Steadily improving though still sniffly, thanks for asking. Actually made it out of the house and to work for a few hours so that's a definite improvement, even if everyone told me how terrible I looked and didn't bat an eyelash when I left early. I feel it'll be all better tomorrow, after a 5:30 session on the recumbent bike, life will be good. That's my story.

I spent much of my time yesterday rereading The Jane Austen Book Club. Oh, it improves with rereading and that's saying quite a lot. I caught several things I missed the first time around, and just generally went slower and appreciated every sentence, rather than reading it hungrily. It's such a good book. You can pre-order from Powell's or Amazon at the above link, and why wouldn't you? It's out in April. So very soon. Yay!

Bonny Doon Vineyard is running a competion with some very cool prizes, including lots of free wine (we sadly live in a place that hates us and won't allow wine to be shipped to us). All you have to do is:

Authors should parody a great poem, song, libretto or famous passage from a novel or essay. English only please. All submissions must include references to: at least one Bonny Doon wine (extra kudos for each additional Bonny Doon wine included), a cigar, & a spaceship. Even more kudos if you work in a reference to “The unfortunate incident with the kilt.”

More info at the Bonny Doon website. (Thx, Gavin!)

There's an interesting interview with Bruce Machart, author of the current One Story story "What You're Walking Around Without." As always, its about the story. (Yes, highly recommend One Story -- I'm behind, but it'll still only take me an hour or two to catch up. That's a good magazine subscription.)

Anyway, Bruce has the following to say about point of view in the story:

I'm fascinated by the possibilities of point-of-view, and I've been particularly curious about second person for the last few years. It struck me a while back that most writers use second person the way we all use it colloquially, as a defense mechanism for a first-person speaker who, for emotional or psychological reasons, is distancing himself from his own story. Lorrie Moore, Pam Houston, and David Foster Wallace have all done this kind of second person beautifully. But I've begun to see other interesting possibilities. There's no reason, for instance, that a second-person narrator can't (or shouldn't) be more akin to a third-person narrator than to a first-person narrator. The mode is just so full of opportunities. But this isn't, of course, a second-person narrator. It's a third person story, one in which second person language is used periodically by the narrator, and I wanted a narrator powerful enough to do that, an omnipotent—rather than omniscient—third person, if you will. I wanted a narrator with the power to implicate the reader, and to do so explicitly without sounding too didactic.

And Max Adams has launched (yes, another one) a new site about writing, focused on film, Write Like God. Make sure you check out the T-shirts, which are hilarious and wonderful.

Colby is such a goody goody smarmface. Gah. (YAY! They just voted him out.)

Anyone interested in an actual Jane Austen book club? I feel the need to read them.

worm: Jane Austen

today's fave post: "Bodies" at twinkle twinkle blah blah blah etc.

namecheck: Karen Joy "Genius" Fowler