Hey, this novel-reading thing, it's kind of fun. In what is surely record time, I read William Gibson's PATTERN RECOGNITION, and really enjoyed it, both the book and the reading experience itself. For me, reading Gibson is like doing little puzzles every minute, and as soon as you solve one (usually involving a character or an item and how the two are either related to each other or the setting), there are another two or three rolling your way. I liked the novel. I talk more about it in my Discussion Board.

Now I just need to get caught up on Gibson's blog archive. I stopped reading a while ago, afraid of too many spoilers. Plus I wasn't getting any of the references, anyway.

It was fun reading him, and he's made me think a lot about writing styles and way to look at the world. And adding DETAILS. I will will will cure myself of my minimalist ways. People don't want to read Raymond Carver unless Raymond Carver wrote it, okay?

So now I'm hungry for a new book to read, and I'm waffling between THE SCAR by Mieville, which I know I'll dig, or THE PORTRAIT OF MRS CHARBUQUE by Jeffrey Ford. I may dive into the Ford novel, just for kicks -- he read a passage of that at his reading and I was suitably impressed.

Speaking of other authors' works, and works-in-progress, check out some short snippets of some WIPs here. Some cool stuff there. I was foolish enough to post something there myself, next to the Real Writers. But I'd been tweaking the opening to the SF novel this morning and wanted to put it up there as a reward.

I think I may have figured out a way to fix that novel, by the way. It involves undoing some of my drastic changes, and basically rewriting the entire last act. This is a good thing, I think.

I'm also doing some back-burner thinking about a young adult SF novel that takes place in the same setting as my story "Working the Game." I think there's more stories to tell from that version of future Raleigh, picking up after the main character in the story has moved on. I'm psyched about it, and I think it'll be the next novel project, which I'm hoping to start drafting in September (after the SF novel and Blackbeard novels are fixed up). So if anyone's up for a September Novel-Writing Dare...

Finally, here's a nifty page worth reading about -- a collaborative story/anthology entitled "House with 87 Cabinets." I'm still working my way through all the details, but it looks like fun. Each author gets to write about one of the 87 cabinets.

So much to read, so little time. And me with a $30 post-birthday Borders gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket...