Rock, Paper, Scissors

Ever since I was introduced to this song on my most recent road trip, I've been unable to stop listening to it. 

For the first time since I was five, I'm not returning to school in the fall. Oh, I certainly plan to next year, but the fact remains it is entirely my choice, and that is stunning and exciting. And I am fully aware that this song is relevant, because it's right now I choose what I want to do. It's terrifying, because I'm scared I'm going to fail horribly, but I know I have to choose, and there's a certain confidence in that.

The other thing that just happened is I finished another novel. I am thrilled with this one, but it's another instance of change. Even though I'm going on directly to write the next installment in the series before the characters pack up their bags and move out of my head, it's not going to be the same. Again, exciting, new, and absolutely terrifying. 

So I've been taking lots camping trips this summer. My middle school's outdoor program instilled in me a desire to flee to the wilderness when there are decisions to make or difficulties to heal from, and heading on my long first trips without my parents or school with me has seemed a deeply appropriate way to mark the transition from college to the great big world. It's scary, but being that independent (constrained only by my car's tiny gas tank) is one of the best feelings I've ever had. There's a thrill to knowing that everything you need is with you, that you can go anywhere you want. 

After a long hard year in which a lot of things went very wrong--as wrong as they possibly could have gone, in some cases--that is an enormous comfort.

The Writing Process

...because I hear this is a common question.

Never actually been asked it, but I hear about it a lot.

I don't have one 'writing process', a routine I sit down and follow every day. I have two: the ideal, and the real.

My ideal writing process would be this: get up at an hour that makes my parents and housemates cringe, have something tasty for breakfast, make a pot of tea (black tea, for preference) and arrange it on a tray with milk and sugar and other tea implements, and drag the whole thing back to my room. Then sit and write and have tea all morning, then go off on a bike ride to burn off the remainder of said caffeine before lunch.

My real writing process (during the school year) usually involves getting up at an hour even I think obscene, going to lab or class, running around and doing massively important things for the rest of the day, crawling into bed at something approaching midnight and writing until I fall asleep on the keyboard. It works--I'm far too tired to self-edit, and if we're to be entirely honest, the ideal writing process usually ends in me getting stuck on Tumblr for three hours instead of writing. I have been known to sit in a tree with my computer to get out of range of the router, but that's been an unpleasant prospect ever since the ants took over my favorite orange tree.

...This turned out to be a much sillier post than expected. Oh well. Such is life!

Summer! Finally!

I have emerged from the hell that was finals week--or, more precisely  the last month of the quarter. It could have been worse, as I wound up dropping Statistics out of sheer desperation, but there was still more than enough to keep me running, including the first few chapters of a new novel (I found an excuse to take a writing class) and moving out of the apartment. 

Which happened today and was far from conducive to peace of mind. Enough on that now. I doubt anyone wants to hear about what we found in the back of the fridge. 

Somewhere in there, Fanime happened. It was the first convention I've gone to with a large group of friends, and the results were both delightful (people to hang out with in the hotel room, dances) and disastrous (coordination, hoo boy...).  I shall post pictures as soon as I can get them off various people, as I left my camera in a drawer at home, and the tablet's camera wasn't quite up to the job.

I spent most of my time at Clockwork Alchemy. There, I finally purchased an Author Hat, which I am inordinately fond of. I had a wonderful time, and returned to school in a much better frame of mind for the explosion of excitement that was the ensuing month. 

Fieldwork has also picked up. I need to go in to lab tomorrow to finish processing the samples that we got yesterday. In the meantime, I'm going to appreciate being home with parents and cats and lots of good food... 

Post-Release update

 Conventions, novel releases, and surprise trips to Colorado have meant that I've gotten behind on my school, and am paying the price. I arrived home this week to a flurry of frantic activity: while I was off adventuring, the rest of the world had moved into the dread and terror that is Midterm Season. And the little part of that world that is my lab had shifted into We Have To Present Our Research HOW SOON? mode, so there was a lot of scrambling. On the plus side, there are now pictures of the research I've been doing for the last year. 

Isn't it adorable?!

So in between photographing urchin larvae and studying for statistics (at least that exam's over now--eeek, math), I am left with only one exam more before I need to start worrying about finals and posters for the grant. 

And then it will be summer. Tolerant Housemate and I had a brief argument about summer yesterday: he insists on not considering it summer until June 21st. I insist on calling it summer now because I've had to resort to hiding in the 15ºC room in lab from the heat. Yay environmental rooms. 

As for the novel? Well, if you go visit my website, you'll see that it's up at a variety of new and exciting places. If you've read it, do please leave a review! You shall make me a very happy author indeed. 

And as more people read the book, I can start posting more about said book, such as how to use a fan in combat...

The Unintentional Hiatus

Well, that was rather longer than I planned to go without updating! Unfortunately, school had other ideas. I wound up working in another lab, and it's been spectacular fun. The housemates and I had many nice breakfasts (must upload pictures at some point!) and had many panicked evenings of studying. I also got that nasty coughing cold that's been going around and gave it to the Tolerant Housemate, who has cursed me many times as a result. Said coughing cold has refused to move out, which has done just wonders for my productivity. (Sarcastic? Me?)

But now I'm finished with finals, have bade farewell to the housemates, and am relaxing at home with good food and a lot of cats. 

By a lot of cats, I mean three. But they're all rather high-maintenance and very people-oriented (read, demanding) and so sometimes it seems like we have even more cats than we do. 

The cats. 

After living elsewhere for several months, it's rather an adjustment not to be able to leave food out on the counter! Even peapods aren't safe. Neither is cilantro or anything green and leafy. The black cat will even eat cake, and last New Years, got into someone's spilled champagne, and drank enough he was sick under the table. We've had to be very careful with him and alcohol since.

In novel-related news, I'm just about done with the first round of edits. Release date still seems to be May 1st, so here's hoping that doesn't change! 

Food, glorious food!

I have been rather ill behaved of late with sporadic posting, but I have an excellent excuse for that, which is midterms. Yay midterms! Also getting things in on time to the publisher, which is just as much of a thing. 

This weekend, facing two imminent midterms and writing-related-work, I kind of...froze. I sat there in front of my computer and decided that not only could I not take another moment of trying to memorize exactly what Romanus IV was doing in 1011 (answer, getting his butt handed to him by Alp Arselan at the Battle of Manzikert because he had left his reinforcements in the hands of an uncle of the child-emperor he was determined to depose), but if I had to puzzle over the exact weight of my main character again I would either scream or crawl under the bed and never come out.

So seizing my tolerant housemate by the arm, I went to the grocery store and then raided the cookbook shelf (my parents, convinced that I would starve without suitable instruction, have given me more cookbooks for my apartment than most people see in a lifetime). 

I then proceeded to go through all of the dozen eggs I'd just bought. The products of this were rewarding, to say the least. 

I must confess, though, I did not make this first one. These are the tolerant housemate's lemon bars, which may have won the award as the best lemon bars ever, even over my mother's! (Sorry mom!)

We baked them in a pie dish, since we do not actually own a small, deep sided pan suitable for lemon bars, brownies, or other such delights (a thing that must be remedied soon. I got another dozen eggs on Tuesday). 

These are cinnamon chocolate chip muffins. Though the flavor was lovely, I have somehow mastered the technique of making the tops of the muffins perfectly tender and their bottoms something akin to cardboard. I blame the fact that I left the wet ingredients in the fridge and the butter congealed and made the dough a funny texture. Moving on. 

 Here are the lemon bars, freed from the wax paper and the pie dish. In future, the wax paper will be omitted. It was...difficult. 

This last one, I cannot take much credit for, as it came from a box. It's an almond sweet bread--think a giant cinnamon roll except with crushed almonds and almond icing. The tolerant housemate loathes almonds, but I love them. (So does my main character in Weather, one of the few things we agree on!) I also added caramel to the center, which was a success, though it did make the bread ooze a little in the oven. 

So now, dear reader, you know how I retained my sanity this weekend. After all the baking, I went back to studying and working on other projects quite happily. It might have been something to do with the lemon bar I was munching.