I'm taking a day off of revisions (All That Glows sequel!), so instead of cleaning my house I've decided to slink back to this blog with a life update.

Where have you been the past one and a half months, Ryan? What have you been doing all this time when you could have been typing letters into the white blog box?

Good questions, interwebs. Good questions.

Writing wise I've been juggling projects (which is hardly new, I might add). THE WALLED CITY has been sent off to copyedits, I added about 15,000 words to sekrit novel (with the help of one of the best pumpkin spice lattes I've ever had*), and dove into revisions for my second Faery novel.

I can smell autumn from here...

As for the rest of the non-writing time:

The husband and I photographed an engagement shoot with a couple who pilots Black Hawks! Ridiculously cool!

 After five years of eating on the couch, we bought a dining room table!**

I rescued a baby squirrel and named him Rackety Sam. I gave him to another foster mama who does not own a wolf-hybrid who named him Phil.

The other reason I passed Rackety Sam/Phil off to a foster mama is because we went to Turks and Caicos for a scuba diving trip! I'd never been diving before, so I had to get scuba certified while I was down there.

All you see is blue...

Some of the prettiest waters I've ever seen.

Of course, when you're a writer, you never really leave work behind. I had one last round of THE WALLED CITY edits to get through in my temporary office.

The dives themselves were amazing! I saw sea turtles, reef sharks, stingrays. I also got stung by fire coral, which was substantially less awesome. On the flight home we had another unexpected surprise. Our layover in Miami was not two hours long, but twenty-four hours long. We made the best of it by going out for Cuban food:

Seafood Paella

We got home from the trip and I found a package from my editing team at Little, Brown by the door. This beauty was inside:

It's a nautilus necklace! This particular seashell plays an awfully big role in THE WALLED CITY. So this is an incredibly thoughtful gift! I've pretty much been wearing it every day!

And I can tell you up front that these next few months will be just as busy. YALLfest is coming up!!! Yay!

Also! If you want to enter for a chance to win an ALL THAT GLOWS ARC, there's a giveaway going on at Goodreads right now.

*legit. If you're ever in Charleston in the fall, visit the Orange Spot Coffee Shop. They'll hook you up.

** We're real adults now. If you couldn't tell.

the research of zoom.

All novels require some sort of research. Whether it's watching Youtube videos of Kate Middleton attending a gala, lugging around tomes of Civil War books or eating dumplings in Chinatown.

Latest project (Motorcycles & Tattoos), has required a bit more in depth research than most of my books. It does involve maps and tomes of a war, but by far the best research I've done so far made me go outside. In the sunlight! (Believe me, when you start spending weeks on weeks in your writer's cave, this becomes a commodity). 

Actually, it was my wonderful husband who surprised me. He's been very excited about Motorcycles & Tattoos, but has rightly insisted that I learn how to ride a motorbike. He told me we were going on a day-long date and brought me to a dirt bike course!!!

The point was to A) learn how to operate a motor-bike. B) learn how to drive said motor-bike over tumultuous terrain. I'm always up for acquiring new life skills, so I was really eager to get on and drive. 

But first I had to put on a helmet that smelled oh-so-distinctly of sweaty boys. (Blurgh). My husband patiently guided me through the kickstart and the shifting of the gears. We practiced weaving around cones in a gravel lot. And then--THEN--we tackled this:

I think it's safe to say that this map was a mixture of happy, thrill and terror. (Combined those trails are hundreds of miles!!) Even the "easy" trails looked daunting, with hills and mud and sharp turns! We tackled it bit by bit. There were a few falls. A few expletives. Many bruises. I started to feel very, very bad for my main character.

Once we tackled the easy trail we moved on to "moderate."

Haha. Moderate.

Moderate saw an exponential rise in the expletive department. (Though, fortunately, this did not correlate with the bruises). And I felt even worse for my poor MC.

Poor MC.

Though on the bright side, we did forage berries from the trail:

So, there you have it. I can now drive a dirt bike. And describe riding a motorcycle on less than pristine roads!

take a moment and drool with me.

Sometimes, being an author means writing.

Other times it means surfing Pinterest for the perfect picture of a protagonist, watching Youtube documentaries or reading speeches by dead guys. Researching comes in so many random forms, that sometimes I feel like I'm not really working when I click play on the sixth episode of some awesome travel documentary. Or when I'm grilling my father-in-law about alternate history scenarios over Ethiopian food. 

My WIP (which I've fondly been referring to as Motorcycles and Tattoos), predictably, has a lot of motorcycles in it. Pretty, pretty Zundapp KS601s to be exact. 

Okay, so this one isn't technically a KS601. It's not even a Zundapp. But it was much too pretty not to take a picture of.

I just... I want it.

Please?

Yeah, so, complete and total honesty time. I've never driven a motorcycle. I HAVE ridden one (in the pouring rain with three other people on the muddy roads of Phnom Penh while flatbed trucks zoomed around in every direction). And almost been hit by one (on the same muddy road, rain pouring Phnom Penh day incidentally). But I've never jumped on and taken one for a spin. That might have to change. You know, if I'm really dedicated to this WIP. ;)

the SNIS is alive!

The past few weeks have been packed with amazing things, hard things and all the things that lie within that vast spectrum. A quick rundown (though I shan't depress you with said hard things):

-I finished teaching at the preschool and I'm once again OFFICIALLY FULL TIME! Hooray! Only this time, I'm not going back when the summer ends. I'm a full time writer full time. I'm still figuring out what this means, now that I have 5 extra hours in my days to sit in front of the computer and resist the temptation to forever Tumble and Tweet.

-I've started exploring a brand new project, which is actually the SNIS (shiny new idea syndrome) that struck me around this time last year. I'm about 40+ pages in and it still feels pretty shiny. Motorcycles and tattoos. Nesting Dolls and Walther P38 pistols. It's a terrifying project in that I don't know if I can write the subject matter well enough (ie. the doubt monsters like to creep in and tell me to give up before I even begin and to that I say "H*ll no!").

-Hubby and I are joining a gym so that the Andes don't royally kick our butts in 8 weeks when we deign to hike them. They probably will anyway.

-In about 3 weeks I'll be able to show you the cover for ALL THAT GLOWS!!!! (Finally!!!) It's been sitting on my desk for quite an impressive amount of time, waiting for just the right moment to make its online debut. I can't wait to reveal it! (Also, 9 more months before ATG hits the shelves! That's a mere pregnancy away!)

-My awesome friends completely surprised me with a VINTAGE TYPEWRITER yesterday! I've always secretly wanted one (perhaps not to type with, but to at least put on a shelf, so that I'll look like I'm a "serious" writer. With black-ringed coffee stains on my manuscripts and typewriter ink on my fingers and all that.)

I'm thinking about stripping down the grimy gray and painting it. What do you guys say? My house is very bright, so it would go better with the decor that way!

-Hubby and I finally took our wolf-pup Raiden out into the wilds of Georgia. But that deserves a completely different post of its own. :)

back to it

Apparently four days is all I can last sans writing (without a larger purpose, such as a tropical vacation, to distract me). In this time I:

-cleaned the house

-made these delicious coconut-lime sugar cookies:

Source: traceysculinaryadventures.blogspot.ch via Ryan on Pinterest

-gave Goodwill about 1/4th of my closet! It's amazing how many clothes I collect that I no longer wear. About two trashbags full.

-went house-shopping (the very word sends me into cold, non-committal sweats!)

-celebrated my Grandma's 80th birthday. She got an iPad and is incredibly excited about it. In fact, she's probably reading this post on said iPad. Hi, Grandma! Let's hope that when I'm 80 I'll be as spry and technically saavy as her!

-I've also started watching Band of Brothers for the first time. I have a feeling that I will be crying before the end.

Despite all of these wonderful distractions, I can't get this certain storyline out of my head. So I'm in the very early brainstorming/tinkering processes of a story I'm really, really stoked about. I probably won't get too far with it, since I have about a bajillion (or, really, four) other projects that take priority at the moment. But I will finish it. Even if that day happens to be three, four or five years from now!

I have yet to give this project a nickname. I'll have to come up with one. Right now the file name is Tattoos and Motorcycles (which is a bit long, but it will have to do for now).