My short story "Weaver's Trade", is republished in Let it Snow. It's set in the early 1600s in an unnamed New England colony. Following the death of his family (50% of colonists died in the first year, sometimes the whole colony was wiped out) the weaver rents his house to strangers. It was my Christmas story several years ago, and it won second place in the Bethlehem Writers Roundtable the next year. The anthology is full of wonderful winter stories. You can find Let it Snow at Amazon: http://bit.ly/BWRLetItSnow
I missed my blog deadline last week because by the time I was supposed to be writing it I didn't have enough energy to hit the keys with any accuracy. Sometimes being a writer can be hard physical work.
The week before I was to write and post, I did three days of work at my museum job. That is paid, and if I don't make some money I will have to stop eating.
I attendee two writers events. One was a day long presentation at a library, an hour's drive away in the snow. The other was my critique group meeting which comes at the end of a day of work.
On Wednesday I took a group of school kids back to the 18th century and on Thursday a group of adults to the 19th. There were the regular sheep tasks. All this would have been fine if the temperature hadn't been hovering above 0. Except for the library which was toasty, all this was done in some degree of cold. During the week I was trying to dash off 1000 words each day.
When I got home from critique group on Monday night I collapsed, and have pretty much been that way ever since.
The up side is that everything I did, was something I love and wanted to do. I couldn't possibly said "No" to any of these things.
I submitted a story to my critique group and was waiting for their verdict. It is one I wrote for a specific publication and really want to have it published. They could have told me it was rotten and I ought to toss it. I knew it was incomplete, but I didn't quite know what to do with it. More background? More character development? More plot? As usual they came through for me.
Today I was awake enough to make the necessary changes to the story. Now it sits for a bit and then gets a read from someone else. Then off it goes.
It hasn't been all rushing around and meeting the public. I have two stories coming out in anthologies. The first will be out by the time you read this, the second sometime in March. Maybe for my birthday. Needless to say I am very pleased with that. More on the March one closer to publication.