Hot potato! Hot potato!

Hi guys!

So I sort of forgot to write this blog, so I’m doing it at midnight. My sleep schedule and reference of time is all sorts of screwed up thanks to a) the time change and b) surgery.

Hey, I had surgery last week! I did a quick blog post Sunday about it, but I was really doped up on pain killers and not in the right mind to be blogging. And yet someone allowed me to have a computer.

My ROW80 goals have been divided into Health and Writing stuff since the beginning, so I guess I’ll tackle them that way in this post.

How am I feeling?

In comparison to my Sunday post, a lot better. I seem to have three states of being right now.

1. Pain. Thankfully the pain is usually specific to one incision or another. I have three visible incisions on my stomach and then one in my belly button. The one in my belly button on the furthest to my right are the problematic and painful ones. Thankfully, pain is my least common state.
2. Uncomfortable. This is my problem area. Part of the way the surgery is performed is that a lot of air is pumped into my intestines to make the surgery easier. That air has to exit the body and because the stomach and intestines sort of shut down while the body sorts everything out, it takes some time for it to all get the heck out of Dodge. Between the air and getting things moving again, uncomfortable is my least favorite state of being.
3. Pretty damn good. Thankfully I spend most of my time here. Really, recovery has been about as good as I could hope for without bouncing back immediately.

I’m pretty lucky, honestly. I’ve had a ton of support, from family to friends, I’ve had someone pop over every day to take care of me or just check on me. I haven’t had to want for a single thing. That can also get exhausting. There have been a few days where I just over did it with the people. For the most part it’s been family and really close friends I don’t feel any guilt about leaving in the living room with the cats to go take a quick nap, but that hasn’t always been the case. Thankfully it hasn’t been a huge issue.

As far as my actual recovery, I’m back down to my pre-surgery weight, which makes me feel better. Until I look in the mirror! Because I still have a lot of surgery swelling and air in my gut, I have a large bump, which looks a lot like a baby bump. Yeah, one of the new leasing agents at my apartment complex asked when I was due. *sigh* Really?

I’m also finally mostly mobile on my own. Granted I’m not about to go drive long distances, but I can at least get around a little. I can’t walk tons. I get disoriented after a while and just plain tired, but I’m making progress. The latest accomplishment has been eating real meals and not just sick people food. My diet is going to continue to be pretty bland for a while, but I can eat more than broth and saltines, which is what I lived on during the weekend.

Am I really writing?

The short answer: Yes.

The long answer: Yes, but on nothing I’m supposed to be writing.

I believe I talked about switching up projects a few updates ago. I’m supposed to be writing the follow up to A Kiss for a Cure, my 2013 science-fiction/romance from Lyrical Press, but it just wasn’t working. I wasn’t in the right head space, I was distracted with all the surgery business and I couldn’t get started.

So I started writing an erotic horror. I realized once I’d written several thousand words on it that I cast the wrong heroine. Mistakes like this happen when I haven’t adequately planned stuff out and since I pretty much pantsed the whole beginning, it has to be reworked. I figured all that out right before I had surgery. Reworking a major character takes work. Plotting takes work. And with surgery head I wasn’t able to do that. I just couldn’t manage it. I’ve slowly tried making the changes, but I’m not up to speed and I don’t totally know where this horror book is going.

Yesterday, while waiting for my pain pill to knock me out for a nap that never happened, I had this fantastic idea.

Male strippers, in space.

Genius, right?

It’s a bit more complex than that. There’s nanotechnology. The men aren’t strippers by choice. There’s kidnapping. And maybe some kinky fun later on. The story is kind of over the top, ridiculous and totally awesome in my head.

I’m just happy to be writing words that want to be written. It’s easy to get discouraged for me right now. I’m willing to write whatever wants to be written during my recovery. It’s just a bonus that it’s also NaNoWriMo and every word counts.

Ideally, if both the horror and stripper books go to completion, I’d like the horror to be either short novel or novel length. There’s a lot I can do with showing the slasher part of the horror, if I can write it without scaring myself. The stripper book on the other hand would make a great novella, with maybe a few follow ups to see what happens with the other strippers.

Both of these ideas are in the early stages. They’re not on my master list of books to write this year, they’re honestly messing with my schedule, but one of the best things that ever happened to me was unplanned and really unwanted until I wrote it. *cough*Under His Skin*cough*

Speaking of Under His Skin…

Monday was the print release for the book!!

In October while at Romanticon I got to sign and see people buy early copies of the book, which was awesome and gave me the opportunity to scratch something off my bucket list. I signed a bunch of books and sent them off to happy homes. Again, awesome experience. So it was again very exciting to have that release date and think that people have another medium through which to read what I write. And holy cow, people really do read what I write! I’m still getting used to that, to this day.

What’s in store for this next week?

More recovery. I’m planning on actually leaving my apartment on my own so I need to be up for that. I also need to get back to my day job, which I’m less excited about, but has been so super understanding and accommodating about my surgery.

I’d like to do some more blogs, but I’m not going to push myself too hard. I have another book releasing in a month, so I should work on that.

Write something. I don’t care what I write on, I’d just like to write.

So that’s me. How’s everyone else doing?