A week in BlackBerry pix

Today, Bailey in the window watching the snow.

Bailey in her pink blanket.

Manis with K

7th Avenue during Brooklyn Blizzard #1

Ditto

I climbed several of those piles . . .

Pretty, though.

Stuck car.

All of these pics are on my Twitter, so sorry if you've seen them twice.

Incredibly tough, painful and disheartening aren't even strong enough to explain the past couple of weeks. There was a lot of bad. A lot. But in those moments, of utter darkness when you're on the brink of falling off the edge, someone pulls you back and you do the same for the other person. You see the rawest, deepest parts of people that are so intimate it can only serve to tighten bonds. You see what people are made of. Or who they really are.

I'm throwing myself into work during the day and spending every other free second with K. Things had to happen to get me fired up about blowing through several work projects--and I'm setting the Excel sheets, readying the Word docs and prepping my hand brace for a work out of epic proportions.

When things go wrong, I've always done one thing--the thing I'm good at--work. It's the solution to many problems.

Late start to NaNo--kind of . . .

Well, I'll be getting a late start, anyway. I took off the first week of Nov so I'll probably start writing NaNo-style on Monday. I'm not officially doing NaNo, but that's kind of how I write with my deadlines so I'll be writing in crazy-mode along with all of the NaNo participants.

Take the Reins was my first novel and it was a NaNoNovel, which makes me superproud to be part of the NaNo crowd. A lot of people don't like fast drafting and hey, whatever works, but it does for me and I love the spreadsheets and the thrill of getting the words down on the page to meet my (and my editor's!) deadlines.

I'll be working on CHOSEN--the Canterwood super special. It'll keep me from looking at my BlackBerry every 5 seconds to see if I've got a response to an exclusive that I sent to an agent. It's the first and only query then requested sub I've sent since Agent #1, so I'm anxious/excited/curious, etc., to be out in the field again. The type of novel I subbed is VERY different from Canterwood, so that's fun and challenging at the same time.

With Canterwood not on a bi-monthly schedule for the new set of books (after Chosen, anyway it'll leave me time to work on developing proposals for the YA ideas that I have. I still want to write tween books and will continue to do so if I'm lucky enough, but I also want to do YA.

Personally, things have been incredibly busy/stressful with life stuff, but I'm hopeful for a turn around for someone I love very soon. The events of the past few months have definitely put perspective and priorities in place for me and I never want to go back to the person I had been--the 24/7 workaholic. I *love* what I do, but personal issues have shed serious light on what's really important to me and I needed a better balance between work and doing things for/with people I care about.

ANYWAY . . . what's everyone reading? I just started ASH by Malindo Lo. Loving it so far! Share what you're reading!

PS: Team Canterwood, if you're reading this post, the e-mail address for Jess Ashley is for YA only related projects, so keep emailing me at jess_burkhart AT hotmail DOT com. Thanks! :)