In the muck up to my hips

The pace of life is picking up again. Saturday will be all family stuff, and three days next week will be spent on the Kansas trip, plus at least a day to prepare for it. The rest of the month should be fairly open for writing, so I’m not stressing too much. Just a little.

A couple updates:

TWISTED – The advanced reading copies are supposed to go out soon. Do not ask me for one – I don’t have any. There is a magician who works at the publisher’s office who waves a wand and the books miraculously appear on the desks of unsuspecting readers. At least, I think how that works. TWISTED will be published in March, 2007 (yes, that is 6 months from now) so I don’t expect to see reviews for a very long time.

HISTORICAL PICTURE BOOK – This was supposed to be published in the summer of 2007, but the illustrator is behind, so the release has been pushed back to Summer, 2008. For therapy, I am gnawing through medium-sized trees. No, I’m fine with this. really, it’s good. Sigh.

NEW NOVEL – I am on Day 5 of Draft 1. The book is more outlined than usual because I have to mesh the story of the main character with the historical events. Of course, the gods laugh at outlines. They laughed so hard, they wet themselves. Chapter 3 turned out to be way too packed and morphed into Chapters 3-5. Yesterday I realized that Chapters 7-10 moved too slowly, so I started hacking away at fluff to even out the pacing. Those are the chapters I’ll be working on today. Probably tomorrow, too. I must admit that despite the long hours (12 of them yesterday) I am having fun. A couple of unexpected characters have popped up, and I’m enjoying delving into the soul of my main character. I am also beginning to have a much clearer sense of the emotional impact of some of the historical events.

A big forest shout-out to Dr. Kim McCollum-Clark who is using SPEAK in a class of hers at Millersville University! (While I am at it, I will make a fool of myself and jump up and down and wave at everybody I know at Millersville. :::jumping and waving:::: Take your vitamins! Get some sleep!)

Last but not least, I have two sites for you about graphic novels: Artbomb and No Flying No Tights. Let me know what you think.

Time to start shoveling words…