Amy Ruttan

No rest from Mr. Bump who is teething. He’s cut 1 and 2, but he’s working on 3 and 4. Thanks to another mother I’ve found a great homeopathic remedy, and it seems to be making him less grumpy.

I finished NaNo and had 1 day where I didn’t do anything. Then what happens? New idea comes, and I’ve started writing again. Again another genre I really have never written and no nothing about, but it seems to be flowing well. I’ve even done the synopsis.

*sigh* Looks like a few more sleepless nights for me … even inspite of the fact Mr. Bump is sleeping through the night again.

Well, I am finished the WIP which consumed my very existence since October 20th. Seriously I couldn’t think of anything else. Sometimes when I am writing I think of other books, other projects, the characters are arguing. These characters came in, sat down and all I heard was them. Day and night.

Now that I’ve finished the book, done a read through myself, done the blurb and have sent it off to my trusty CP’s I’m sitting here wondering now what? Well, I should really do the synopsis, but I loathe them so much. Grrrr.

I have a couple projects out on sub which I’m waiting to hear from. This WIP is off to my CPs, and now I have to figure out what project to work on next. I feel the need to keep churning out the WIPs. Which is good, but I don’t know what to work on next and frankly I am a bit sad I’ve left my Urban Fantasy world behind. I loved it. I loved being in my heroines mind for a month (since it was first person POV).

I have a couple erotic romances I would like to finish to sub out. Perhaps some hot sex and fun will stir the pot again. The muse is down, but not out. She’s already cooking up the sequel to the WIP I just finished, but I can’t go there. Not yet. I have to let things stew for a bit.

Perhaps I’ll just procrastinate a bit more ….

Well, Tuesday night I got the official purple bar. Oh yes, not only did I finish NaNoWriMo but I finished my WIP.

Yesterday I was planning on going back through and reading, but instead I did the blurb. It took 15 drafts to get the high concept pitch just right. I hate writing them, but it’s one less thing to do when I start querying in a couple of weeks.

So after the blurb was done I thought it was time for a decadent reward from my month of hard work (I started the WIP on October 20th).

No Bake Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie

1 1/4 Cup Oreo Baking Crumbs

1/4 Cup Butter melted

1 pkg of Cream Cheese

1/2 Cup + 1 Tbsp of Peanut Butter (Smooth) [Keep the 1/2 Cup and 1 Tbsp separate from each other]

1 Cup of Cold Milk

1 pkg of Jello Instant Vanilla Pudding [I used chocolate last night, turned out fine but was RICH]

2 Cups of Cool Whip [Divided into 1 cup each]

3 sqs of Semi Sweet Chocolate [Though 3 sqs was not enough. I used 7]

Melt butter. Mix crumbs with butter and then press into a pie pan. Beat cream cheese, 1/2 cup Peanut Butter until blended. Add milk and dry pudding mix. Beat 2 minutes. Whisk in 1 cup of Cool Whip. Spoon into crust. Refrigerate. Microwave [I used a double boiler, less chance of burning] remaining cup of Cool Whip and Chocolate 1-2 minutes on high until melted. Spread over pie. Microwave 1 tbsp of Peanut Butter for 30 seconds. Drizzle over chocolate. Freeze 4 hrs until firm.

Anyways, going to try to do a read through today. Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends.

I’m over at The Raven Happy Hour Blog for my first ever post! I’ll be posting the third Monday of each month about Canadian Hauntings.

You can find my post here, all about the Ghost Road in Port Perry Ontario. A Ghost I’ve had a run in with.

So come visit with me!

Since becoming a mother of 2 boys I have a hard time watching war movies. I picture my boys in the soldier’s place and it breaks my heart. Recently I watched a movie on TVO, a biopic of Rudyard Kipling called My Boy Jack. Yeah I bawled, and then I went to see if Rudyard’s son survived WWI.

He didn’t, and then Rudyard wrote this poem:

 MY BOY JACK~Rudyard Kipling circa 1914-1918

“HAVE you news of my boy Jack? ”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind—
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide.

This is this the time we need to remember sons, fathers, brothers, husbands …even mother, sisters, wives, daughters who fought as well. Think of those who fought & died for our freedom.

For the boys who never came home, like Jack.

Lest we forget.

WOW what an intense week of writing. I have hit (as of Saturday November 7th) 19k in my WIP. I started NaNo my Urban Fantasy was sitting at about 23k and now it is at 41k. I am immensley happy. I’m also happy it still seems to be flowing. I mean it’s a first draft so I know I’ll be going back over to make sure her internal conflict is layered through the story. It’s a first person POV so I only have to worry about her GMC etc.

I also have to make sure I tie up loose ends, because the UF is taking me places I never thought it would. Yet, each piece fits into the puzzle and the mystery. Or at least I hope it does. I think it’s my strongest first draft, and as much as I want to go back and edit if I do I will lose my flow. I hope to have NaNo finished before the end of the month, and I hope my WIP will be at 80k, the minimum of the line I am targeting.

As I write on I realize my book has a very strong tie to the book of Revelations. WTH? Where did that come from? Maybe it was all those years I had to listen to cr*p from a crack pot who didn’t really practiced what he preached. Anyways I’m boning up on my Revelations and writing like the devil himself! I’ll try sometime this week to post a bit about my characters. They constantly take up my time and my energy nattering at me. I haven’t been this focused on one book in a long time.

How are all my NaNoers doing out there?

How was everyone’s Halloween? We didn’t have as many kids as we usually do. I usually buy about 150 mini chocolate bars and am able to give them all away. The street is humming with kids, I live on a crescent with a school so there is no shortage of trick 0′ treaters. This year not so much. By the end of the night I was giving the few kids coming to my door handfuls, and I still didn’t get rid of all my candy. I bought double because Halloween was on a Saturday and I was expecting a lot more.

I was talking to my neighbors and other mothers at the school and we think it was the Swine Flu which kept them away.

If I didn’t have the kids innoculated I might have reconsidered too. James is just too young to get the H1N1 shot; but Thursday I lined up 1.5 hours before the clinic in my area opened and our entire family got innoculated. My DH and the kidlets hung out in the van watching a DVD while I froze. LOL! It was also important because my parents came down with H1N1 and it hit them fast and HARD! My mother is an asthmatic with COPD, she’s still suffering. My Dad is a diabetic, he’s on the mend, but my mother told me it was the worse flu she has ever had. She’s been an asthmatic her entire life.

I’ve also been locked in my writing cave since NaNo started. I started NaNo with roughly 23k in my Urban Fantasy. I’m now sitting at 31k. I’ve written (since the start of NaNo) 8007k on my WIP. Not bad. I just got to keep my momentum up. I want to get my UF to 80k by the end of the month so I can start pitching it and sending it out. After the read throughs from my CPs of course. I have to say I’m loving this WIP. It does have romantic elements, but I’m loving not having to write all the hot sex all the time. In fact 31k in my hero and heroine haven’t done it. It’s a great mental break.

I’ve also been preparing my blog posts for The Raven Happy Hour. Yep, starting November 16th and then every 3rd Monday of the month I’ll be posting about Canadian Hauntings and Ghostly tales. I’ve been prepping my posts; but I thought for my inaugural post I would do a post on a ghost I have spotted before, and a ghost close to my hometown. I’m doing the mysterious headless biker ghost from Scugog Island in Port Perry Ontario.

I’m not just doing Ontario ghosts either. I have some great Maritime hauntings, some freezing hauntings from the artic, and I’ve lassooed in some hauntings from out west as well.

So how have you all been?