Thursday, June 21, 2007

The End

Yesterday I finished writing a book I call Avalanche, the fourth book in The Wild Life Series in Norway and Sweden. It's due there in August so it should be ready in time.

It's tough ending a book. There's such a feeling of dissatisfaction for me ,knowing the perfect version in my head is now an imperfect version on paper that needs to be re read and rewritten over and over.

I reread it today and found some astounding date and day errors. This kind of stuff always happens. As you reread you mark what day it is on a paper, then suddenly you're really into the content and forget to mark that the day has changed when characters go to bed and/or wake up.

So tonight I made more adjustments, making sure clues that I had inserted are reaped when solving the mystery.

Tomorrow I need to review the subplot, the romantic element. I'm sure that that problem gets solved way too early and needs to be stretched out.
For the most part the real rewriting will be after other writers have read the manuscript and commented on it.

Time for some creative panic now. What if something major is wrong? To complicate life a coworker at my magazine is seriously ill. I know I may have to jump in and write and edit things that I've never had to before. But her illness also wants to make me "seize the day" and not work myself to death.

My best hope is that Avalanche is sound structurally.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Clean Fishbowl, Clean Puppy, Father's Day Lobster.

I've been looking at our poor sad Beta triplets and saying I really must clean their bowls for the longest time. They are beautiful fish and ask so little. Just the occasional speck of food and clean water say once a month.

But it's a life threatening situation for them too. They don't like to be dumped into the sink, they don't like to be fished back out. On occasion they have leaped into the air and hurtled to the hard porcelain floor. Then I have to scoop them flip/flopping around back into their clean bowls.

Today I did it. No injuries. So encouraged, I also washed the Jackapoo Mortie. He whimpered and whined the whole way through. Then for a long time after he shivered.
So I took him for lounge outside in the hot sun. Hard to shiver after that.

Next on the agenda was Father's Day supper. I heated up lobster for six, we bbq'd steak for the non shell fish lovers and enjoyed a great dinner together.