I'm at 30,000 words on Straw Doll Cries at Midnight...and it didn't take me a month and a half!

Well, okay, I had serious wordage from my Japan trip that hadn't gotten typed into the document yet, but still. This time it took only half a month.

The real test of my new-found resolve is to see if I can maintain this pace even without handwritten pages of first draft scribbled in Tokyo bread shops.

Also, if you are always on the lookout for speculative retellings of Austen (if you like Bronte you should already have picked up Tina Connolly's Ironskin-- retelling of Jane Eyre) then do I have a treat for you.

I'm caught up in the first 2/3'rds of Diana Peterfreund's For Darkness Shows the Stars and it's a very, very absorbing, interesting take on Persuasion. It's YA, it has an interesting post-apocalyptic world where only the descendants of people who refused genetic engineering really survived unscathed. Not only is it true enough to Persuasion that half the fun is identifying characters, but the emotion-strumming angst of regrets and societal restrictions are also perfectly cast.

I recommend it for lovers of the Hunger Games.

I had read Peterfreund's first novel, Rampant, and wasn't entirely enthralled. However, For Darkness Shows the Stars had me reading way past my bedtime.