Friday, March 2, 2007

Something new to interfere with my writing.
I really depise cold weather. You see, I live in a little old house (built around the turn of the last century), and it's drafty an has its share of problems. One of these problems is the plumbing.

I don't have a basement, just a crawlspace, and it's drafty and not heated. For the past several years, when we get a serious cold snap, my pipes freeze. So last year I decided to do something about it. Because most of my pipes busted last year, I ripped out all the old copper and galvanized piping and replaced my entire plumbing system, by myself, with PVC. One reason is that I know how to work with PVC; I can repair it myself. Another is that parts for PVC piping are much cheaper. After I replaced my entire system with PVC, I insulated the pipes with snap-on insulation. According to the guy at the home store, that would keep them from freezing.

It didn't.

So for the past week and a half, I've been tracing down multiple leaks and cracked pipes, trying to find them all and repair them. Thankfully, because I replaced with PVC, it only cost me about $60 in materials and the time it took me, rather than several hundred to a plumber. But it's irritating. And I'm kicking myself, because in addition to the insulation, I had planned to put these heat strips on the pipes that are guaranteed to keep them above freezing. I bought the strips, but never got around to installing them. Ugh.

So I've gotten very little work done in the past several weeks. I've been working on a short story for the Writers of the Future contest, but I haven't gotten very far yet, and I'm not feeling that confident about my ability to work in short formats. I did get my marked up pages back on book 2, and have completed all the revisions that I want to do for now. But that was easy; there wasn't really that much to it.

Still no word back from my agent. For about two weeks now, my first book has been in the hands of three major publishers. It'll be a while before I hear anything, but I check my e-mail daily hoping to hear from my agent. Nothing so far, though, and we most likely won't be submitting anywhere else until we hear back from these three.

So there's my last update for the week. I'll be spending the weekend doing quite a bit of writing, so maybe I'll have some new insights to post soon. In the meantime, check out another site that I post on quite a bit. http://www.deepgenre.com is run by several pro authors in the scifi and fantasy genre, names like Katherine Kerr, Carol Berg, Kate Elliot, and many others. The site has areas to post questions for the various authors as well as a section on "Writing My First Novel" where you can post questions, concerns, look for hints and tips, get encouragement, etc. I'm not affiliated with this site, but I post there and get/give tips and insight there. If you're interested in what I have had to say there, or what other budding authors are up to, it's a good resource. I post there under the name ehjones.

And if anybody has any good links to other author resources and websites, send them my way! I'm always looking for other writers, pro and amateur alike, to talk to.

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