ve got a few smaller projects lined up as well, and I’m doing the hunt for what I’ll work on after that.

What else? We went apple-picking last weekend with Paleologa and others and had a great time. The kids loved it and we have many many apples—my lovely wife made some into caramel apples last night, which were a huge mess but very tasty. We’re off to our cousin’s birthday party this coming weekend, along with a visit to the wife’s grandmother en route. We went to a Mets game two weekends ago, which was fun even though the Mets lost horribly. My good friend Dochyel is in the hospital but is on the mend and will hopefully be released soon. I’m planning to visit him today.

I’m still having trouble squeezing my writing back into a proper schedule. Part of it is that I’ve been utterly wiped lately—I’m trying to get to bed at a reasonable hour but I wake up still tired each morning and by the time I get my daughter to bed I’m having trouble focusing. I can’t really write like that, so I futz around a little bit, maybe work on the one graphics project I’ve got right now, and then give up and go to bed. Ugh. Hopefully I’ll get some proper sleep and be able to stay up and write again soon. Otherwise I’ll be stuck sneaking in moments when I get home and on weekends.

In general, though, things are good. And the weather is starting to turn. Autumn is my favorite season. Oh, and my birthday is less than a month away. Not sure what I’m doing for it yet, perhaps dinner and a movie with friends. It sort of gets swallowed up between my daughter’s birthday, our wedding anniversary, and this year our trip to Kansas. I’ll figure out something.

Bleh

Sorry I haven't posted yet this month. I got a cold last weekend and I've been dragging a bit as a result. Otherwise the weekend was fine, including Monday when I watched both kids so the lovely wife could actually go out for a change.

Work is work. 'Nuff said there.

Writing is moving, though slowly. The cold's knocked me back a bit, and having only one computer at home has been an issue. Starting next week I'm going to push forward again, though. I've got one project I need to finish and two more I need to start, plus a few I need to outline.

Not much else. The kids are both a little feverish today, some sort of stomach thing, but not too bad. We're going to a Mets game this weekend. That should be fun. Oh, and I reconnected with two old friends this week, one by email (Hey, Tom!) and one by phone, so that's nice.

Around and around

Another week, another month, etc. Time marches on—actually, it seems to be scurrying past, these days.

Not much to report, really.

The kids and the wife are good. My son finally has a tooth through! Now we’re just waiting on the other dozen or so. He’s a good boy but he wants to examine everything, including using the ever-popular “Let me shove you in my mouth” test. My daughter alternates between being helpful and cranky but she is a sweetie and she dotes on her little brother. My lovely wife is tired, as am I, but usually seems in high spirits.

The car is acting strange—the dash lights going out unexpectedly, the radio readout flickering, the car not wanting to start for the first few tries. There’s got to be a loose wire somewhere. What’s annoying is that it wasn’t this bad *before* the mechanic touched it, and he’s down in Rockaway so it’s not that easy to go back and say “you broke it, you fix it.” I just hope we can get it sorted before any of the day-trips we’ve got planned this month and next month.

lexman8’s visit was good, if way too short. He showed up in time for a late lunch Tuesday, went and wandered the streets for a few hours, met me back at work, and then headed out to Queens with me—we stopped off for Thai food, took it home, ate, and hung out until the wee hours. Got up the next morning and took my daughter with us to go get bagels and pastries for breakfast, went back and ate, then trekked into the city so he could catch his train out of Penn Station. Much fun, and it brought back the days when we lived in the same town and got together every Saturday to hang out. Damn. Why can’t you and the wife just move up here already?

Work was quieter this week, which is definitely a good thing. I also went over the page proofs for Night of the Daemon and turned in my corrections. Now it’s back to the current novel. I’ve started discussing the next two with their respective editors/licensors, so by the time this one is finished one of them should be ready to go.

Today was the last of my Summer Publishing Fridays (done at 12:45), and combined with having Monday off this is a nice long weekend. And I’m doing very little with it. We had dinner with qadgop and skoobwoman tonight, and hopefully I’m heading into the city tomorrow to hang with worldforger and keltickefiwolf. My lovely wife is taking a much-needed and well-deserved break on Monday to hang out with one of our friends—I’m thrilled for her, though I admit I’m nervous about handling both kids by myself for most of the day. Our son is very Mommy-centric right now, so this could get rough.

I need to make up a new to-do list for myself. I work best with lists and I haven’t updated that in a while, which probably contributes to the fact that I keep remembering random things I need or want to do and then forgetting about them again. Time to writ it all down again and then hopefully start working my way through it.