Things to do when your sick...

... and November is just two days away.

When you're sick you're suppose to drink lots of fluids and sleep, right?  Drinking I can do.  Sleeping - not so much.  I've been trying, but it's just not working.  So I've used my sick-kid time getting all the Future Letters stuff done that I wanted to get done.

I updated it a bit (didn't make any major changes to the story, I promise), added a new cover and uploaded it for sale on Nook, Kobo and the new version for Kindle and paperback through Amazon.  I know the saying "Don't judge a book by its cover" but obviously people do or else there wouldn't be "Best Cover" lists on sites like Goodreads. 

The old cover was okay.  It really wasn't what I had in mind, but every time I tried to take a picture of what I wanted it just never looked right.  I'm definitely not Dylan Mead and do not have his photography skills (although I do like taking pictures).  With some brainstorming with a friend plus working at a high school  where students doodle all over their work and notes - the new cover was born!  According to one of my doodle art students it looks pretty cool.

So now I'm back to the waiting game.  Waiting for all the sights to finish publishing the newest version of Future Letters - complete with new cover, additional acknowledgements and (hopefully) a table of contents that will work on the readers. 

Not that I'm happy to be sick - it sucks - but these last two days off have given me the chance to completely clear up all Future Letters updating so I will have a completely clean slate on November 1.

What's the big deal about November 1?  It's National Novel Writing Month!  Last year my NaNoWriMo project was Future Letters.  This year it's the complete rewrite of Nine Days. 

I actually wrote Nine Days in Spring 2011.  It was the first full book I wrote and at the time it was called "Where You Belong".  I loved the plot idea for the story.  Loved the spinoff idea for a series that I got from the story's setting.  After re-reading the story itself, I hated it.  I tried keeping the characters and changing things a bit so I could just jump into the first book of the series my husband would like me to write.  I started, stopped, tweaked, started again, rinse, repeat.  It just never worked. 

As much as I didn't like how the original story turned out, I still love the plot idea and feel it's a story that needs to be told.  I've already mapped everything out.  Other than most of the character names and the basic plot Nine Days is all brand new material (which is need as a NaNoWriMo project).  I like the new versions of the characters SO much more.  I love the new characters and relationships between them.

I've been wanting to rewrite Nine Days for a while.  November is my shot.  30 days of writing and no looking back. 

So today I leave the world of Lil, Alaia and Morgan behind.  And when I start writing on Thursday I'll submerse myself in Andy Qwinn and her runaway spring break trip to Hawaii to meet a couple of monk seals.