I’ve been horribly lacking in the blogging department lately. I’d apologize, but I’ve been accomplishing a lot. As some of you know, my parents, sister, and I moved in with my grandparents about six years ago. The house is a three-family home, and each apartment is a one-bedroom. Originally, my great-grandmother lived on the first floor and my grandparents lived on the third floor. My great aunt lives on the second floor. When we moved in, my sister and I moved in with my grandparents on the third floor, and my parents moved in with my great-grandmother on the first floor. It was supposed to be temporary, so we literally slapped down mattresses in the middle of each apartment. When Popi got sick, he and Noni moved downstairs and my parents came upstairs. Mike moved in with us on the third floor. Popi passed away. Our apartment continued to look like a hostel rather than a home.

For years, we planned on moving things around, making it look better, but for one reason or another (conflicting schedules, procrastination, etc), it never quite happened. We did finally empty out our storage unit and move everything into the cellar. Mom rearranged the bedroom. I decided to stop waiting for any kind of collaborative effort and took it upon myself to rearrange my sister’s and my room, what was originally our grandparents’ dining room.

For the past six years, our mattresses sat on an angle in the middle of the room, leaving only a slim pathway between the living room and kitchen. It’s still not done, but I moved a lot of furniture around, went through all of my things and took out several garbage bags, vacuumed, dusted… and ended up with this:

Coming together...

There’s still a huge walnut desk and dry sink that need to be moved downstairs so that Noni can use them again (the dry sink is just for decoration), but it’s coming together nicely. Mostly, I’m proud of myself because I thought I couldn’t do anything like this anymore (moving furniture around). I thought it’d be too much on my body… which it was, but I did it anyway. And you know what? Every day after I moved furniture, I felt a little better. Sure, I popped a lot of Tylenol and Tramadol at night after lifting, heaving, and tugging all day, but the sense of pride I felt way outweighed the pain.

I’ve lost a little momentum now, but can’t do much more anyway until the desk and dry sink come out. I have “before” pictures and I can’t wait to show you them with the “after” pictures I’m going to take. I know it’s probably not such a big deal, but knowing I did this all by myself is a big deal to me. Take that, joint pain! Plus, getting anything done around here is a big deal anyway. We’ve all been sardined in here for so long that everyone’s sort of gotten comfortable with it, even though we all complain about the lack of space.

I printed out the first draft of Secondhand Mom, and as I put the pages into plastic page protectors in a binder, I noticed a lot of continuity errors just from speed reading as I went through the stack. I sort of want to edit Secondhand Mom before I work on Sade On the Wall, but I’m not sure yet. I think SOTW will be easier to turn into a second draft, because there aren’t any continuity errors, just some style issues, accuracy with some description, and maybe pace. The more editing and revising I do, the more I love it.

Speaking of which, I’ve edited and revised another short story to be published as an ebook soon. I just need to format the manuscript and haven’t had the chance to do it. I did design a cover, though, and after sleeping on it for a few days, I’m really happy with it and won’t be making any changes. At some point, I’m going to write up a quick post about designing covers.

And continuing with the writing theme… I found a website that has tons of freelance copywriting jobs, and was thinking about trying to make that into my part-time income, but then decided I’d rather spend that time working on my fiction. So, one of my goals for this year have changed, just a little.

I’m really anxious to get this room finished, though, because my whole reason for rearranging it was to create a more organized and comfortable work space for myself. I have a hard time doing any writing when I feel cluttered.

I’ve also been thinking about going back to Facebook. Hear me out. I know I said I wouldn’t, but it’s becoming more and more clear to me that, for marketing purposes, I do probably need to be there, to some extent. I want to get my hands dirtier with self-publishing and submitting stories to markets so that when I start querying Sade On the Wall, I have somewhat of a name and readership built up for myself. I was talking with a friend one night over dinner about self-publishing and she asked me if she could do it, too. “Sure,” I said. “You’d even have a leg up on me, because you still have a Facebook, with friends and family on it who’d support your work.” And it’s true. I gained a lot of readers through Facebook. Half the time, I didn’t even know people were reading until it was casually mentioned, or someone emailed me about a blog post I’d written. I’ve decided that, if I do go back, my personal profile will be completely locked down, and I’ll use it only to run a page focused on my writing. That way, I won’t have to deal with most of the things I hated about Facebook. I haven’t completely decided yet, though.

Speaking of social media, I now have an author profile on Goodreads. This isn’t nearly as cool as it sounds. It’s still the same profile I had before, just more writerly. I’m still relatively unknown… but I’m hoping this will give me a leg up. Maybe I won’t have to return to the devil Facebook.

However — and this is cool — I discovered that Goodreads authors can put their ebooks up for sale there… so “Moon Prayer” is now available on Goodreads. “Moon Prayer” is still not available on Amazon… but De told me it’s because Smashwords and Amazon are at some kind of standstill for negotiations, so I need to upload it to Amazon myself. This is on my mile-long To Do list… which is only getting longer, but I love every minute of this.

I’ve been following De’s successes closely for a long time now, but recently started following the success story of Amanda Hocking as well, and the more I read about either of them, the more possible this all seems. I’m going to be an author. It doesn’t feel far-fetched, like some kind of pipe dream. It feels like a real dream. It still scares me, but in a good way.

via Pinterest

It’s freeing.

Aside from all that, I’ve been reading, experimenting with clothing and makeup, contemplating cutting my hair, spending time with friends and family, saving my ass off for a Mac and an apartment, snuggling with my cat, loving Mike and falling in love with him over and over, and just enjoying life in general.

It’s all coming together.