Summer Time And The Living is—Easy?

~Sia McKye~

Unless you’re a writer and live at my house.

Easy is not exactly how I would describe it. I’m overrun with people, noise, the constant barking of dogs, and clutter. My yard looks like a used truck lot. Hey, I got all colors, makes, and models. Of course, I also have hot sixpacks walking around—not hard at all on the eyes.




We had a tornado come through in April and did thousands of dollars of damage to my property, so now we’re doing repairs. New house roof, siding, fencing, tree removal, new barn, haying and bush hogging. So we have all sorts of equipment going at any given time. Logging trucks moving in and out the pasture. Bucket trucks, tractors, and three huge trailers to haul the tear off from the roof.

Living at my house is anything but quiet or easy. August has always been my best writing month. I look back with fondness to last August when I wrote 3000 words in a day and still got my household chores done. Pfft. Not this August. Even earphones and music don’t help. There’s no place to hide to escape the pounding hammers, buzzing saws, or blaring of rock music—even with the windows closed it thumped it’s way into my house.

Add to the chaos outside, I’ve had my sister and her guy living at my house too. So my three-bedroom house is full, meals become a major undertaking. Do you realize how many dishes six people use in the course of a day? What dishwasher? My sis and I shared the dishwashing tasks as well as meal preparation. Not to mention what your refrigerator looks like with a cazillion bottles of Gatorade stocked in it. Trust me, it's suddenly not as big as you thought it was. You know? I once thought I had too many towels. I don’t think that any more and I swear I heard my washer groan.



There was always a question I needed to answer, or something I had to see, a decision I had to make on some aspect of the work being done. This was a big project and at any given time there were at least three crews working, one on the house, one cleaning the debris bush hogging, and cutting down trees, one on the two barns needing repairs and new roofs. I walked miles—just to walk to the barn and back is a half a mile and I did that several times a day, climbed ladders to look at the damaged decking, or something around the chimney, to see the how the felt was laying or look at how the shingles went down, a problem with the drip lip…endless. Then there is the paper work. While I have a good insurance policy, I still had to fight tooth and nail at times, to get funds released. So I was either on the phone with the bank, the lumberyard, or the insurance company. I have about 200 pictures of documentation and most of those pictures were taken by moi.





You’d think once everyone went home and the house became quiet after dinner writing would be easy. Sorry, the brain was mush and I was tired and ready for bed by 8 or 9 pm. I don’t know how many times I was falling asleep over my keyboard as I prepared my blog. And it suffered as well. Normally I’m booked about four to six weeks in advance. I’m looking at September and realizing I still have open slots. Most people have TBR stacks and I do too, but now I also have a pile of ARCs sent to me by various publishers to be read and reviews written. Normally, everything is organized and each day I have X amount of time to work and X amount of time for my own writing. I still did what I had to do, but any extras—forgetaboutit.

My poor muse said later gator, and headed off to parts unknown for a vacation and is apparently having a grand time. All I can say is, thank god I didn’t have a deadline.

This week has been a bit quieter but next week, I have another crew coming in to finish up my outer office walls and then I get to go on a working vacation to a writer’s conference in Columbus, OH. I also have an interview, and a speaking engagement with a writing group. I figure by the time I get back, my muse will be too and we can pound out the rest of this book and work on a proposal. I hope.

So, how was your summer? Get much writing done? If you’re on a deadline, how do you handle distractions? Especially like these?

The Paperback Writer And Settling In

My guest Over Coffee is Paranomal Romance author, Kendra Leigh Castle. She has a dual career as a working mom and Naval Officer's wife--which I can assure, comes with social obligations and work; plus she is the author of The MacInnes Werewolf triology, nominated for RT Reviewer Choice awards. She is also busy writing a new series for Harlequin Nocturne. As you can see, Kendra leads a busy life.

So how does she juggle it all? How is she adjusting to being a busy working mom?





The other day, another mother said something to me, in passing conversation about being impressed that I was a working mom. My first thought was “Huh? Me?” Probably because I’ve been doing my own thing and raising my kids for so long now that it’s just not a term I have ever associated with myself. I mean, yeah, we all work, right? At least, this is what it feels like when I’m slipping in dog puke on the kitchen floor on my way to wipe my preschooler’s nose; all while my two older kids are rapidly progressing towards a fistfight over my daughter’s refusal to share looseleaf paper.

But despite the circa 1980s vision of a “working mother” that pops into my head every time the phrase comes up (big perm, briefcase, power suit with big shoulder pads, and I know, I watched too much TV growing up), I suppose it’s true. Writing is, after all, a hell of a lot of work. But with three young kids, I guess everything sort of flows together…I don’t look at one thing as more work than the other. The moving parts are just different. My day is work, with fleeting moments of relaxation and/or the eating of something from my candy stash that gives me that ahhh feeling. My writing is just a part of the routine now, scrounged out of my three-year-old’s quiet times and pushed into tired nights when I might rather slink off to watch Ghost Hunters (thank God for DVR). But my surprise at the label, I’ve come to realize, is simply emblematic of me finally settling into my life as a published writer. The process is still as frustrating and fascinating as it ever was, but it’s not novel anymore. I go in my office. Small people follow me into my office and demand things like food and dispute mediation (which they often ignore, leading me to chase them away and in the direction of their other, louder parent). The pets snooze in here while I work. My husband gives the computer dirty looks when I’ve spent too much time with it on any given day. It’s all so…normal.

The settling in has been an eye-opening process for me. When my first book came out last year, I was an utter neophyte. As in, when it came to the world of publishing, I was about as dumb as a box of rocks. I’m a pretty smart girl, but I will admit to total failure to comprehend anything much at the beginning except “me write book/me sell book.” I’d written one (bloated, reasonably bad) manuscript, joined RWA, shopped the MS around, cried over a bunch of rejections, and finally, buried the no-go book in my closet and tried again. Wrote the Scottish werewolf book I’d been kicking around in my head, started subbing, and BOOM, suddenly I had an agent. Not long after, I had the sale. Two books, two years, start to…well, publication. Which is both very cool, and, looking back, incredibly overwhelming. My learning curve was huge from the start. A year after the release of Call of the Highland Moon, and having just finished up the trilogy with Wild Highland Magic, I’m still rushing up that curve, but there are a few ways I know I’m settling in:

• I confuse family members when I start to talk about the business aspect of writing, and so wind up fleeing to my writing friends, who actually understand what the hell I’m talking about.
  
  
• I actually have writing friends.
  

• I’ve been through both a publisher change AND an agency change (my agent recently formed her own agency with a partner, so of course I went with her), and I didn’t freak out.
  
  
• I have a blog, website, MySpace and Facebook, and I actually know how to use them. Mostly.
  
  
• Bad reviews no longer make me cry (brood or steam, maybe, but not cry).
  
  
• When I tell my family “I’m working,” they assume I’m doing something other than looking at Perez Hilton and may even let me write. Yes, sometimes I sneak over to Perez Hilton anyway, but my procrastination habits are too scary to really go into here.
  
  
• The word “deadline” now inspires more dread than excitement
  

And most importantly…

• When I talk/think/dream about what I’m doing, it always involves the word “Career.”
  

My life has always been a little crazy. I’m a Navy wife, with an often-absent husband, three young kids, two little dogs with a penchant for regurgitation and an occasionally sympathetic cat. People are constantly telling me (as I’m sure people tell every writer) “I don’t know how you do it.” But see, I’ve managed the whirlwind that is my life by having a head full of stories. Some things are always going to be rough, I think: putting out a new submission, for instance, still makes me a little sick to my stomach. But I don’t turn red when people ask me what my stories are about anymore (yep, I can say “sexy Scottish werewolves” with a totally straight face now, even to strangers), and I can even tell you a little bit about my own personal writing process, when pressed. I’d probably still pass out if Nora Roberts said hello to me, but I’m getting it. Slowly but surely, I’m getting it.

I’ve always written. But I finally feel like a writer. And no matter what comes next, that’s a pretty cool place to be.

Thanks for having me over for coffee, Sia!

***

Kendra Leigh Castle is the author of the MacInnes Werewolves trilogy, as well as the upcoming series The Fallen, coming from Harlequin Nocturne. She lives in Maryland with her husband, three kids, and menagerie of pets, and loves to be visited online at http://www.kendraleighcastle.com/ and at her blog, http://www.kendraleighcastle.blogspot.com/.

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