loaded_march | Entries tagged with part 14

First, allow me to apologize for (a) taking so long to write LM14 (even though it actually didn't take that long? word-count wise, anyway), (b) letting real life get in the way (which, unfortunately, is no one's fault), and (c) struggling through the edits and taking even longer (I had trouble with this part for reasons that are best left unsaid). I hate making people wait, and no matter how many reassurances I get that it's worth it, I will still feel bad about it.

Second, I may have rushed through the second half of the second part of LM14 because this is the first weekend in a really long time that I actually have that isn't stupidly crazy busy, and I'm hoping that I can veg my brains out tomorrow, at least for a few hours.

And third, if you've read all this instead of clicking the link below first, thank you, because I'm about to ask for a favour. It's come to my attention that many people who have been waiting for LM14 are currently right in the middle of examination season.

If you are one of them, good luck! and, for the love of grade point averages, please wait until you've written your last exam/handed in your last assignment/done whatever you need to do to wrap up your semester before you read LM14. Your studies are more important, and LM14 will be there for you when you get back.

If you are lucky enough not to be writing any exams, please tag your spoilers (on Tumblr, the Hive Mind has decreed the spoiler tag to be LM14) or hide them under a cut.

And now without further blathering:

Title: A Storm on the Horizon (AO3, 2 chapters)
Rating: NC-17
Word Count:

Summary:
The world is in chaos. Civilization is menaced by a looming threat. Violence holds entire cities hostage, hapless citizens hiding in their homes. When the magic released by the NWO's bomb settles, it's only a matter of time before the war begins.

In Camelot, it's easy to forget what's coming, even if it's only for a little while. Among family and friends, broken bodies can heal, shattered hearts can mend, and betrayals stop hurting, becoming a dull ache that allows others to trust again.

The team has been kept in a heightened state of readiness while they wait for the Brass to reactivate them. They train until they're exhausted, they recruit new members, and they make sure that their new home and their loved ones are safe and protected.

It's idyllic until it isn't, not anymore.

AO3 won't let me post.

*pounds on keyboard*

I'm halfway through the beta on the second part of LM#14, and assuming that I don't end up with more stuff to do than I'm prepared to deal with, it's entirely conceivable that the ETA will be this weekend.

That is all.

Hi!

I meant to do an update that didn't happen, because of Stuff That Happened, and I suppose, in the end, I phoned it in? Most nights, I'm too tired to do much more but shower and crawl into bed. But, anyway:

The getting-the-house-ready-to-go-on-the-market part of selling the house and finding a new one to move into was finished just a tiny bit over two weeks ago and involved packing up a rather impressive shitton of books and assorted sundries, and everything is currently in storage while the house is being shown.

When you go through your stuff, you realize you not only have a lot of crap, but you also realize you have a lot of crap that you'd forgotten about, which in my case mostly amounted to two filing cabinets full of stories that I've been writing since I was a kid. More accurately, since I was a teenager -- my mother refuses to give me any of the stories I wrote as a kid. I think she plans on using them as blackmail material, someday, I dunno. But the point is, I had over 180 stories in those filing cabinets -- handwritten and obviously transcribed later, since I had corresponding print-outs and diskettes in each file folder, because I organized that shit, back then. I found rejection slips, letters of encouragement from book publishers, and a combination of horrendously bad writing and surprisingly good stuff.

I shredded it all and kept the digital copies.

Anyway, we are currently firmly in the getting-randomly-kicked-out-of-our-own-house stage, which means either I have to drop everything, come home, tidy up, pick up the puppy and bring him over to my parent's house so they can babysit him, or the Spouse does it. We're taking turns. We both have flexible work hours (me more than him), but it also means I end up working extra time on some days to make up for what I've missed.

Have we found a new house yet? Nope. We're looking. There are a couple of places that we really like, but there's something off about them, somehow.

But I've got to tell you. We were both pretty much done with this entire process from the first weekend. *sigh*

If nothing else, I now have a better idea of how things are for me, time-wise, and in two words, it's sporadic and spotty. It probably doesn't help that at work right now, we have new students, I have more projects to deal with, and I have a coworker who's a gigantic asshole for reasons I'm too tired to get into right now.

But I digress. I think I can manage some breathing room every now and then to start going through the betas' notes on LM#14.

Starting tomorrow.

I hope.

As I write this, it's 4:30 AM. I should be grabbing my shit and heading to the gym, but instead, I'm cuddling a very scared puppy who is shaking in terror at the loud thunder and flashing lightning. I don't blame him. I mean, the bed was shaking when I woke up with a start, but I think it was the Spouse trying to suppress his laughter, because I'd blurted out, "Goddamnit, Thor, cut that shit out."

So, the pup is currenetly tucked under my arm and drooling all over my PJs and squirming while I try to type, and it's taking forever to finish a sentence. But since I'm wide fucking awake while Thor rescues the world from yet another Loki-scapade, here's a brief update:

Since my last post, I've heard back from my beta for LM#14. She's okay! (Thank God) And I'm sure she appreciated the well-wishes. She has sent me what she managed to go through for the second part of #14.

I'm still in the middle of trying to make the house look attractive and saleable, and currently failing. There are mounds of boxes everywhere. It's an adventure trying to make it from the living room to the kitchen, I'm sneezing every ten minutes, and I've had at least two bad allergic reactions, but at least once this weekend is over, most of the crap will be in a storage unit and I'll stop stressing the fuck out (and downgrading to freaking the fuck out). We have a lot left to do, but the breathing room will come next weekend, when we're supposed to be finished. After that, it'll be a mess of showing the house and going out to look at houses ourselves.

I'm really not sure about my free time and I don't want to make promises only to blow past them again (sorry, sorry), so I'm going to play the wait-and-see game (which will involve less waiting and more too busy to do anything that I want to do) to see what I can get done before I let you know about an ETA.

Again, I'm sorry for the delay.

(Un)Surprisingly, the students never showed up, which kind of amuses me because one of them had emailed me super late on Friday night to say "how about next week, will come see you next Monday, we can get started then".

I'll be honest. This isn't the first time that I've had students come to me and say, "I'm free on Tuesday at 2:30 PM, I'll see you then", fully expecting me to drop everything and rework my day around their flighty schedules. The only reason I was supposed to have them with me this week is because it was right after a long weekend and I'd just come back from vacation, so I didn't have anything urgent planned.

Anyway, these kids? They're in for a hard, hard lesson that I'm not at their fucking beck and call. I'm booked solid with projects that need finishing and meetings about projects that need starting. And, better yet? I'm aggravated by the students' entitled attitude. So here's a pro-tip that applies to everyone, not just students: if you're hoping to obtain something (whether it's advice, instruction, or anything that your heart desires) from someone else, don't demand that they provide it at a certain day or time -- ask when it's the best time for them and work your schedule around that. They're doing you a favour, not the other way around.

Believe me, they'll appreciate it that you're considerate of their availability and workload. Giving them the option means you might just get lucky and end up with extra time with them, which translates to the person going out of their way to show and tell you nifty things that you wouldn't have learned otherwise. That's my M.O., anyway -- I don't know about other people, though.

Anyway, all this was just to let you know that without the students around, I now have my free time back, and that means that I'm working on the beta of the first half of LM#14.

As it turns out, I'm a lot not where I want to be on LM#14. Although my beta has shaken the first half until it gave up all the things to fix and sent it to me to go over, my very well-meaning plans to spend all of Easter weekend going through it fell through.

See, my brain wanted to be lazy. And when it didn't want to be lazy, it wrote fic. And when it didn't write fic, it issued an alert with all the lights flashing and sirens wailing, because the basement was flooded. When that got taken care of, I had to deal with a lot of wet, unwashed clothes from the regular laundry and a washing machine that wouldn't spin (the Spouse and my dad tried to fix it) (spoiler alert: they didn't) (on the bright side, after a long argument on what the problem was, taking it apart and putting it together twice, they had to agree with my initial assessment that either the fan belt had torn, the rotors were burnt out, or the motor needed to be replaced) (the actual diagnosis: all three) (by the way: being right also means shelling out about 250$ for a new motor) (this is the only time when I hate being right).

Also, since, for some godforsaken reason, someone thought it was a good idea to send me a pair of students for this week, ostensibly to teach them and to shape their young minds, my free time this week will probably be very, very small. Because this aggravates me, I will be teaching them how to make penis-shaped origami and will mould their young minds into something more appropriate for their future as someone's evil minion.

So this is the official word on the state of the thing: it most likely won't be posted this weekend. I'm sorry. I'll update when I have another time frame in mind.

It seems that I've been accidentally AWOL -- though I think it's more like I hopped my shell somewhere else and turtled.

As some people can attest (one person in particular, actually, and she knows who she is because she's had to listen to me complain nonstop), I've been driving myself crazy for the last two weeks because I never had the time to write. I either worked through lunches, or had a ridiculous number of meetings, or got home so completely beat that all I could think about was shower and bed (with a side of food).

I swear, I was going through writing withdrawal. It sucked.

But, anyway. No one wants to read about that. You came for the metrics, and metrics you shall have, to the order of a completed LM#14 at just north of 120,000 words.

Right now, it's with a beta, so here's an ETA for the posting. I've been quoted a relatively quick turn-around, but since I'm away on vacation out of the country, far far away from an Internet connection next week, I am guesstimating end of April or early May.

Sorry, sorry. I haven't been posting metrics, but I have been reaching the minimum word count each week -- which, for anyone keeping score, is 10K. I'd give you an estimate of the current word count as it stands, now, but I can't.

See, normally my chapters are at about even in length, but the last few have been all over the place, and I... kind of lost track?

But I'm still writing LM#14, if anyone's wondering.

For now, though, I'm going to take a break, because it appears that I've contracted the plague (thanks, Spouse) and I'd rather curl up in bed and not wake up until it's over.

I was going to say something about how I'd noticed I'm horrible at answering PMs and comments when I'm immersed in writing a fic, but that's not exactly right. I'm already bad at answering messages. When I'm writing fic, I'm in an entirely different world of bad. I apologize for that and I'll try to do better!

I forgot to post yesterday's metrics. I managed some 2,000 words before I had to stop for reasons of realization, which pretty much amounted to, huh, I was wondering when you'd show up again, and threw me for a loop with, goddamn it, what are you doing now, showing your face here after all this time, because it has to be relevant, and I have to somehow tie it in with everything else that's going on.

It didn't take me long to figure out, because, well, the roundabout logic in my head makes sense (maybe only to me), but it fits, and it works, and the kind-of-always-there but suddenly unexpected plot point tying itself up with minimal effort for the win!

I would have continued to write last night, except I was tired. So I left it for today. Only to end up with a word count of Zero (capital Z intentional) for reasons of -40C weather. Apparently it went to -45C overnight, and after several days of -30C weather, well, a poor automobile can only take so much. So, even though my car (grudgingly) started, other people had problems (like the buses not running and needing to take their kids to school, or waiting for their cars to warm up and start), and when I got in to work I had a bunch of texts from coworkers asking me to cover for them until they could make it in. By the time I finished running around taking care of Things that needed immediate taking care of, there was another text message on my phone -- from the Spouse. One word: Nope.

Yeah, his car wouldn't start. He tried to get in touch with someone he works with who could've picked him up on the way, but I guess their timing was off and the other guy didn't get the message until after he'd already gotten to work. I drove home, picked him up, drove him to work, drove back... And made up the time missed by working through lunch so that I could leave at my usual time, because I had an appointment, after which I had to go pick up the Spouse and get us home.

(And then, more Things happened -- walking the dog super quick, because it's still too cold for more, even for Mister Fuzzface, who's normally not fazed by the weather. Then the making and eating of dinner, the cleaning-up after, the throwing-things-in-a-bag-and-calling-it-tomorrow's-lunch, and the waking of the Spouse from his (too short) nap so that he can get his shit together for his volleyball game tonight. Incidentally, his car has thawed out enough that it started up no problem, so that's one less Thing to deal with today.)

Now, I'm just kind of dead (and still thawing out from the freeze). I'm declaring today the International Unavoidably Humped Day. Tomorrow will be a writing day.

The regularly scheduled, erm, schedule of wordcount is back, though I kinda miss Amnesty Week already, because even though I got an unbelievable amount of shit done at work, I still managed to get 5,000 words -- half my weekly wordcount goal. They were a good 5,000 words, and I got there at a pretty relaxed, laid-back pace, so I'm happy. That brings my wordcount for LM#14 to 17,000.

Counting today's 3,000, I am now at 20K.

In other news, if you're participating in the postcard post, I'll be "drawing" the winners of a full set of postcard on February 1st. You still have time to find the minimum of 5 postcards anywhere on the web and get an entry in.

In the news #2, I'll put up the post to put together the postcard story at about mid-month in February, so stay tuned.

I had an in the news #3, but the temperature here is looming in the -30C's with a forecasted -50C overnight, and my brain cells have completely frozen together -- kind of like licking a cold piece of metal. Ripping them apart to get some use out of my brain is just, you know, not recommended.

As of Friday, I have 12,000 words on LM#14 and a pretty good idea of what to write next, so I'm pleased. I have no idea how long it's going to end up, though, so stay tuned.

Unfortunately, since I'm working in a restricted area this week (there are no words to say how pleased I am by how rarely this happens, but it does happen a few times a year), and the work is the attention-to-detail/time-consuming/can't-leave-it-alone-or-disaster! sort, I won't be able to get away much, if at all, to do any writing during my breaks or my lunch. So, for that reason, I'm declaring it a metrics-amnesty week, just so that I don't stress over it. If I get word count, yay! If I don't get word count, oh, well, it's not the end of the world.

On the flip side, since I met my weekly word count goal for LM#14, I spent the weekend finishing up an old fic that was originally started for marguerite_26's Oh Canada Fest. I am a little overdue on this one, I'm afraid.

Is anyone interested in being a beta? It's Teen Wolf, PG-13, Stiles/Derek and nearly 25K. Some knowledge of Canadian history would be helpful, but not necessary.

I'm capping myself to a maximum of 10,000 words per week for LM#14 -- it worked out well for LM#13, and I didn't feel that burned out afterward (obviously, if I'm already writing the next part), and if I write 3K a day for four days, I'm easily at 12,000 words with a 2K wriggle room margin.

Today was a 2,000 word day. I only managed to write 1K in rough bits and spurts throughout the day for reasons of dentist and root canal and pounding headache, and I squeezed out another K when I got home.

The head is still pounding and dinner was very much on the liquid side, so I'm going to stop where I am for the day.

3,000 more words on LM#14, and firmly in well, this scene is firmly past the it should have ended 1,000 words ago territory.

Houston, Houston, I have a runaway storyline. It was impacted by a stray meteorite and is now tumbling out of its projected trajectory. The engines are malfunctioning and they're bingo fuel. They're equipped with a vacuum cleaner hose, two arm's lengths of duct tape, a broken barometer, and an empty Lays' potato chip bag, regular flavour. There's just enough power to run the MacGyver emulator for twenty-three seconds. Please advise, over.

FFS, it's only in the second chapter. What the fuck happened?

So, I mentioned that the LM Scavenger Hunt story is an interim Extra between #13 and #14. I also said that a good chunk of it toward the end didn't make it into the postcards and that I would post it in February when we post everything together.

Erm.

Slight change of plans. That chunk will be cut to about a fourth (or a sixth) of its present size and posted as part of the LM Scavenger Hunt. The remnant will be shredded and rewritten as part of #14.

Speaking of.

I have metrics for #14. Today's wordcount is 3,000 words.

THAT IS ALL.