Blue Heaven is going great. We just finished the first rounds of critiques this morning, which means the first fifty pages of everyone's novel has been gone over with a fine toothed comb. Tomorrow we begin the full length manuscript critiques. Everyone has two full manuscript readers. Exciting, exciting.

It's a great group this year (though we miss you Jim and Mary, so much). We've had to eat at the Pump twice so far, which isn't too bad, I guess, better than last year. It's a hick bar/diner and everyone stares whenever we come in. They ask if we're the writers on the island and look highly suspicious. One of them looked like Heath Ledger, which was interesting, but the Polish houseboys who were working here last spring are gone, so all the jokes surrounding them are old.

Blue Heaven novelist Cathy Morrison has a story (her first pro publication) up at Scifiction this week. It's hilarious and charming, so go forth and read it! I'm too rushed to do an html link, so just go to scifiction, damnit.

Last year we all had drag names and goddess titles. This year, I brought these silly bags of potatoe chips from Youngstown called Rap Snack, and each one of them has a different rap character on them with a saying, like Ms. Toi tells the reader to respect themselves. Very funny. Anyway, it's set the tone and we are all having our rap names revealed. I'm Fifty-fifty. The others are much more funny, in my opinion. The Notorious Holly H., Sir Talks A Lot, Creamy T, and Lil Puppet, are just a few.

More later. Hope everyone is good.