A proud moment

From time to time I check my books on Amazon, search for them to see if my tags work. That's what I did today.
The search term 'funny short stories' in the Kindle store resulted with Excuse me, where is the exit? at #17, which is fantastic.
The term 'paranormal romantic comedy' brought up No Wings Attached at #15 and Candlelight Sinner at #10.
I've searched for 4 stars & up.
Not too bad, I think. Although it's unlikely someone searches for paranormal romantic comedy. Ah well. You can't have everything. But what I'm really and I mean really proud of is the following:



And that makes all the hard work, the tears, the pain, the frustration and fuming worthwhile. I hope my next books will be perceived with equal enthusiasm. A massive thank you to everyone who helped me to bang the books into shape, my beta readers and friends for invaluable feedback, and my dear readers who kept encouraging me to finish Candlelight Sinner.
Just wanted to share. Now I'll better go and edit the next novel, hopefully coming out around November.

The newest addition: a soon to be scar

Some call me stupid, some call me brave, I call myself not careful enough. While trying to fix something in the iguana's house, he came running in order to chase me away. I did take a few steps back, but he jumped anyway, getting the ball of my hand. I'm not sure if he intended to, but given that he's in mating season, I'd say yes. He then charged me so I had to quickly hide in the bathroom, out of his sight. Probably a good choice, because I'd started bleeding all over the place and needed to stop the bleeding first. However, I pressed something to the wound and put the iguana back into his house.
Interestingly, he becomes rather wild when he has bitten me, as if he had a rush of adrenaline running through him. Moving things get him going, whether it's a towel, a bag or me. You run away, he'll chase. However, I don't recommend standing still; if an iguana charges, he'll attack. If you have something at hand to throw over his head (towel, blanket or jumper) do that. Or if you have something to block him, hold it in his way. A charging iguana is determined to get you and if you don't pay attention, he'll succeed. I was lucky, again, today; the wound is not deep, just cut through the first layer of my skin, which will heal nicely, but leave a scar.

Below are the pictures:

 <--two minutes after he bit me.

 Bleeding almost stopped, already a little swollen -->



Below: Bleeding stopped. You can see that he has literally torn the flesh in three areas.  It'll take probably a bit more than a week to heal.

                               

And a picture just taken (3rd day after bite) before I put on a new dressing:
It is still slightly swollen, because I don't rest it enough and it's in an awkward position with lots of fat and muscle underneath. But it's dry now. It'll leave a scar for sure, but it doesn't hurt as much as I thought it would. I think it'll take another week to heal properly, then will continue to be sensitive for a while.

This picture was taken on the fifth day after the attack --->
Still a bit swollen and slightly infected. I've taken off the bandage for the first time to let air on the wound, which was good. It's almost closed and dry now. I've carefully cleaned it with saline solution, as it's a gentle disinfectant and dries the wound in addition. It'll probably take until end of this week for the swelling to go down and another for the scab to come off. I was lucky he didn't get deeper.

<--This is exactly a week after. I will have to watch the very dark bit on the top, but it's healing nicely. The swelling has gone down and appears now only around the scab. I'll give it about another week to be healed completely. It's still sensitive when I press on it, but that's normal, given that it's still healing underneath.

13 days after the attack, finally without the scab: it's not completely healed yet. I have to find out if the remaining black bit is dead tissue or blood underneath the skin. My guess is the former. Will have to wait and see if it grows out eventually.
It's still rather sensitive and often painful to touch. It would have been better if I had stitches as it's a very difficult area and constantly in use. Another battle scar from the sharp teeth of an iguana.

Stop the abuse!

Its not right

Of the poor apostrophe, that is. Whenever I see the little punctuation mark misused, I feel terribly sorry for the sod. You know, the apostrophe can't defend itself; it relies on the writer's knowledge on how to correctly use it. But almost every day, when reading posts on fora or tweets, in blurbs of self-published books even, I see the crime of the lofty comma being maltreated. It brings tears to my eyes and makes me wonder, dear people, what has that fella ever done to you to deserve this? And I can't help thinking if the apostrophe sometimes might feel lost there, in its position it wrongly had been placed, with no fault of its own. Is it confused, sitting there, wedged between two letters it doesn't belong? Does it cry at night, silently begging to be taken away from where it had been put by a heartless person? Maybe it wishes to have arms and legs to be able to climb into the right spot.
Please, dear people, have a heart and help to stop abusing the tiny, yet important, punctuation mark.

Typical offenders: 

Typo's.
No! Please do not misuse the apostrophe to indicate a plural. It's typos. One typo, two typos. Unless Typo is a person whose belonging (bike/car) you refer to.

Writer's website.
No! Unless you are referring to a single writer's website, it's writers' website.

Writer's retreat.
No! Unless it's only one writer to visit the retreat.

If you are still in doubt, take a look at this post: Possessive apostrophe Part One

The end in close distance: why I hate writing (novels)

Yes, I know, another moan, sorry. If it's too much, feel free to click the little cross to the upper right. That'll do nicely.
But I have to rant. As you can see from the title of this post it's about writing. Novel writing to be precise.
I know I've said I love to write and I do, but I have those moment when I don't. At all. A novel always starts with an idea, something inspired me, pops up in my head and I see the story building. Slowly, but I can literally feel the emotions, see the film. I love that stage of writing. Don't get me wrong, at that stage is no plotting involved, just a floating theme, but it's enough to open that Word document and start to type. I love the stage when the characters develop, when they come to life and surprise me. I love the challenge the genre/POV pose to me. All good. But then, I start to struggle. The reason being is that I just can't plot. I can't sit down and outline a novel from start to finish. I've tried. I've tried so many times, but I failed. Four novels and none of them was outlined. Well, the fourth novel is what gives me the biggest headache.
I've noticed a pattern, though: it's the last 10k that give me grief. Always. I normally know the ending and I have already written 70k. I always aim at 80k. Plus/minus, you know? Proper full length novel. But then I have to connect the two bits. Since I have a clear ending already when I start, there's no way I'd change it. The ending stands and I need to work towards it, tying loose ends and make it exciting on top of it.
In this case, I've written the ending months ago and had a vision on how to get there. Somehow, it had come differently than I've anticipated. My characters wouldn't have it. Me reigning them in, that is. And for the past few days I've been spitting fire, cried blood. I've whined and moaned and started to hate the book. Hate it with so much passion, I wanted to hand it over to someone to finish it. I mean it. But I can't give up either. It's a massive pickle. I'm becoming increasingly aggressive, eat far to much to stuff the anger and frustration down my throat and force myself to write.
Nothing can console me, nothing helps; not the wonderful feedback I get from the beta readers saying it's a page turner, that they can't wait to read the ending; not the satisfaction that I've already made it almost towards the end, which I didn't even think I'd manage; I don't want advice, because nothing anyone says can help me to love the book again. Not for now, at least. I don't want to step away from it, I don't want to leave the house and meet people, the book won't leave me alone anyway. I don't want to write something else, either. I just want this fucking bastard of a novel to be finished! My trouble is that I have already other stories banging on the door, demanding their way out and I would love to start on them right now. But I can't. I have to stay focussed until this baby is finished, then go back and edit.
Yes, that's pain for you.
Only when I hand it over to my proof reader, I sigh with relief, open a new Word document and begin to bleed the next story. It'll only be matter of time until I reach the hate-state again.

That's for all of you out there, who can remotely relate.