20 days ’til I turn 39!

Audiobook and pain — As I mentioned somewhere, working with my narrator on the files of the first TLY audiobook ate tons of my time. I had the Kindle book and the audio files open side by side, and was following every word to check for misspeaks and other spots that needed to be rerecorded. And though I listened at the fastest speed I could manage, it still took forever and got very tedious at times.

But that’s done for now. He’s rerecording stuff in response to my notes, and I suspect my next listen-through will go about ten times faster. It’ll be nice to have an audiobook version available, and I’m hoping I might even get a sale or two out of it. Meanwhile, I’ve finally been free, for the last few weekends, to work on other stuff. Though there were a couple of bad weekends in there too.

One evening, I accidentally half-dosed myself on my pain meds. This was, like, three and a half weeks ago by now, and the extra pain has still not settled. In better news, though, I have an official diagnosis of fibromyalgia now, and we’ve doubled the daily dosage on that medication. Still, I’ve been in a damn lot of pain lately, which always slows down productivity. But moving on.

Exchange fic — This story takes about three and a half hours to edit each time, so I don’t do it more than once a day. It’s coming along nicely, though. It’s a rather odd story, and I have no idea if the recipient will like it. Of course I very much hope they do, but I won’t be surprised if I get a bemused, polite “Thank you” as my sole comment XD (And, given the way my life goes, I won’t be surprised if I don’t get a comment at all XD)

His Own Humanity — I am halfway through editing Seeing Red, and I still love it soOoOo much. The developing relationship between Sano and Hajime is very sweet, and the almost-procedural setup interests me. And poor Kaoru! I do plan to have her hook up with Megumi eventually, but I don’t actually have a plot for that one yet XD Anyway, once this one’s done, there’s Fast Decisions, which shouldn’t take too long to touch up, and then I have to tackle Plastic. I can’t imagine how long that’s going to take, but it needs editing most out of all the HOH stories.

And of course I’ma post it all on AO3 as soon as each is ready, which will be a nice lead-up to Nine Decades, the first new HOH stuff in years. That’s pretty exciting. Also, having finished that ASZz part, I’m moving on in my fanfiction list to Sano and Kaoru’s Phone Log, and someday that’ll be postable too. It’s all pretty exciting.

Aku Soku Zan(za) — In the original version of this latest part, the other man’s warning to his drunken friend was successful, and they left the bar without any fight occurring. This time around, I felt that was heaping extra unkindness on Sano’s head when he’s already in the middle of some turmoil; let him have his punch to the ceiling! Beyond that, Sano has a tragic flaw in this story that’s very important in this first arc, and, though it’s been subtle, it’s already been hinted at. I wanted to take this opportunity to bring it forward a little more, because I feel like in the original it wasn’t quite fleshed out enough by the time it took center stage. I accomplished that with the new version of this scene. Plus I got to put to paper my mental image of Sano punching a guy upward into the ceiling XD

I just got a voice with a Scottish accent (my favorite accent) for the TTS app I use to listen to fanfiction and my own stuff, and I listened to this entire story in that accent. It was charming, and I’m still soOoOo pleased with how much better the rewrite is. Also that part where Katsu hugs Sano and calls him his brother still makes me tear up a little. What I’d really like is a voice with a Japanese accent, but I haven’t been able to find one. Anyway, I then moved on to Heretic’s Reward (which, after so long, is next on the list after the phone log), and that’s really fun to hear in a Scottish accent as well. Of course this interrupts the reading of my actual reading list, but whatevs. Rereading my own fanfiction FTW.

This weekend I may be able to get back onto my usual schedule. Wish me luck!