Yes, it is exactly what you think it is.

The Read for Pixels campaign is working to end violence against women. They’ve raised more than $5000 already, and now they’re shooting for $10K. If we can reach that goal, I will come out of cover pose retirement to do one of three covers. And if you donate between now and October 19, you get to help vote for which one!

I’ve seen all three potential poses: one is from a book cover, and the other two are from comics. The idea of trying to imitate any of them frightens me.

ETA: And if we make it to $15K, things will get exponentially more interesting and entertaining!

Writing Update: I think I may need to put Project Bob on hold for a little bit. It’s a pretty serious (for me) book, and I feel like I need to do something goofy. I need to go full goblin. The book pitch I sent to my agent would be goblin-level humor (while at the same time being significantly different from any books I’ve written before.) So while I wait to hear back on that, I think I’m going to set Bob aside for now, and work on a few shorter, sillier things I’ve had on my list.

They won’t be goblins, though. So for the sake of clarity, let’s call this batch of fiction Project Orc.

Project Orc should be interesting. It’s both very similar and entirely different from what I’ve written before, and I have no idea if I’ll ever be able to publish or talk about it.

Read for Pixels: I’ve been part of the Read for Pixels campaign to end violence against women. I’ve given away two autographed books, and have additional goodies coming up soon.

I also took part in a Google Hangout, talking about women and girls in pop culture, sexism and harassment, and answering questions about whether or not I’m going to keep the shaved-head look going.

For those who might be interested, I also read a snippet from Revisionary…

I should warn folks that said snippet does spoil a few changes that happen in book three. I also thought it gave a nice peek at Isaac and Nidhi in action.

We had a few technical glitches where the connection died. I don’t know if that was on my end, theirs, or if it was simply a bunch of internet goblins making mischief.

Direct link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgBKhDA8WVk if for some reason the embedding doesn’t work.

First came my very first day as a full-time writer.

Then came the first day of school for the kids, meaning I actually had my first day to myself as a full-time writer.

Today, just over four weeks since I left the day job, was the first day of my 10 hours/week job. I’d been hoping to pick this up both to provide a bit of structure to my week, and to supplement the erratic writing income.

What have I accomplished thus far? Well, I was able to turn around the revisions on Revisionary. I wrote up and submitted a pitch to DAW. And I’m up to 15,000 words on Project Bob.

There has also been a boy who was home sick for a week, followed by me getting sick. Not cool, germs. Not cool!

I remember chatting with folks about the transition. Harry Connolly wrote a guest post about apps for shutting out the internet and helping you focus on writing. A number of other writers mentioned doing the same sort of thing. And I read those posts and listened to those stories and nodded my appreciation, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I sat back all content and smug, knowing I would never need such tools. I’ve spent 15 years disciplining myself to shut out distractions and write during my lunch break…

I assume you know where this is going?

A few days ago, I was sitting down to work on Bob again. I’ve been struggling a lot with this one, and my word count reflects that. I finally forced myself to physically shut all those windows — email, social media, the works.

And damn if over the course of a single hour I didn’t double my wordcount from the previous day.

Lesson learned, thank you.

I’m also rediscovering yet again the importance of momentum. It’s so much easier to keep writing than it is to start writing. And the longer it’s been since you wrote, the harder it is to start up again.

Unfortunately, being at home during the day has led to a number of interruptions. Some are minor. Getting up to let the dogs out and back in is probably a good thing, since it periodically makes me get out of the chair and walk around a little. Constantly answering the phone last week when the entire freaking world decided it was a good time to call Casa Hines? Yeah, I’m letting at least some of those calls go to the answering machine now.

With all that said, it’s only been a month. Every week has been different. I’m hoping that as I start the part-time job, I’ll finally get closer to a stable schedule, and will be able to start strengthening some good habits and routines.

In the meantime, I’m still better-rested and generally happier than I was a month ago. Go me! 🙂

Tonight at 8:30 EST, I’ll be doing a Google Hangout where I’ll read a bit from Revisionary, do some Q&A, and talk about the Read for Pixels campaign, part of the Pixel Project to end violence against women.

I’ve got a cold, so this should be interesting. I’m hoping the raspy throat ends up giving me sexy voice, but we’ll see what happens.

Google Hangout Link

You can RSVP if you’d like, or just come by at 8:30 to listen and ask questions.

In the meantime, you can also donate to the Read for Pixels campaign and claim any number of cool goodies. I’ve given away two books so far, and there will be more Hines prizes coming up soon. Plenty of other authors have donated cool stuff as well.

I hope you’ll be able to click over and say hi!

I’ve come across several references to the “overrepresentation” of minority characters lately, including remarks about my own work. (In my case, it’s been about LGBT+ characters.)

In theory, I assume overrepresentation means portraying a larger proportion of a particular type of character in your fiction than you’d expect to see from a sampling in the real world. For example…

Overrepresentation of white men:

Overrepresentation of straight white men:

Overrepresentation of straight little blue men:

Overrepresentation of male … whatevers:

And so on, and so forth.

Focusing on my own work — the remark was about the Magic ex Libris series — let’s take a look, shall we? I’m adding a cut-tag here, because we’re about to get into minor spoiler territory.

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