It's been too long...

 For some reason, I just wound up here again.  I just reread the previous posts and that's when it hit me that it has been a little over four years since I last added anything here.  The last thing I was discussing was my books.  My Stillwater group now stands at 15 books with four other WIP's.  No, I haven't made a whole lot of progress in the last couple years.  I'm a tad low on steam generation...as in I've pretty much run out of...

I mentioned previously how I was working on the book where Ash's wife mistakes his long, lost brother for him and plants a liplock on him.  I had a lot of fun with that book.  You'll recall that I mentioned that Ash had triplet sons.  Well, the question was raised after Jason walked into the diner that...what if...there was another brother floating around out there.  So, that book wound up with Jason, hailing from Charleston, SC showing up via his recent stint at LVPD.  After some searching, Brian turns up from Warwick, RI.  He, too, was in law enforcement as a Rhode Island State Trooper.  Like I said, I had fun  with that one.  Ash, as I've indicated before is my comic relief to a certain extent.  He will always be the imp of the group.  Jason has been nicknamed "Sober Sam" because of his more serious demeanor.  Brian is the middle of the road brother in temperment.

The book where the brothers meet wound up being Brian's story.  My imagination really ran wild with that one.  A good portion of the book was the exposure and capture of his stalker.  Lots of twists and turns in that one.  

I was actually surprised that it turned out to be Brian's book since he wasn't the first new character introduced.  Jason's book is the 15th in the series and starts out with a sad event--the death of a beloved character from the other books.  I'll miss Sara Sue.  She was a pistol!  Take heart, though.  She was in her 80's and lived a somewhat fulfilling life.  She never married.  She lost her fiance to the VietNam war.

 Let me jump to my crash survivors now...  The book that was previously stuck at 64 pages is now up to 71 pages.  I made a lot of progress in the last two years...NOT!  I looked at the file date on it and I haven't added to it in a year.  While that book takes place 10 years down the road from the previous one in this series, I couldn't seem to muster much enthusiasm for adding to it.  Because of that, I started a fifth WIP that takes place about another 10 years further on.  I needed to bring in new blood so decided to start writing about the kids that grew up on the mountain while still incorporating the existing characters.  That one hummed along for a bit but then slowed down because I realized that I needed to figure out what the tension factor was going to be in the plot.  It's been a number of months since I added to that one.  I'm still thinking, apparently.

My writing isn't the all-consuming force that it once was.  Maybe that's why I seem to have run out of steam.  I still go through the finished books two to three times a year.  I've got files set up that I can dump into a text-to-speech reader that allows me to listen to them.  I wind up making tweaks here and there as I listen to them.  I find that it has been a big help to load the WIP's into the reader, as well.  It helps me fix awkward sentence structure or can also indicate where I need to elaborate on something.  It's also the poor man's audiobook!  Think I'll load one now--it's been several months since I listened to them.

Is is coincidental? ...or my inner clock??

Well, it was exactly two years since I last posted when I started writing this post.  I've re-read all my old posts and got more than a few chuckles out of them--especially from my 'Chicken Clucks' side.  It wasn't until I read the post written in 2017 that I realized that I had discussed my books.  At the time I wrote that one, I was working on the 13th book of the Stillwater series.

Well, I finished that 13th Stillwater book and have three other Stillwater books in progress.  I think I probably finished up that 13th book shortly after posting.  I've been stuck in various stages with the other three.  There's a funny story related to one of the three...

After doing Branch's book (the 13th), I decided I wanted to do something different.  I had been reading a lot of shifter romances and thought maybe I should give a try to that genre as a change of pace.  I started the book off with a bang and it had a really good hook to get things going.  I decided to make my hero a bear shifter, and in homage to my son, he's an IT and Security specialist running his own business.  Yes, he's also a former Army Ranger.  Give me a break!  You didn't expect one of my books to NOT contain a military type, did you?  Anyway, the heroine is an unsuspecting human escaping a particularly ugly situation.  Great start, right?

You do remember that I've indicated that I never know where my books are going till they get there, right?  Okay, so our hero and heroine take off across country masquerading as a biker dude and goth chick camping out.  They run into a bit a of a snag that gives our hero pause to consider their options.  Long story short?  Yup, they wind up hiding in Stillwater with some of his military buddies--the former SEAL team from the previous books.  Well, they're not actually hiding with his buddies.  They're actually in an ultra secure Cyber wing of a manufacturing plant.  Getting them there and safe was easy.  Getting myself out of the corner I may have painted myself into may not be as easy to navigate.  That one's stuck at 69 pages.

When I'm not trying to unstick myself from that one, I've also got two others floating...

I've got a character named Jim who was a rather minor character in one of the previous books that I decided to give his own book.  I've got the hero and, strangely, also the heroine scoped out already.  It, too, has a great hook to get things started.  It goes great guns for....ten pages...  I lost steam after I decided on a course of action for him.  I couldn't seem to get him off his duff to get moving.  It's been a while...

The last Stillwater book I've got cooking?  Well, I've got a main character in a number of the books whose very presence on the page brings delight.  He's comic relief, irreverence, and lovable all at the same time.  He's one of the members of the retired SEAL team.  I forget exactly how I came up with the plot line for the last book I'm working on.  I vaguely remember thinking about Ash one evening after re-reading one of my manuscripts.  You see, Ash and his wife had triplets...boys.  Ash has always felt badly that his adoptive parents never adopted any siblings for him.  Looking back, I'm sure he feels it was better that those siblings never existed considering how how his childhood was.  At any rate, I got to thinking...  What if...Ash had a brother show up in Stillwater to interview for a job.  What if...Ash was out of town, his brother walks into the diner and Ash's wife thinks he's home early and kisses him.  What if...she discovers quickly that the man she has just kissed isn't her husband, she pulls back and draws her sidearm.  Margo's a bit of a pistol, you understand...no pun intended.  The book is currently sitting at 44 pages.  What I related is just the first two pages of the manuscript.  I haven't painted myself into a corner with this one--I'm just undecided now who the hero is going to be.  You see, I haven't given you any further plot twists from the next 42 pages...  Once I decide on the hero I'll have to come up with a heroine.  I have a feeling she'll be easier than deciding on the hero.

Stillwater aside, I still have the fourth book of the crash survivors in progress.  I go back and pick at it every so often...as the mood strikes.  According to the file date, I haven't worked on it since July 1st.  It's stuck at 67 pages in.  

Sometimes I wonder if I'm storied out.  I mean, the ones I'm working on haven't gotten that far in.  I guess I got spoiled by all the books that flowed like water from my fingertips.  I did have one, long ago, that got stuck at 112 pages.  It sat that way for six months or more.  I was almost to the point of just dumping the file when I opened it up one day and it absolutely took off.  I learned a good lesson that day.  Never give up on your characters.  That stuck book?  It was the first Stillwater book.  I figure my WIP's will all take off one day.  I think my heart and brain have to be aligned for that to happen.  It falls, that way, into the same category as sewing, knitting, crocheting, etc.  You have to be in the mood to do it.

Some will suggest that I plot out my books by using outlines, etc.  Yeah...doesn't work for me.  I do better when I just let it flow.  I like being surprised by where things go.  Some of those surprises have turned out to be absolutely outstanding, too.

The Journey Begins...Again...

It has been way too many years since I last posted.  I retired in 2014 and have not really felt like posting anything until now.  I went back and read all my previous posts today.  It was then that I remembered that I used to have 2-3 blogs covering different aspects of my life.  Well, that got old so a number of years ago I restructured everything and lumped them all under "As the Chicken Clucks", the blog I had originally set up to cover the things related to my workplace.  It was around that same time, I think, that I changed the focus of my main blog to my needlework.  Like a lot of things in life, that fell by the wayside, too.  For some strange reason, it appears that the only blog that now appears correctly when I preview the post is this one.  Until I can figure out why "Chicken" isn't working right, I'll just have to lump everything under this one.

The last several years have not been particularly enjoyable. Hubby passed away in January of 2012.  I continued to work until the end of April 2014.  Let's just say that circumstances at work helped me make the decision to retire.  I was still in that quagmire called grief when I retired.  Not having to get up every morning and go to work and function, my insomnia became full blown during that time period.  I've suffered from insomnia a good portion of my life but it got really bad in 2014. Night after night, I'd try and go to sleep...with very little success.  One of those nights I became so angry that I grabbed my laptop and just started writing.

Probably twenty years ago I started a book about a woman that survived a plane crash and lost her memory.  At the time I was working full time and taking care of family responsibilities.  I only got a couple chapters into a book that I felt would be very therapeutic for me to write.  I stuck the pages into a desk drawer once life got in the way.  See that was back before I had a huge hard drive to save files to.  Long story short, those pages disappeared.  Maybe they got thrown out...I don't know.

Back to 2014...  I remembered the story and took the premise of the airplane crash and started writing.  (I saved the amnesia plot line for a subsequent book.)  Anyway, I started writing that night and the words flowed out of me like water.  I finished that first book in under a week.  I almost felt driven to write. Every waking moment I was pounding away on my keyboard.  Oh, my insomnia got better, by the way.  In writing that book, I worked through some of the grief symptoms and a number of things were put into perspective.

The first book is not my favorite.  It was a journey...one that came in just under 300 pages.  It was therapy with a plot.  I really liked the characters from that first book and realized I wasn't done with them...so I wrote a second book.  The second book takes place about three years down the road from the first one. The original characters are in it and a bunch of new characters were added to the cast.  I got more than a tad gabby in that book and it's over 600 pages. After I finished it, I realized I still wasn't done with the characters and wrote a third one.  It takes place a further three years after the second book.  More new characters were added to the ever-growing cast.  Then I got the bright idea to write a fourth book in the series.  That one takes place ten years after the third book.  Yeah, that one started out okay but didn't get very far before it stalled.  It has now been stalled for at least eighteen months.

I have this thing I do when I get stuck in my writing--I either start a new story or I open up one I've already got in the works. While I was working on the second and third books of my crash survivors, I had also been working on two others.  The first was the amnesiac.  That book got stuck at 112 pages in and sat that way for over six months.  Oh, I'd go back and pick at it and maybe get a sentence or two and then I'd get stuck again.  The other book that I was picking at during that same time period was about a woman that travels to her hometown to visit her sister and gets broadsided by a drunk driver on the way into town.  It hit quite a few snags, too.

I began to wonder if what writing I'd already done might not be all I'd be able to come up with.  After all, the amnesiac had been sitting out there for so long that I was almost to the point of just dumping the file.  I came really close to doing that, too.  I actually opened the file one day and decided to give it...one...more...try.  Imagine my surprise when it took off like a house afire!  It went from 112 pages to 369 pages.  Technically, I suppose it could have been two books but the stories dovetailed so nicely that I just left it together.  The first part of the book is about the amnesiac.  The remainder of the book is about a secondary character related to the amnesiac's story that morphs into a main character. Once the amnesiac's book was finished, the second book about the woman traveling to see her sister took off.  

I've read about writers that have plot outlines and backstories all laid out before they ever start writing the actual story. Unfortunately, I don't have the patience to do all that.  I'd rather be writing.  My approach is to start out with a basic premise and my hero and heroine.  I never know where a story is going until it gets there.  Sometimes where my stories wind up even surprises me.  That's what happened with the two books I just mentioned.  The amnesiac's book takes place in a small town in Nevada.  The second book takes place in Minnesota. There's a character in the second book that sells his business and starts to travel in a motorhome across the country visiting the National parks. Guess what! He shows up at the beginning of the third book pulling into the little Nevada town to eat breakfast at the diner.  No, it wasn't planned--it just happened.  He winds up staying in that little town, getting married and has a kid.

By the time I was a few pages into that third book, I knew I had something.  I wasn't sure what...but I knew it was something. The third book pulls the other two together.  I'm currently working on the thirteenth book in that series about the small town.

One of the things I love about writing is that I don't have to be bound by reality. Oh, to a certain extent, I do, of course.  I'm talking about not having to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt before putting it to paper.  After all, no one reads them but me.  In this latest book, I put this outlandish escape pod system into the backside of a high security lab in a manufacturing plant.  I mean I had intruders armed with assault weapons and C4 getting ready to breach the interior of the lab.  I had to have a way to get my hero and heroine out of the area safely. Come on! Give me a break!  They got safely away... They're traveling around the country in an RV right now.

I've got an idea where things are going now...sorta...  I've been giving my brain a bit of a rest to recharge while I re-read the previous books again.  Well, I read for a while and then I put my earphones in and listen to an audiobook while I knit for a while, then I go back to the reading.  Somewhere in that cycle I'll pull up the book I'm working on and add a bit to it before starting the cycle all over again.

I have a friend back East that says I absolutely need to publish the books.  I don't see that ever happening.  I think I've got too many hangups from my childhood.  I'm not a professional author--I'm just an old woman that started writing because I couldn't sleep.  My books bring me pleasure and escape.  I love my little town with all of its quirky inhabitants.  I wonder, sometimes, how long I'll be able to continue to add to the town before I run out of steam and have to fold my tent.  I've already got my next hero and heroine waiting in the wings  so I'm good for now, at least.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next time around, I should write about my cats...

Rippit! Rippit! Rippit!

As things usually go for me, I was chugging away on my gloves and looked back and saw this small hole--teeny, it was really.  After I saw it, all I could do was think about that stinkin' little hole.  I was through all the increases for the thumb and the hole was back in the first row, or so, of the increases.  I just gave up and frogged it back to that point.  There are times when I wish I didn't have this quirk where things have to be just so.  It wasn't the ripping out of the stitches that bothered me so much as the picking up after the ripping was through.  I haven't mastered the technique yet of picking up stitches before I rip out.  That will take watching a few more videos.  Other than that, the gloves are coming along nicely. 

San's scarf is about 75% done.  Needless to say, I didn't get it done by Monday morning.  I'm at the point on it where it will take just a bit of concentration and my brain hasn't been there.  I did discover that Hobby Lobby has their "I Love This Yarn" on sale this week.  It will make a really scrumptious scarf so I'll have to take my old bones over there and get a skein.

The bibs are coming along, too.  I haven't worked on them since Sunday evening.  I'm on the last part of the pattern on one of them.  That makes two done (almost).  I have a third one done but will probably rip it out as I think I made it too wide.  It was the first one I made.  I guess the next one I do will have her son's name knit into it.  I've got it graphed out but haven't actually done it yet.  I'm hoping it turns out okay.  Nothing like doing something new...

Until next time...  Happy Stitching!!

San's New Scarf

I wasn't happy with having just one project going so I started another one this morning.  This one is more immediate,anyway.  My daughter, San, is out in the weather a lot and needs a scarf to help keep her throat warm.  She saw the Lotus Leaf Scarf pattern when we were looking at http://www.e-patternscentral.com/ one day and really liked it.  Since she is allergic to wool, I'm making this one out of Red Heart Sport and the color is called Polo.  It was on clearance one day at Herschnner's and I couldn't resist.  As with most of my yarns, I bought it to make myself something...  Not to worry--I have more! 

Since San hasn't seen this yarn, I'm taking a bit of a gamble in using it because her color tastes and mine don't always agree.  I do know that she likes jewel tones so I'm probably safe.  I figure this will do until I can get some better yarn--this is really my 'run through' scarf.  It's a tad scratchy for me so I'll be on the hunt for something softer. 

I'm following the basic pattern except for one modification that I made.  It didn't look wide enough at 18 stitches for the body to me.  I was afraid it wouldn't give her good enough coverage on her neck so I widened it to 24 stitches.  Like I said, it's a prototype.  Once she has a chance to use it, I'll know better where I need to change it.  I've got it about 50% done and hope to have it totally done before I go back to work on Monday.  San's currently out of town and it would be nice to have it finished for her to use as soon as she returns.

I worked more on my gloves after I posted yesterday.  I also spent some time working on some baby bibs for an upcoming arrival last night.  I've got a little time on the baby project, however, since the mother isn't due til 4/1.  I've been switching between all these projects depending on my mood and which one of my cats is sitting on my chest while I'm trying to work.  Currently, it's Sugie.  She's the cat that I used for my profile picture.  I didn't mention that I like cats but I think you probably figured that out already.

Happy Stitching!!

Out With the Old!

I ended 2009 by starting a new project and creating a new blog.  Both seem to be coming along nicely.

The project is a pair of 2-Needle Fingerless Mittens that I got at http://www.knitpicks.com/.  It's pretty simple and is progressing rapidly.  I have about three inches done on the first glove.  I'm using some Regia sock yarn that I purchased some time back.  It's pretty colorful and should go with just about anything I'll wear to work. 

I downloaded the pattern day before yesterday and couldn't wait on my order to arrive with my circular needles.  I thought I had the correct size in my collection, but didn't.  I didn't want to wait until my order arrived before I started on this so I decided to improvise.  I have a set of DPN's with the correct size so am using them as mini straight needles until my circs arrive.  The only real disadvantage is that I intended to do both at the same time on the circs so everything would be even.  I like the idea of "when you're done, you're done".

I've never worked with sock yarn before and for the first couple of rows I thought I would go blind!  My eyes aren't as young as they used to be.  Once I got going, it got much simpler.   I think the thing that has surprised me the most is how quickly it has been going.  I mean, the stitches are tiny and I seem to be flying on this.  It's truly mind-boggling to me...but, then, it doesn't take much.

I decided on this pattern because it seemed to fit my needs.  In the last 2-3 years, I've started experiencing a fair amount of hand pain once the weather starts getting cold.  It doesn't seem to matter whether I'm inside or out, either.  They hurt all the time--and not my fingers, either.  It's the thumb joints.  I've felt like I've assaulted my coworkers' nostrils enough with my support of the BenGay makers.  That stuff can just about drive me out of my cube when I use it. 

I've got some beautiful yarn coming from Knit Picks to make more of these with.  I'll post more pictures as I make more progress.  I'm also going to try and keep my Ravelry posts up to date with the progress, as well.

What a crazy year this has been!! It seems that time has been going by in this big blur...as is obvious from the lack of posts. But...

I sent a care package off to Desi this week that contained SIX chemo caps. I was in such a rush to get them done and gone that I didn't take any pictures of them. They were all made out of the same yarn as her cherry red hat--Luscious. Hobby Lobby had a sale on it some months ago and I bought every color that I thought she'd like. It didn't take long to get them made as any loomer knows--it was just getting to the doing.

I've discovered that looming seems to be a cooler weather project for me. Don't ask me to explain my convoluted brain for I can't. I mean I knit and crochet afghans in the summer and loom in the winter. Is there any sense to that? I don't think so.

Anyway, the six hats were colorful, to say the least. I made them more skullcap style this time instead of with the foldup brim. The hats were made in the following colors:

Buttercup--a soft, mellow yellow

Party Mints--you know those small, melt-in-your-mouth mints they have at weddings, showers, etc. That's the same color as the yarn variegation. I thought it was supposed to be for baby projects until I looked at the name.

Spearmint--picture a softened lime green and you'll have the color right.

Pink--more a cross between a medium rose and a medium hot pink

Black Raspberry--this was a variegated yarn...black, white, raspberry pink. It was gorgeous in the skein and also made up. It reminds me of the 50's for some reason.

...and last, but not least...

Peanut Butter and Jelly--when first viewed in the skein this doesn't resemble PB&J. When you see it made up, it does sorta look that way. It's another variegated yarn that streamed from one color to the next--blue, reddish, brown, gold, yellowish. I know it doesn't sound particularly appetizing, but it looked pretty nice.

All of the variegated yarns formed spiral stripes. They were really pretty cool. The PB&J and Black Raspberry hats were mildly spiraled but the Party Mints hat was really spiraled. I'm not sure what made the difference but there was a definite difference in the look.

The package left the Albuquerque sorting station early a.m. yesterday. It has not updated so it will probably deliver today. She has no idea that I sent the package this week.

She knew I was thinking about making her another hat because I wrote her that in a letter several weeks ago. I got a letter from her Thursday in which she said if I was going to make her another hat, she could really use it and that color didn't matter--within reason. I love her disclaimers. I just chuckled when I read that. Will she be surpised....