All for You

Saturday, and it’s lovely to have it be the weekend again. Huzzah!

I finished “Never Kiss a Stranger” last night after the gym, which made me extremely happy. It’s slightly less than twenty thousand words, and it needs a lot of work before anyone else will ever be allowed to see it, but that’s two novellas down, and as they sit right now that means the collection sits at around forty thousand words; halfway done. Huzzah! This makes me quite happy, frankly. I had thought I’d finish it over the course of this weekend, and having it finished already means I have the weekend free to do some other things, other writing. Reading and cleaning, definitely.

So, the first part of the final line edit of Bury Me in Shadows dropped into my inbox last night, and so I skim-read it last night in my easy chair while we watched a few episodes of Happy Endings–which was quite funny, although some episodes missed the mark; I am really surprised it only lasted three seasons–and having NOT read it in months, I was relatively pleased with it. It’s much better than I remembered, to be honest, and it flows really well, and it feels like I nailed the main character’s voice. The mood seems right, too. This is quite a relief, frankly. One of the hardest parts of writing anything, for me at least, is the contempt that familiarity brings in its wake. I am so roundly sick of everything I write by the time I turn it in I literally have no concept as to whether it’s any good or not, if I got the mood and the characters right, if it flows…so inevitably there’s always that moment when I hit send on the email with the manuscript attached where I have that fleeting thought this could be the last nail in the coffin of your career. So, it was quite a relief last night to read the first third of it, post line edit clean-up, and realize, hey, this is really pretty good. I am kind of proud of this book, and hope my readers like it, too.

I’m also pretty pleased with myself for finishing “Never Kiss a Stranger” last night. As opposed to “Festival of the Redeemer”, I knew what the ending for this one was going to be–the question was how to get there. (“Festival” I only had a vague idea of what the end would be, but the proper ending revealed itself to me as I got closer to the end, and I am pretty happy with its ending as well.) Both stories are going to need significant edits and revisions–I suspect there are a ridiculous amount of run-on sentences to break up; paragraphs that need to be moved; scenes to be strengthened; and maybe even a scene or two that need to be added. I also want to revise “The Sound of Snow Falling” this weekend; possibly write a chapter of Chlorine, and get to work on either the next novella, or another story (for some reason, “Parlor Tricks” has been hanging out in my frontal lobe this past week); I definitely want to finish reading Bath Haus so I can move on to Razorblade Tears.

I also slept rather well last night–I even slept in a little later than usual this morning, which was not only a surprise but a very pleasant one. We watched Fear Street 1978 last night, which was a lot of fun (the first was better, but it also set a pretty high bar), and next week the final episode, Fear Street 1666, drops, which should also be a lot of fun. I read a lot of the Fear Street books back in the day–they were fun–and R. L. Stine, whom I finally got to meet a few years back, was quite a lovely man; very gracious and kind (which was really nice; it’s awful when you meet someone whose work you admire and they turn out to be horrible).

Looking around the apartment this morning as I sit here, slurping coffee and scarfing down coffee cake, there’s also a lot of cleaning that needs to be done around here, too. I have errands to run later–getting the mail; picking up a book at the library; possibly stopping around Uptown to take pictures; possibly stopping to get a few things at the grocery store–but for now, I am content to just sit here and write this and drink my morning coffee, and bask in the glow of being well-rested as the caffeine slowly clears the cobwebs inside my head. Paul is going to the office this afternoon, which is a prime opportunity for me to get some more writing done rather than wasting time watching videos on Youtube (which has become my go-to when I am too tired to focus on anything or don’t want to commit to watching a movie or something)–I love the Kings and Generals channel; I watched some great videos of theirs on the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, which is the starting point for a stand-alone Colin book I’ve always wanted to write (I know, I know–but I’ve always wanted to do a Colin stand alone which is an action-adventure thriller along the lines of Indiana Jones or Dirk Pitt; I’ve had this idea since the late 1980’s, and after creating the character of Colin I realized he was the perfect lead for this story, should I ever get around to it…and then I think, wouldn’t it be fun to do a series of books about Colin’s capers while he’s away? And then think, but part of what makes him so fun is that he is kind of an international. man of mystery and then but he still would be that to Scotty, just not to the readers…and yeah, you see how this goes)–so who knows what will happen today? Tomorrow I definitely have to go to the gym and have a good workout; I enjoyed last night’s work out but the problem with those week night workouts is there’s always too many other people there, which I have never liked…so Sunday’s workout is inevitably the best one of the week.

And on that note, I should probably get to work else I will wind up wasting the day. Have a happy Saturday, Constant Reader!