A Step Forward

Last week was one of the most exhausting of the entire summer--and I'd think it would have been just the opposite. This was when the summer was supposed to have slowed down! I spent a large portion of last week trying to scare up ads for my younger daughter's feis program book, and that involved a lot of running around. A feis (pronounced "fesh") is an Irish dancing competition, and getting ads for the program book is part of how our group will meet the expenses associated with it.

On Monday I went to my chiropractor and had her look at my foot as well as my back and neck. I was expecting her to have to pull the big toe back into place since I'd corked it last Saturday. I was even expecting her to pull a few other toes back into place as well, since something had been not quite right with the middle of my foot for maybe a couple of years now. She did all that, no problem. But then she told me that she thought I was getting a bunion on that foot. That's where the big toe starts to lean over toward the other toes, and the joint at the bottom starts to form a sort of knobby protrusion which can be increasingly painful and may eventually make it hard to walk. I had no idea there was a problem. She told me that I needed to do something about it now, before it gets worse, so I went home and did some research to find out what my options are. Basically I came up with two: surgery or a brace. I choose the brace, since this thing is in such an early stage that I doubt a surgeon would even want to operate yet. (Also, I'm a wimp.) So now I get to wear a toe brace for several hours each day or night and see if I can stave off this problem getting worse. I'm ticked off about it, but as problems go, it could be a lot worse. I'll take a bunion over a fatal disease any day.

I managed to get the new scene for Chapter Ten put together. I had a hard time wrestling it into being, but now that it's mostly there I think it'll work well. It occasioned an additional reshuffling of scenes, and now I need to go through and look at all the things it rearranged so there are no timing issues--characters knowing certain things before they're supposed to, etc. But from here on out, things should go a lot more smoothly. At this rate I won't get the rewrite finished by the end of this month, but hopefully I won't have to go too far into August. I really don't want to take more than another two or three weeks on this. I'm ready for it to be done, so I can move on to the next book. (Or finish the third book of the Oantran Triad.) So, back to work for me....

Self Sabotage

Well, I finally did it. Lost a scene I'd written because I was hasty and careless. Yesterday I took the laptop to a Moxie Java and used it to reorganize Chapters 10 through 20. The trouble was, I'd already done a lot of that work on the PC at home and didn't realize it, so I ended up doing the same thing twice for no good reason. There was some benefit to it because I also made a few notes in the various chapters on the laptop that I didn't have on the desktop PC, and further refined my reorganization of 10 - 20. But my big stupid mistake came after I'd started to transfer the newly updated files from the laptop to the PC. I only had to change a few of them, and Chapter Ten on the PC contained a partial scene that the laptop did not. I thought I was being careful to transfer only things that had changed substantially on the laptop and improved the chapters in question. Then I realized that I'd overwritten the PC's Chapter Ten with the laptop's Chapter Ten--and in the process lost the partial scene that had been on the PC. Gone forever--no way to get it back. I'll never know whether the partial scene was particularly good or not, because it had been a little while since I'd read it through--but good or bad, it's gone forever. Now instead of polishing and finishing it, I have to rewrite it completely. They say that you can always fix bad writing, but you can't fix a blank page. Don't I know it! Sheesh.

Oh, and to add injury to insult, I fell asleep in the office's comfy armchair while I was waiting for a downloaded program to supposedly recover my overwritten files (starts the process but won't finish unless you buy it--very frustrating little exercise in doomed hope). Then I woke up suddenly with a sharp pain in my left big toe. Seems I'd kicked out in my sleep and whacked the toe on a fan which was on the floor in front of the chair. Hurt like a you-know-what, but didn't turn purple, so I guess it's not broken. But I've been limping all day because it hurts when I try to move it much or put any weight on it. I can walk normally, but at about a quarter of normal speed.

Apparently, I am my own worst enemy.

Power Lunch

Today (Friday) one of my Moxie crit partners and I got together for lunch and brainstorming. Both were excellent. I think we both went home with what we came for, which is always the best end to any brainstorming session--or any lunch, for that matter. I'd been spinning my wheels on this revision, but over the last two days I finally started to get a better sense of the road ahead. I think now I can finally write my way out of the corner. It's great when you have a sounding board for ideas--someone who can say, "No, that won't work because you did thus-and-such back in chapter seven," or "Don't forget, you still need to add this-or-that plot element, like we discussed last time." The input from another person always helps put things back into perspective. It's like a dress rehearsal for your wild-*** ideas before they go onto the page. Or if you're short of wild-*** ideas, then it may generate some--for all participants and all novels present at the table. That is my preferred version of a power lunch.

Conversions

My car now officially runs on ethanol. We just finished the conversion today. It has a lot more power than it used to; I like being able to accelerate faster, especially from a complete stop. They took a video of the conversion process. As soon as I have a link to the video online, I'll post it for those who are curious about what's involved. Please note that the conversion of the Ford 500 in particular is a little more complicated than most, simply because of how the car is put together and what it takes to reach the fuel injectors. The conversion process took about an hour for an experienced mechanic to do. Most conversions take a lot less time and don't necessarily require a mechanic. But then, that's Phouka for you. Can't be anything simple with this car, can it?

And of course, being Phouka, it had to pull at least one more little trick. This time it was the right rear turn signal. The Huz didn't notice when he drove it because he doesn't normally pay attention to the specific behaviors of my car, but when I drove the two of us to a movie tonight, I noticed right away that the right turn signal was going about twice as fast as the left. When we got home, we checked it out. Sure enough, the right rear turn signal main bulb is burnt out. Sigh. And we can't figure out how to get to the bulb to replace it--at least, not without the Chilton's manual. Can you imagine me having to take the car to the dealer to get a stupid bulb replaced? Argh. The kids would say "That's Pah-hooooka!"

On the writing front, I've been shuffling scenes, considering throwing out some and altering others, trying to get all the stuff from Chapter Ten through Chapter Twenty arranged so it all makes sense. I need to write a whole new scene or two for Chapter Ten. Meanwhile, the Moxie want me to throw out a scene that I thought brought an important sense of closure to one of the subplots, so I'm considering whether to throw it out in total or try to compress it a little and save the most important parts of it so it doesn't drag. I'm getting a little frustrated with this revision because without specific details on what parts really don't work in the storyline, it's feeling a lot like I'm trying to bake a cake without a recipe. The middle's soft. Okay, so I keep poking it with a toothpick, but I'm not sure which parts are baked and which parts are still doughy. Help!

Living Lean in the Forest

I just got back from a 5-day camping trip. Tent camping, not RV. We spent a good part of our second day gathering wood for the fire, cutting it, splitting it, and piling it. Now picture me at 5'0" and my husband at 5'11" on either side of an old fashioned crosscut saw, sawing away at a downed log like a pair of lumberjacks. My arms and legs hurt the next day; I woke up stiff and sore from using muscles that normally don't get a lot of exercise. Between that and pumping drinking water at a hand pump, swimming in the lake, etc., I imagine I'd soon get into amazing shape if I had to live like that for very long. Somehow I doubt the pioneers tended to be either out of shape or overweight.

Now here's the kicker: I took the laptop with me. I finished doing my paper edits for Chapter Nine and got all the edits input for Chapters Three through Nine. If I'd had another day or so, I'd probably have been able to write the new scene I think I need for Chapter Ten. With any luck, I'll be doing that tonight. But I found out that when you have a laptop running on battery power and you're limited to however many hours that battery will last, you're a lot less likely to even look at any computer games. Play a game = waste power. You get as fast and as efficient as possible. I was able to recharge the battery using an inverter and our pickup, but I only recharged twice and didn't find myself tempted to take it for granted. Also, with no internet, no email, no anything extra to waste time on, it was a lot easier for me to just dive right into the work without stopping to do other things first.

All in all it was five days of livin' lean. I am, however, very grateful right now for all the creature comforts that I usually take for granted.

The Pooka's Latest Tale

Phouka, the car, went into the shop on Friday morning and was out again by Friday afternoon. There was something wrong with the computer (and didn't I say as much two years ago when it wigged out on that trip to Portland?) As I understand it, a piece of bad code was causing the transmission to refuse to shift, even though there was nothing structurally wrong with the transmission. They re-flashed the code and now supposedly all's peachy. I swear, sometimes I hate computers. Can't live with 'em....

But I got to run errands earlier, which was good since we're about to leave town for a few days' camping. What isn't good is that my daughter brought yet another cold home, and of course after a few days' holdout, I came down with it. I'm not crazy about camping with the dregs of a cold, but will do so if necessary. If I get worse, we can always come back home. And I won't get worse, so there it is. As colds go, the one we had last month was by far the more miserable.

For the last two nights, I've worked on reading through Chapters 1 through 9 of the manuscript so I can figure out what to put in the blank Chapter Ten. From what I can tell, I've accomplished a lot of the changes I was supposed to make. I think I have an idea of what needs to happen in that blank space, so I need to check the story's calendar to make sure it fits in. Wouldn't it be a hoot if I actually came back from this camping trip with the book fully revised? Anyway, it feels good to be working on it again and know that I'm making progress. A great writing coach once told me it was more important to get it right than to get it fast, but ideally I'd prefer to do both.

Oh, and the reason I'm up so late/early is that this particular head cold isn't very conducive to sleeping lying down. If I have to make a choice between sleeping and breathing, I choose breathing.

Golden Compass

Okay, I couldn't resist this one. Who wouldn't be curious about their animal alter-ego?



You can find these at http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten is completely blank. I got to shuffling scenes, trying to address the revision points Bob and I had discussed, and somehow everything ended up getting moved out of Chapter Ten and into other places. So now I'm trying to figure out whether I really need to add anything new into that chapter, or whether everything else from Eleven on simply gets moved up to fill the gap.

I thought it might help to read through everything I have revised so far, from Chapter One on. But as soon as I started reading it, I had to start tweaking it. Dang it! I'm not sure whether it really needed tweaking, or whether I was just reading it too late at night to be properly objective. That's probably the case. I'll try again tomorrow.

We're about to go on a five-day camping trip, and of course, there's plenty to do to get ready. I was greatly tempted to just let the family go and stay at home by myself, but #1: my car's in the shop as of Friday morning, and I might not have a vehicle if I stayed in town. And #2: I promised I'd go with them. It's one of the family vs. career things, and in the long run, the family is most likely to stand by my bedside if something happens to me, so...I go camping. But I'm taking the laptop. So there! Who knows--maybe a change of scenery will jog something loose or mysteriously help me figure out whether we need to see another Colm/Brenna scene or a Niall/Colm/Brenna scene, or.... Argh!

If a tent in the forest inspires me into figuring out Chapter Ten, I'll go camping more often.

Just Life

I guess sometimes I don't post because I don't feel I have enough news on the writing front to post a good, thoughtful piece about writing. But maybe a few posts about our day-to-day life would keep the blog up to date and fill the wait between writing-specific posts.

Phouka's been at it again. Anyone who's read the posts I made back in 2005 about my Ford 500 car, Phouka, knows what I mean by that. This time it may be the computer. I don't know. You know how you need a problem to repeat enough times reliably so it can be diagnosed? Well, this is like that. The other day I went to start my car in a parking lot and it started flashing "check engine" and "check transmission" at me. All the way home, it wouldn't shift gears. Then we put it on a code reader, it flashed another nonsense code just like it did two years ago, and after we cleared the codes it behaved perfectly, shifting and everything. Then the next day, I was idling the motor in Park mode at a fast food drive-though window, (ironically at another Taco Time like two years ago) and when I went to shift it into Drive it gave a weird clunk and started flashing the same messages as the previous day. So, another drive home at 35 MPH stuck in first gear. Then I got it into my driveway, the Huz went out and messed with the clear info buttons on the steering wheel, and the next morning when he went to start it up, it was fine--started up fine, shifted fine, everything. We even took it to a meeting that evening and it behaved fine the whole time. If the transmission was shot, I'd expect that it would behave differently than this--but then, I'm no mechanic. However, it seems more like the computer is wigging out or something. Fortunately, those parts of the car are still under warranty. But I'll have to get it to wig out again so that when I take it in to the dealer, they have something to diagnose. Otherwise it's just the well-named mischievous Phouka acting up again and taking me for a wild ride. Hmph.

Otherwise, it's life as usual. Weeding the square-foot garden, putting nylon stockings on all the little apples on our tree to ward off codling moths without using pesticides...and trying to clean the house after letting it get so very disorganized during our last three hectic months of the school year. Then there's the vow renewal of a friend of ours this weekend, and a planned camping trip coming up one day soon....

And writing??? Um, going to do that now, actually. Right...now....I promise. The revision's almost done, assuming I hit all the points I knew about in the way I was supposed to.

A Good Crime Was Had by All

Okay, the silence is probably getting ominous, so it's time to squeeze a blog into the already crammed schedule.

This last weekend I attended our local mystery conference, Murder in the Grove. I took a master class on Friday from Margie Lawson. She had some interesting techniques for diagnosing and evaluating a manuscript, mostly focused on how you've handled the various story elements with regard to character emotion and highly charged emotional moments. It was a good class and certainly gave me a few new tools with which to tweak the rewrite. I also met Sharan Newman and took a class from her on Saturday--her information on research and accuracy in historical fiction was right in line with what I've always believed, and Sharan is as gracious a lady as anyone who has read her books could hope to meet.

The kids and I are about a heartbeat away from being able to mail the last of the homeschool packets for the year, and then I'll be hitting this novel revision with a sledgehammer. Next year I'll be ruthlessly dividing the schedule up into very focused blocks, which should result in my getting lots more writing time and the kids keeping pace or getting ahead with their schoolwork. Oak Meadow's such a great school program, we'd really like to be able to continue with it.

Meanwhile, onward....

Blue Moon

I'm still here, still working on the rewrite, still trying to get the kids through this school year. We're close now--just a little way to go and we're done. We even took part of today off to go and see the new Pirates movie. Good movie and lots of fun, but they left one piece of story unexplained in either a prime example of bad writing or bad editing. When I read a possible explanation online, I liked the story better. Supposedly the missing piece of information was in a deleted scene, if the rumor is at all credible. I hope it is. Seeing it on DVD will probably clear up my one objection to the script. I know it was a long movie, but sometimes the scene that gets cut is the one scene that makes sense of the whole thing. I hate it when that happens--in any medium.

I finally feel as though I might make sense of the one scene in my novel that was sort of hanging fire. I think I even managed to find the right place to include a particular detail that Bob mentioned over the phone. Now it's just a matter of finishing a couple of scenes, making little tweaks to a few others, and then taking a read-through and seeing whether the story hangs together with the changes I made.

That's about it. I didn't have a lot to blog about. I know it's been sparse lately and today's blog probably doesn't add a whole lot to the existing picture. But since I haven't been managing a blog a week lately, I figured I could at least blog once in a blue moon....

Deadlines

How many of your deadlines come from outside factors, how many are self-imposed, and how do you handle each?

The kids and I are coming smack up against the homeschool deadline for this year, which is a pseudo-flexible kind of thing. By that I mean that we're supposed to be finished with our 36-week school year by the end of this month, which gives the official correspondence teacher a couple of weeks to finish grading all the papers and assignments for the year, to get them done and grades submitted by June 15. But we've also paid for the teacher support through the end of June and can ask for additional months as we need them in case our school year needs to run longer for any reason. In the case of one kid, we may need an extra month, but in the case of the other, I hope to be done on time. We'll see. Either way, my personal deadline for this homeschool year is to be done by the end of May so I can have all summer to concentrate on writing issues, clean my house, sort through all the junk in the storage room and get things back under the illusion of control. I have no idea whether this will become reality or whether we'll end up stretching the school stuff into the summer as we have for the past two years. But I can always hope. Each summer, we gain a few more weeks of vacation time, which may or may not involve an actual vacation.

Then there's the writing deadlines. Since I don't have a publisher, my deadlines are mostly set by me and sometimes by tacit suggestions from Bob, who's a lot more realistic than I am. I have the tendency to set unrealistic deadlines, meaning I set them on a tougher schedule which I can rarely comply with in real life. For instance, I hoped to have this rewrite done by the beginning of May. Not only has that not happened, but I'm only halfway through the rewrite. Granted, there are a few extenuating circumstances, but I still feel that it should be going faster. Would I be able to go faster if I had an actual publisher's deadline to meet? Certainly it would help the family to take my writing time more seriously. But ultimately, my time management issues are my own, and I feel like I've been playing hooky. That must change, immediately. Bob can't market a book he doesn't have. And every week that goes by without the rewrite done is a week that he might have been able to make a sale for us and couldn't. So, shame on me. I must and will pull it together. I guess if that means the kids' school year drags longer into the summer, then so be it. Meshing of the schedules and getting all members of the family team to work together is a big challenge. But for me to figure out how to merge my writing into the larger family agenda is the biggest challenge yet.

I've Got a Bee In My Bonnet

This whole honeybee issue is really bugging me. I can't stop thinking about it. Every day I look at the news online, wondering what's happening with the bees. I hope they make it; I hope we all make it. But unless people wake up and begin to realize that everything we do has an effect on the environment, we may be in for a very rude awakening. I hate reading posts on the internet from naysayers who believe that they can go on spraying their pesticides, using their fossil fuels and polluting this planet without any kind of consequences. Scientific evidence says otherwise. This evidence has been available for decades. In fact, the whole ecology issue should be a no-brainer. (And yes, I did read the articles about the Varroa mites. They're getting more and more resistant to the pesticides, just like germs get resistant to antibiotics. We seem to be dealing with multiple causative factors in this bee issue, and I'm betting we need multiple solutions to solve the problem.) We've only got one planet, folks. Please, please, let's take care of it, and everything that lives on it. If we do that, then we're taking care of ourselves as well.

As to the book: no, the revisions are not finished. I scribbled as many notes as I could while talking to Bob on the phone, but other than that I'm working blind. I think I've addressed most of the issues we discussed, so we'll see what happens. I'm generally pretty strong in the revision stage; I hope that proves true this time. I guess I'm nearly halfway done. Should be closer than that, but we've had to put in some major homeschool effort in order to get finished on time. (The family got quite a bit behind while I was writing the first draft of the novel, so we've been hitting the books double-time to make up for it.) Two weeks ago both kids got sick, so we lost a lot of time there. And as part of my fifth-grader's science project, we're planting a garden. The new tomato boxes that the Huz built are going into place today, and then I can go shopping for the plants to go in them. We'll have home-grown tomatoes this year, dang it, even if I have to hand-pollinate them with a Q-tip!

Gotta go. I have assignments to make out, and maybe an hour of novel revision to do, and then I have to hit the hay because we're going to see a Spider-Man 3 matinee tomorrow.

Bee good to each other, and please send a few positive thoughts in the direction of the hives.

Earth Day and the Yellow Hummer

What could Earth Day and a Hummer possibly have in common? Well, it just so happens that the yellow Hummer in question runs on Ethanol. My husband just spent the past four days including Earth Day helping out at a local show featuring "big boy toys" like motorcycles, huge backyard grills, collapsible camper/trailers, backyard spa tubs, ATV's, the Hooters establishment, sandrails (racing dunebuggies) and other race cars in general, and, last but not least, the only Hummer in Idaho that runs on E-85.

Why ethanol? Where to start? It burns cleaner, keeps your engine squeaky clean, gives your vehicle a snappier performance (just ask the racers who've tried it--they're in raptures over the increased horsepower), and can end our dependence on foreign oil. Your car on petroleum fuel...ugh, sputter, cough, cha-ching! Your car on ethanol...vroom, vroom, feelin' good. Any questions? Check out this website and read all about it, plus take a gander at the strapping, healthy, corn-fed Hummer.

The View From the Top

Today we drove into the mountains. In part, it was so the kids could do some field work for various science assignments. The rest was probably due to the fact that we all love adventure, not to mention the fact that my husband has a 4 X 4, and he knows how to drive it. And drive it he did. Scared the **** out of me when we went down a road that turned out to have been washed out and swept by fire--I'm not sure in which order. We had to turn around in an alarmingly small space and go back to where the road had branched. There we tried the alternate route, but when we got close to the top of the mountain, we saw that the way ahead was blocked by snow. Only a short stretch looked to be blocked, but it was on a side hill, and deep enough that even with the wonder truck, we didn't dare try to make it through. So again we had to turn around and seek an alternate route. As dusk fell, we made our way back to the main highway. We eventually got home, but it wasn't by the paths we'd originally planned, and we never saw the view from the extreme top of the mountain because of the snow-blocked section of road. The view from that point was spectacular; or at least, I think it was. Maybe in the summer when the snow has melted, we'll finally be able to drive across that last bit and make it over the mountain and down the other side.

Kind of like the path to publication.

Synergy

How can it be April already, let alone a week into April?

The kids and I are booking right along on their correspondence school work. We have a few more weeks to go and a heavy workload at that; I don't know whether we'll have to drag the process into June or not. I hope not. It would be great to have a full summer off the school stuff for once, though my preference would be to do all the science for the upcoming year over the summer. That way, when it comes time to load the packets next fall, we can just reach into the file and pull the science lessons we need at the appropriate time. Or something like that.

I got a verdict from Bob about the initial draft of Beyond the Pale. Basically, it's like this: Beginning, fabulous. End, fabulous. Middle.... Don't worry, it's not toast. I just need to hike up the conflict in places, bring a few things closer to the beginning, intensify a couple of the relationships, that sort of thing. The basic storyline will stay the same, but we'll up the stakes in various ways--some subtle, some not. To tell the truth, I had the feeling that one of my villains was a bit under-utilized. I'm not sure how that happened, but he's now going to step more into the light. He should be a threat. How could a devastatingly handsome guy who isn't who he says he is not be a threat? I dropped a couple of balls without realizing it, but I'm ready to pick them up now.

I love what happens when Bob points out things I've missed in a novel. Sometimes when I finish a novel, even though I've had a crit group on point for months, we've all missed some of the forest for the trees. Just too close to the subject, I guess. Then Bob reads it and makes a couple of comments, and everything becomes clear again. It's almost always an "Oh, yeah," reaction--something I noticed once but then forgot about, or something I might have once meant to fix but then somehow didn't. A few issues take me by surprise, but after a little thought, I can see how the suggested change--or sometimes a different but similar change--will strengthen the book and take it up a notch. I don't like making mistakes, but I love what happens to the book when they're fixed.

That's where I lucked out. Not all agents are editors, and for the most part, they shouldn't have to be. But sometimes the right comment at the right time makes all the difference in the world. I don't need a lot of hand-holding and I try not to be the squeakiest wheel on the bus. However, a little bit of input can help a lot.

When you find an agent who will market your work to publishers, that's luck. But when you find an agent who refuses to settle for less than the best book he can get out of you and knows how to make that happen, that's synergy.

Change

We may end up moving this year. I hope we won't have to, because this move would come at a bad time for me; I'm busy enough as it is. I don't want to leave my friends, my house, the life I've built for myself here. And at the same time, a part of me knows it would be a great adventure to live somewhere else for a change. The east coast? The Great Lakes region? But that's so...far away. It would be a huge change for me, my kids, my elderly cat...

The Huz would be fine. His family moved a lot when he was a kid, so he's used to it. But not me. I put down roots. I lived with my grandparents in Montana for most of my life. I went to one school before college, all the way from K through 12. I moved a few times right after I started out on my own at age 18, but I've been in Boise for sixteen years. Ten of those years were spent in our starter home, and the last three years have been here, in the house I'm not sure I can bear to leave. This is the house I always dreamed about. I had a hard enough time leaving the starter home, but this...leaving this would be very, very hard. I love to travel, as long as I have my secure base to come back to. The more of myself I put into a home, the harder it is to let go.

The one thing I know for sure is that change will happen, whether or not I'm ready for it. I'm ready for some change, like publication, book tours and hard deadlines, but not for an entirely new base of operations. And what if I get the publishing contract right when we're about to move? Urk! Oh, well, bring it on. Better that than a lot of other, less constructive types of change.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

This week is always one of our busiest weeks every year. My Irish dancer daughter spends the whole day running around from one venue to another, participating in performance after performance with her dance troupe. It's a whirlwind of appearances, drives across and around town, hurried meals, flying curls and tired feet. I envy her, but I'm very, very proud of her. She's living her dream--right here, right now.

I'll also never forget the day she watched me typing for the first time and remarked, "Mama, it looks like your fingers are dancing." And so all artists make beauty in their own way....

Dance on, everyone.

Catching Up

This last couple of weeks, all I've done is catch up on things I let slide while I finished the last manuscript. The kids are enrolled in a correspondence school and have an official teacher, but for everyday intents and purposes, we function like homeschoolers. I have to get their packets ready to mail, make sure all the assignments are there, etc. Sometimes we get behind, and over the past few months, we got really behind. We'll be fine just as long as we get our work done by mid June at the latest, but we're having to make up now for some things that just didn't get done while I was lost in "book fog."

So I've had my break from writing, but it didn't really feel like a vacation. I'm starting to get antsy from not writing, and I need to get back into it soon! But I also need to take care of some of these other responsibilities as well. If it's a balancing act now, I have no idea what it'll be like once I'm published. Whatever happens, I hope it involves staff--like a housekeeper, private tutor, and personal assistant, maybe? Yeah. That'll be happening.

Follow-up To Last Tuesday

It's a small world, and the Internet has made it even smaller. Over the past few years since I first explored the web, I've corresponded with all sorts of people I might not have met otherwise. Last Tuesday the world shrank a little more, in a good way.

I mentioned a book by William Brohaugh called "Write Tight." The next day I was greatly surprised and thrilled to see that the author had noticed the mention in this blog and responded with some great news. His comments are below in bold:

Kathy, thank you for the kind and humbling comments about Write Tight. I know the author well because, um, well, I'm the author.

Write Tight is not out of print (ISI Books is the current publisher), though availability seems a mite scarce at the moment.

Good news: Especially because of your enthusiasm for the book, I'm excited to announce (and yes, this is, to the best of my knowledge, the first place it's been annnounced) that Write Tight will be coming out in paperback soon--schedule at the moment is fall 2007.

Good luck in your writing, and thanks again for your kind nod to Write Tight.

There you go, folks; you heard it here! To find out more about this great editor and author, check out his website.