Stuff

Greetings. Lots going on in the life right now. Mostly happy stuff. Some financial frustrations, but that happens occasionally, and should be fixed soon.

Cathy just finished going over the galleys for Hunter's Moon again. We'd done it once before, but there were some new things so she did it again. I would've, but she volunteered and who am I to complain? As she put it, going over the galleys and proofreading "just sucks the joy right out of reading a good book." And it IS a good book. I know it's egotistical to say it, but I don't care.

Today she'll get back to polishing Kate. It's getting to be a much better book than the original novella -- and has really gone in a different direction than I originally intended. That's not a bad thing. It's just a fact. I know that Kate is not her favorite of the books, just as Tony isn't mine. We like different characters, just as we like different people, but it takes all kinds to make a world -- even a fictional one. Kate isn't quite as "dark" as some of the other work we've done, but I think there's a place for that too.

The draft of the new book is coming along. It, too, is going in a completely different direction than I originally intended. We'll have to see if it works. It's fairly dark. I like it, but it's meandering around a bit too much. Which, of course, means that some of it will get edited out, or more action will have to be added in. Cathy tends to write in close to final form. My first draft is just that, a draft. It's also a little tricky because it's first person from the point of view of a person with some serious mental health issues. Like I said, we'll see if it works. It's a challenge for me. If it turns out, I'll be very proud of it. If it doesn't, ah well, at least I'll have tried. I don't want to "play it safe" all of the time.

On a totally different subject, they've apparently gotten rid of the Early Adopter list on Amazon. Bummer, because we were doing really well on it, and it was helping our marketing. Still, it's exciting to know that we HAD been doing that well. And it's just as exciting that a few thorough searches have turned up places in Australia, UK, New Zealand, etc. who are already carrying the book via advance orders. SO COOL.