Hatching a Novel: They're Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere!

As promised, I have a few pictures of fuzzy goodness.  Whew!  This has been a rough hatch.  I tried a few things for the first time.  Not so sure I liked them all.  My humidity wasn't right.  There is no nice way to say it.  I must have peeled shells and membranes from six or seven shrink wrapped babies.  That never happens to me.  I think it's because I tried the carton hatch method.  To keep the fat end up, I placed them in egg cartons.  I see people do it all the time.  But I use recycled paper cartons and I think they were absorbing moisture and jacking with my humidity levels. 

But I now have 13 little peepers--or the dirty baker's dozen as I like to call them.  One is still struggling, but the others are thriving so far.  My struggling peeper was the last to hatch.  Late hatchers often have problems.  Some people think that they are weaker and might not hatch in the real world without intervention.  Still, I've got some late hatch weaklings running around my yard right now, so I'll give this one a chance.  The most obnoxious baby got his picture taken because he (or she) wouldn't stop picking on a new hatchling, so I took him out and he hung out at the computer with me for a while.  Then we played papparazzi. Someone in the brooder is a screamer.  There's always one.

Peep: "OMG!  I'm flipped!  I'm upside down!  Help!  Oh!  I got back up!  Look at that!  Hey!  He pecked me!  Mom!  He did it again!  Ow!  Someone stepped on me!  OMG!  I'm upside down!"

Always one drama queen.

I'm giddy with joy that one looks exactly like my favorite hen, Blueberry.  She is a carbon copy of her mother, a fat, blue baby that was born happy.  She was an easy birth...er...hatch.

Some books hatch easier than others as well.  Mad Hatterly's 2 pecks at me in fits and starts.  I keep getting sidetracked with editing and other issues related to book 1 and my other series.  (Thank God I've got years of practice in juggling children.  I'm used to being tugged in a zillion directions at once.)  Some books just flow.  You start typing, look up, and wonder where your day went, but oh! look at all the shiny new words.  Some are late hatchers and force you to pry them out of your brain, wash them repeatedly, dry them under lamps and rewrite them until your fingers bleed.  Sorry.  I clearly need more sleep.  I try to stay in a single metaphor.

So this book is a little more labor than love at the moment.  If you will excuse me, I've got Drama Chick screeching that she's being killed and a scene that is ready to pip its shell.  One more obligatory cute pic: