25th of July – who can believe it? Time flies when you’re having fun and learning how to keep another human being alive.
It’s been nearly seven weeks since Holly was born, but it somehow feels longer than that. I suppose that’s because having a child is such a major change. There have been numerous challenges in the past few weeks. However, I have managed to meet each one, even though sometimes I felt like I was crumbling. Holly is getting better and better at settling herself in the bassinet overnight, which makes for more sleeping. To be honest, I’m now able to sleep deeper than I have for nearly a year. The moment I fell pregnant, I struggled more with my nasal issues due to extra hormones and so on. And that meant disrupted sleep. Plus, there’s this little thing called “pregnancy insomnia”, which is about as delightful as it sounds. Towards the end of my pregnancy with Holly, my rhinitis was so bad that I would wake up every hour or forty-five minutes, struggling to breathe. So it’s a pleasure to be able to sleep deeply again, although it makes waking up to Holly’s cries even harder, because it’s like coming out of a stupor. Duh… hi… huh, hello Holly… etc.
Holly is beginning to stay up more during the day now, and that’s uniquely challenging because I have little idea how long babies this age are meant to stay up for and what we should do with her, as she’s not particularly mobile. Lots of mat time I guess. I spend time talking to her and singing to her. I’m not sure what she thinks of “agitata da due venti”, but it’s fascinating enough for her to watch me in intrigue.
When Holly was only about three weeks old, I received an editing job from my publisher for the sixth volume in The Fledgling Account. That is, it’s the sixth volume but the seventh book, because volume five got split into two. Just to keep you on your toes. You think you can count but volume six is book seven. That’s Maths in a fantasy fiction world. Needless to say, I was rather stressed at the prospect of doing revisions on something 151,000 words long (why did I write something that long? what was I thinking?). I was granted an extension but wound up doing it in the usual time anyway for two reasons – one, it’s so complicated I needed to keep my head in the game; and two, what else am I going to do for eight hours every day when I’m sitting around breast feeding? Editing one handed actually worked a whole lot better than I thought. Poor Holly might have heard me reading some of it aloud at some points to rework it. Perhaps that didn’t make for good sleeping!
So in summary, it won’t be long before my next book is released! It picks up where Consort left off. Rafen has just broken the curse that was spreading beneath his skin, slowly destroying his body. He has freed many of King Talmon’s slaves from his coal mine and stolen the Tarhian king’s best ship, in which he is voyaging to Siana to reunite with his wife and claim the throne. And then as usual, all hell breaks loose – back in Siana, Richard Patrick is planning to execute Francisco, Rafen’s twin brother. And the Lashki Mirah gets to Siana before Rafen, where he begins to poison the country, using Richard Patrick as his puppet king.
This particular book was extremely difficult to edit because there are two full battle scenes with armies clashing and aerial combat involving dragons, etc. These were incredibly complex to write, and I had already edited them several times before ever putting the book before a publisher. However, they still needed work. To be honest, the only thing that stops me working on a book is finally releasing it.
When I finished editing the book, I was very much relieved for sure. And Holly was that much older and bigger already. It’s hard to believe that she’s nearly seven weeks. An advantage of having revisions to do on a manuscript directly after her birth is that I can put her in the dedication. It’s weird – I never imagined dedicating any of The Fledgling Account books to my own child. It wasn’t that I didn’t want a kid. I just never thought I’d be blessed with one.
So that shows that life sometimes takes you places you didn’t expect in even your best dreams.
It’s been nearly seven weeks since Holly was born, but it somehow feels longer than that. I suppose that’s because having a child is such a major change. There have been numerous challenges in the past few weeks. However, I have managed to meet each one, even though sometimes I felt like I was crumbling. Holly is getting better and better at settling herself in the bassinet overnight, which makes for more sleeping. To be honest, I’m now able to sleep deeper than I have for nearly a year. The moment I fell pregnant, I struggled more with my nasal issues due to extra hormones and so on. And that meant disrupted sleep. Plus, there’s this little thing called “pregnancy insomnia”, which is about as delightful as it sounds. Towards the end of my pregnancy with Holly, my rhinitis was so bad that I would wake up every hour or forty-five minutes, struggling to breathe. So it’s a pleasure to be able to sleep deeply again, although it makes waking up to Holly’s cries even harder, because it’s like coming out of a stupor. Duh… hi… huh, hello Holly… etc.
Holly is beginning to stay up more during the day now, and that’s uniquely challenging because I have little idea how long babies this age are meant to stay up for and what we should do with her, as she’s not particularly mobile. Lots of mat time I guess. I spend time talking to her and singing to her. I’m not sure what she thinks of “agitata da due venti”, but it’s fascinating enough for her to watch me in intrigue.
When Holly was only about three weeks old, I received an editing job from my publisher for the sixth volume in The Fledgling Account. That is, it’s the sixth volume but the seventh book, because volume five got split into two. Just to keep you on your toes. You think you can count but volume six is book seven. That’s Maths in a fantasy fiction world. Needless to say, I was rather stressed at the prospect of doing revisions on something 151,000 words long (why did I write something that long? what was I thinking?). I was granted an extension but wound up doing it in the usual time anyway for two reasons – one, it’s so complicated I needed to keep my head in the game; and two, what else am I going to do for eight hours every day when I’m sitting around breast feeding? Editing one handed actually worked a whole lot better than I thought. Poor Holly might have heard me reading some of it aloud at some points to rework it. Perhaps that didn’t make for good sleeping!
So in summary, it won’t be long before my next book is released! It picks up where Consort left off. Rafen has just broken the curse that was spreading beneath his skin, slowly destroying his body. He has freed many of King Talmon’s slaves from his coal mine and stolen the Tarhian king’s best ship, in which he is voyaging to Siana to reunite with his wife and claim the throne. And then as usual, all hell breaks loose – back in Siana, Richard Patrick is planning to execute Francisco, Rafen’s twin brother. And the Lashki Mirah gets to Siana before Rafen, where he begins to poison the country, using Richard Patrick as his puppet king.
This particular book was extremely difficult to edit because there are two full battle scenes with armies clashing and aerial combat involving dragons, etc. These were incredibly complex to write, and I had already edited them several times before ever putting the book before a publisher. However, they still needed work. To be honest, the only thing that stops me working on a book is finally releasing it.
When I finished editing the book, I was very much relieved for sure. And Holly was that much older and bigger already. It’s hard to believe that she’s nearly seven weeks. An advantage of having revisions to do on a manuscript directly after her birth is that I can put her in the dedication. It’s weird – I never imagined dedicating any of The Fledgling Account books to my own child. It wasn’t that I didn’t want a kid. I just never thought I’d be blessed with one.
So that shows that life sometimes takes you places you didn’t expect in even your best dreams.
