urk.

Down Into Darkness: A Retrievers Novel

A slow week, tied up with other freelancy stuff and slogging into the first read-through. It may suck. It may not. I no longer have any ability to judge. Time to write the last chapter and call it a (very) rough draft.

I have so much work to do, I keep hearing Roy Scheider saying "we're going to need a bigger boat." So far, no shark bites in the hull. So far.


Also, Harriet Kausner was spotted doing her usual mangling of the plot and alleged review drive-by for Burning Bridges, so I guess galleys have gone out. (ETA: yes, she liked it. Although I'm not sure what book she read, based on her plot description...)


My favorite quote of the day: "I'd sum up my 22-year career with the following quote: 'What the hell was that?'"

sundry snowing down on various

After a drive up that was just run of the mill snow-falling-sideways, except for the moment when I realized that my driver's side wiper blade hadn't quite made it through the winter, I am now comfortably settled in the Marriot with a large dose of caffeine and a freshly-made chicken ceasar wrap.

Marriot loves me very very much. They gave me a riverside room, which has (duh) a view of the river. Which, with the snow coming down, is a lovely sight. There is also a balcony large enough for several chairs and a table, but it's Too Damn Cold to go out there.

And now I settle in for a few hours of work before I have to go Be Familial and Observant. After which we will have Chinese food. Yay for the Assimilated Eastern American Jew! *grin*


Meanwhile, lifted this from Another Place, excerpting a book I now have to go buy, Walter Mosley's This is the Year You Write Your Novel.

"A novel is a novel is a novel. A crime story is a novel. A romance is a novel. A book about aliens that came to Earth millennia ago and made us what we are is also a novel... All novels have similar elements...

"In these ways all novels are the same, but if you take on the task of writing inside a particular genre, you will do well to pay attention to the conventions of that kind of book."

"If you take on a genre, you should know something about the form, but you shouldn't let the form gain greater imortance than the novel itself."

(pp. 97-98)


Wise words. I might disagree about how much you should know about the form you write in, but that does not negate the usefulness of the advice.

and some late-breaking happy news...

late orders came in for BURNING BRIDGES and they upped the initial run.

*is pleased*


(and I just realized that may have been written in publisherese. Everyone grok?)