Stressing out

Osiyo~

I haven't had a lot of time to blog this month. Between criiquing and writing my father in-law fell ill and has tied up a fair amount of energy, and time, with worry and visiting him in the hospital.

Now I need to fill you in on the writing. I'm almost ready to file the rest of Healing Whispers away as fully polished and ready to ship. Rewrites are going well so far as I wait for word on the partial I mailed in on July 12th. In the meantime, I'm working hard on finishing HOME (which I still need a real title for). I'm at the saggy middle where I know where I want this story to go, just not sure how to get there and not lose the momentum of the story. I need somewhere around 9K words to go before I submit it for critique. That is my hard goal for this next week-finish HOME.

On another front, my cps and I decided to enter the HQ Medical fast-track running through the month of August. In middle school I had aspirations of becoming a nurse and read these medical-themed romance books to 'learn medically stuff' pre med school to get a head start. Ah, the mind of a kid. Now, I've always liked reading medicals and it used to be I could get them here in the US. I don't know if it's always been an availability issue because I realized just recently that I haven't seen them around much in the past years. No wonder- they only print over seas! They are out of the HQ London house. Don't ask how I always found them here, maybe I was lucky, maybe they used to sell them here years ago. This has a point. I never thought about writing a medical....because I don't have any medical back ground. Nope not even a nurse. As I grew tastes changed as they often do. I discovered all those other genres of books and decided I wanted to write. That. The other stuff, not medical. So that's what I write...as a rule.

About two weeks ago my cps asked if we all wanted to get in on the August medical fast track. Ummm-when do I have the time with all the other projects I've got going??? I found the time. I stared at a blank piece of paper (quite litrally) for two days trying to come up with something...anything, to write about. Usually my stories come to me, not the other way around. Blank, nothing, zip, zilch. I thought about what aspect of medicine intrigues me, what do I know even the slightest of? Animals. Almost every book I write has horses in it. I wanted different though. Dogs, cats, I remembered how as a child I would doctor everything on the ranch from wild birds to strays. Small animal doctor- that was me. In stature and patients. Then the pin prick of an idea came to me. Small animal veterinarian in remote small town (I love small town stories). Good. But HQ Medical requires 'people' medicine. One of my cps suggested I put 'average Joe' hero, who was gonna be some vague paper-pusher-work-at-home dad to a seven year old daughter, in human medicine. Ok, I can do that. How about a Medi-Flight EMT? I began writing and the next thing I knew I had twenty-plus pages. I call this one 'Perfect Doctor Viv'. I organized a chapter one from those pages and Tuesday night I emailed PDV along with a 2-page synopsis to HQ Medical, not holding out for much because I didn't have another chapter to follow with yet. I am so excited about these two characters. I told my cps I have to write this one now, even if it stays under my bed! Well- hopefully it won't make it under the bed. London HQ loved the chapter and they want the first three chapters! Yep, that would be the other two I haven't written yet. They called it "funny, sweet and fresh"!!! Ah-well. I love being under pressure with my writing! So, off to finish 9K on one ms, spit-shine the other...and write an all new one! Wish me good sense?

Dodadagovhi~