Hello. Just got done chatting with Lizzie about the romance novel. Ouch! My wife is a tough critiquer, but honest. And she's going to make this novel much much better than I could have ever made it. She had some excellent, excellent comments. And she even put up with my grumping about it (I was hoping to throw it in the mail and be done with it, in my usual impatient way, but now I know I need to use this last week before the deadline to really make it better).

I also got great feedback from Jenn on the first chapter, and she had some very good points as well. So I have a ton of material to pull together from my fine readers and see if I can't create a kick-ass first chapter. I think it's possible.

I'm amazed at the amount of time these things always take. I never can budget or predict how much time for writing a story or chapter. I have yet to get into Kris Rusch's methodology of "Write-Spellcheck-Mail It". Maybe someday...

I did manage to squeeze some reading in today, after sleeping in until 12:30 or so (got up at 3 a.m. to do the massive Sunday paper, and didn't get done 'til 8 a.m., plus I hadn't gotten much sleep all week, so that's why I took such a massive power nap). I finished Nick Mamatas' Northern Gothic, an alternate history/ghost story novella. Fascinating stuff. It was nominated for the Stoker award, and deservedly so. Very intense stuff about racism and living in NYC. And he writes very differently from me, so it's always good to learn how others do it. Next up is the Philip K. Dick collection for my book review for the local paper.

And that was my day. Not much exciting stuff -- still waiting to hear back on nearly 2 dozen story subs, and still itching to finish the SF novel. One o' these days... Later!

Now Reading:
Northern Gothic, Nick Mamatas

Now Playing:
"Back Porch Music," WUNC

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