Getting Lost in the "Read"

The Latest Read:  Romping through Simon R. Green's Just Another Judgement Day, was like a warm fuzzy homecoming -- in spite of a self-appointed vigilante deciding to clean up the Nightside.  So what if the secret part of London is a pit of depravity.  Does that mean you can't find any "good" people living there?  Does it mean the good people automatically become depraved when they don't jump ship for holier climes?  Green seems to answer those questions when John Taylor, the defender of those the system fails, survives his confrontation with God's enforcer, the Walking Man.

Frankly, I thought the Nightside series ended when the Eddie Drood series began.  Judgement Day was a welcome sight ... and there is another hardcover (#10) waiting in the wings to become a mass paperback.  Guess Green drew in a new breath of wind and set Taylor off on another series of adventures while he contends with whether or not to become the director/enforcer of Nightside when the current one (Walker) dies.

Must confess, I jumped so deeply into the story that I didn't notice the execution.  So, Green uses "was-constructs" a fair number of times.  Adverbs.  Some repetitive descriptions.  Who notices them while Green invents or morphs the nightmares of our culture into grotesqueries for Taylor's sense of humor to deflate and destroy.

Progress:  Emma.  Still revising ... and making progress.  I may very well finish the revision by the end of the month -- before I pay the bills.  Then, I have to revise again.  (The moaning you hear is coming from Maren, who is tired of waiting in the wings.)

Maren.  Sent my first draft/first chapter to my mixed critique group to discuss how to structure the thing.

Critique Groups:  Yeah, I belong to two plus one.  One is a serious speculative fiction local group.  The "one" is a very insightful young man, who I linked up with at Absolute Write.  The other group is sort of a default critique group I'm in because of a friend asked me.  I'm odd man out, but the ladies usually manage to put their fingers on things I should have noticed myself.

Demons/Britt.  Was rejected again.  Still, several queries out there.  May pitch it at the Northern Colorado Writers Conference in March.

Trivia:  Am disgusted with the US Senate.  Someone should send them back to kindergarten until they learn how to play with each other.