Happy New Year!

Hi ya,

First off a very happy new year to you all!

So I made it home safe and sound. As always it feels weird being home. Even now almost a month later I still feel a bit out of place. But I’m working on readjusting. I’ve been having fun hanging out with my family. My older brother, Spencer, has been home since Christmas. So I’ve been doing a lot of hanging out and artsy things.

Am I still avoiding a “real job”? Yes I am. I’m babysitting 4 days a week for 2 families. So I have my own money to make my school loan payments and a credit card bill. I’ve got a good enough reason to be skipping a minimum wage job. I’m still hard at work on my manuscript.

I finished it last weekend. Then I was thinking more on what Sarah had told me at the SCBWI conference. It ended up falling short in the word count (only 120,000) for what most high fantasy books are. So I was thinking, I could have four shorter books and maybe some filler in there somewhere. Or 2 long books where shit moves along fast and keeps you wrapped up in the story. Obviously I opted for the two books. I have a bit more writing to do on this manuscript and I’ve been doing pretty good on it. I’m still giving myself a deadline of march to have the whole thing finished. That will put me at the one year mark from when I started this new version. Hopefully I’ll be done before.

Today though I’m taking a break from my manuscript. I’ve hit a rough patch with a character who’s a total jerk but I don’t want him to be an unlovable jerk. He needs to be loved because he has some very honorable things he does. I figured I needed a day to clear my head. So here I am about to cram up a bunch of blog posts.

Because let’s be honest it’s almost too late to be posting about last summer’s adventures but I promise they are really cool places. And I didn’t want to back log them, that’s too much effort (not really it’s like 2 clicks to change the post date). But I might not do a super thorough job for them all. I will do a super intense one for Yellowstone because that was such a wonderful trip. San Francisco might get a long one. You all will hear about my wallet story and Donner’s Pass will for sure get a crazy post! I’ll do my best not to bore you all too much.

Then we’ll see how far I get into my winter excursion!  That’s todays plan!

Cheers,