Twirling Around

Trivia:  The leaves swirled around us while we were running around in bigger circles.  The coming cold front will probably end Charlotte Armstrong and the red rose's blooming for the year.  Want to be the zucchini survives another cold snap?

Reading:  Interrupted my Charlaine Harris reading kick.  When we learned the local museum charged to enter, we went to a bookstore to kill some time.  Ended up spending $30+ instead of $6.  One of my goodies was the hard bound Patricia Brigg's Homecoming.  Enjoyed the story though I thought the artwork too similar to the Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake one by the same publisher.  Maybe I mis-remember, but I thought there was a greater stylistic difference in paper covered comics.  (I'm sure some artists did more than one series.)  -- If I get ambitious, I might do a little research to find out.  Doubt it though.  I'm lazy in my old age.

I did finish Grave Sight, the first of Charlaine Harris' Harper Connelly series.  Must say I like her southern kick.  Also like her turn of a phrase:  "...people used to shedding authority..."  and "...shooting accusations...", to name a couple.  The who-dun-it was also intriguing though she kind of telegraphed the ending when she mentioned the sheet of paper with the blood types.  No evil master-minds here, just bunglers trying to hide their mistakes by digging themselves deeper into the mess.  Harris satisfies my interest in small group dynamics.  Also, her main character got struck by lightening to gain her ability to locate the dead.  Nice to see the different character twist.


Grave Sight was published in 2005 after Harris published multiple books.   Maybe sales give you permission to use lots and lots of passive tenses.  Or, maybe passives are an easy target for critiquers on the boards, like adverbs, and editors don't necessarily throw up their hands in horror when they see a passive.  Is there a "do want I say and not what I do" phenom in publishing as well as parenting? 


Writing:  Plodding along.  Can't fine tune my writing schedule though.  The problem of "what to do when" disappears only to reappear.   I'm getting Tangled chopped, but progress on Emma is slow.  I'm going to try working on Emma in the mornings to see if I can get more words written at a sitting.

Progress:  1500 words chopped from chapter 8 of Tangled.  Maybe, thanks to my critiquers, I'm learning to catch all my duplicate descriptions.  I'll probably remain too wordy for current publishing standards.

Question:  If I write fantasy, why do I read so much mystery?