Yikes, a few days behind

The week has been okay, but I have been unusually tired during the afternoon, which is usually my solid writing time.

Anyway, I sent off the finalized User Manual to ChartedCourse. Hooray! Apparently launch for the Program is set to happen on the 20th. Good for them.

Today I finished the restructuring of The Mars Betrayal and I am excited to write it up. That will be tomorrow's job. I will get it all done tomorrow. You might ask why. Well, we writers got an e-mail outlining the timeline expected with our books. They're looking to have them in sales packages come mid year. So maybe July. That means that we need to get stuff done quickly. I need to have this draft ready immediately, and it needs to be good. So I have the skeleton redone and am going over it to make sure there are no plot holes and that characters are motivated well. I am still trying to find a way to flesh out the villain some, but that's kind of hard with the length limitations I have.

I'll find a way.

So with the second, good draft done, I will probably need to submit an art brief regarding artwork I think would work, and where I suppose it ought to go. Then I need to work up some proposals as to what the expository subject matter will be. I'm not sure, but I think I might put together a chronicle of the history of space travel over the last four or five decades.

I still fully intend to finish The Cabin this month. I'll squeeze it in. I'll probably start working on it after kids are in bed, in order to get my 5000 words a day.

Now, onto something more personal. I am, blessedly, back in touch with a wonderful lady who is pretty much my oldest friend. I don't mean that she is older than any other friend I have. I mean she is the only friend I have that has been my friend since I was seventeen. Aside, of course, from the folks I grew up with in the Foundation Faith of God. In other words, Jena is the first friend I made outside of the FFoG.

Anyway, she sent me an e-mail and we have been e-mailing lots this week. So Jena, if you're reading this, thanks for sending that e-mail! I'll keep the mushiness to a minimum here on this blog.

So she lives in Austin, which is a place we've actually (I kid you not) been considering as a place to relocate to. Right now I am heavily into a job search. I even interviewed yesterday for a job I don't really want, but that I could do and probably enjoy doing. And I would enjoy the regular $$ that comes from an 8-5 job too. But what I was going to say was that we've seen several possibilities for employment in Austin, and we like the looks of the place and the housing values down there. Our $$ will go farther down there than here in Utah, and we need a bigger house.

But now it's late and I have to run. I really need to get enough sleep tonight. Of course, I've been up late folding laundry. Oh well. Now the pile's gone anyway. If you don't have four growing, insane kids, you don't know what it is to have a pile of laundry. Whew.