BOOK WORK, ETC.

     Send up fireworks! The first thing I did this morning was send off a short story ms that is due by the end of the week. So I'm feeling very professional. Congratulations, me.
     Actually, I did have a bit more time than that. The editor had one copy but had asked me to add a couple of little things so it had been easy to put it aside . . . not professional . . . and I simply hadn't done it. Anyway, it's finished now, so onward and upward.
     I'm putting the final touches on the juvenile novel now. Junkyard Bones is finished and the editor is waiting for it but I had problems with my word processing programs and it has screwed things up royally. I originally wrote the book in Word Perfect and when I got ready to submit the finished ms (after final approval) I decided to transcribe it to Word 7. It was a good thing because Word Perfect decided to give up the ghost and die completely.
     Guess what? Each letter 'b' in the ms turned into quotation marks. Well, fine. I started to manually correct them. (I haven't mastered Word 7 at this point. No, don't try and tell me . . . I only get more messed up.) That was bad. So I tried 'find and replace'. That really changed the whole ms around. On top of that it didn't allow me to change my mind. Ooooooo!!!!! I'm gnashing my teeth and stomping my feet and tearing my hair.
     Anyway, to make a long story short, I hauled the whole computer to MWG and got help and now things are good again. I've gone over half the ms to make sure everything is good and I have half of it to go and then I'll e-mail it to my editor (also a good helpful friend) and it will be good to go. I'm really glad because I'd sure like to have it in time for the school year. Well, we'll see.
     Made arrangements for another writer's conference today (first of June). I'm entering the Trash to Treasure book in several contests (it won an Honorable Mention in the Best Book Award at MWG last week) so I've got to get that done. I have a list of probably twenty things writer-related to do over the next week or so and it is over-whelming . . . a suggested article for a quite well-known periodical, a script to study for a local cookie-cutter conference (they're putting on a mystery and I'm the star!), book signings to arrange .  . . yeek.
     And my poor dear husband still has the shingles. He hurts so much and there isn't a thing I can do for him. He decided yesterday and today that he HAD to do some work (first mowing of our e-nor-mous yard . . . not lawn, yard) and three hours just about killed him. I think it proved to him that he just has to wait it out even if it takes a month. Daughter came over and mowed and mowed and mowed and one of the teen-agers did a lot of trimming. Tomorrow I should be able to find time to finish up (I hope) and maybe he will stay indoors and take it easy, even it it about kills him.
     I finally get the chance to boss him around a little and I can't even enjoy it. Dern.

Am I Normal? Or is it Just Me?

     Thanksgiving is over. Missouri Folklore Society conference is finished. The drawer where the mouse was trying to build a nest is emptied and filled with metal pan lids (try chewing those up, little feller . . . gotcha!).
     Two big important events coming up: Christmas and the surprise in February (NO, I'm still not ready to tell. But I will later.)
     Preparations are underway. Not enough preparations, but at least I've started. Hey! Don't rush me! There may be lots to do but I've still got time. God knows I produce best under deadlines.
     Anyway, I've started shopping and I've got little lists all over the house and I'm working on it. The thing I'm avoiding, though, is (one of ) the deadline that is looming closer and closer and closer.  And that is the current (new) book.
     Junkyard Bones is a kid's mystery and it is basically finished. In fact it has been finished for the past year but I've not had too much time for marketing lately so it set on the shelf (figuratively speaking) through my surgeries, conferences and numerous family crises.
     Now, though, I've got a publisher who is willing to take a risk with it and I'm supposed to be sending it off.
     That was lovely until I began messing around with the finished product.
     I had written the whole ms in WordPerfect, which was the medium I worked in for years and years. Now, I know most editors really prefer Word, so I would convert things when I got ready to send them off and it worked out pretty well, but just about the time I finished writing Junkyard Bones, my old old OLD Word program crashed and I couldn't do anything more with it.
     So . . . I ordered the newest version of Word to be downloaded into the computer.
     And off I went to have the second of the two surgeries, never dreaming that it was to be a whole new ball game when I resumed working on the ms.
     During the past few months I've messed around with the new program by writing some short things and trying to familiarize myself with all of the new stuff. And let me tell you . . . it ain't been easy! (I hate computers.) Anyway, I thought I'd pretty well mastered the basics.
     So a couple of nights ago, I merrily converted Junkyard Bones from my WordPerfect program into my new Microsoft Word and opened it up to have a look.
     At first glance, everything was fine.
     At second glance (or glare) is was not.
     First of all, I had to figure out how to remove the headings, which wasn't too bad. That turned out to be fairly simple and I was feeling really puffed up about myself.
     BUT . . . and this was the BIG BUT . . . the blooming program replaced every blessed quotation mark in there with something else.
     Now, I can use Search and Replace. That's fairly straightforward. But in this case, the quotation mark at the beginning of the sentence is replaced with a bold-faced capital A and the quotation mark at the end of the sentence is replaced with a @ sign. And, since each sentence is of different length there is no way you can put in a string, not to mention that you certainly don't want each capital A in the manuscript replaced with a quotation mark.
     So I am going over the blasted ms word by word and replacing each and every one of those capital bold-faced As and @ signs.
     I'm going to have my own manuscript memorized by the time I get it ready to send it on to the publisher.
     Talk about line editing!