A Fast Read ... Alert

The Read:  Heh, heh, heh.  Karen Marie Moning's series about fae [Seelie and Unseelie] running amok in Dublin gets better and better and darker.  Or, is it that Mac (the main character) is losing her Georgia peachiness or, is that naivete.  The book is 400 pages long, and I'm already 2/3s of the way through it.

Mac has a lot on her plate so far:  wondering what kind of non-human her protector is, a "romantic triangle" between the protector and a death-by-sex fae prince, the antagonism of the organized group people who can see fae who lost the Unseelie book that Mac is seeking for the protector and the fae prince ...  and that's just the "good guys".  The villains appear too, including the "Lord Master" who killed Mac's sister and brought her into the Dublin confusion.  With plotlines like this wrapped around each other, are you still in the dark about why Moning is a popular writer?

Oh, one more thread.  The MacKelters of the Highlander series make an appearance too.  They're chasing the same artifacts as Mac's protector with the intent of saving humans from the Unseelie (dark fae).  The next book should be a whopper of a show-down unless Moning draws out the action.

Blog Comments:  Victoria Strauss gives a couple commentaries about modern publishing on issues every writer should be following.

On self-publishing:  A Boulder, Colorado bookstore is selling self-published writers shelf-space for five books which they have to keep stocked by themselves.  They offer other promotion packages at higher costs, including a reading and signing gig.  --  Hey, promotion costs even if you are published by a royalty publisher. 

The other part is about Amazon doing the bullying thing by turning off their buy buttons.  I'm glad they're getting competition.  I'm not buying an electronic reader under they function like CD players.  Also, I can buy content and it's mine and I can buy it wherever and whenever I want. 

Check out what Victoria has to say at Writer Beware.  [ http://accrispin.blogspot.com/]  Piece is called "Tidbits", and there should be a link in my "useful section".

Progress:  Actually made some.  I'm 6000 words into Maren and it's only 2/3s into March.  I even know where I'm going for the next five/six chapters.  A real comfort for someone who writes by the seat of her pants.  [I think that'll be about 13,000 words total, not quite a fourth of the manuscript.]

Short Stories.  Maybe I'm starting to some responses to stories that've been sitting on editors desks since last July (09).  One was a rejection.  The other made the first cut and is still under consideration.  No, I'm not excited.  I've been a bridesmaid before.  

No, I'm not upset by the slowness.  From what I read, publishing workers are floundering in less than adequate working conditions like all the other wage-slaves in the U. S. of A ... but this isn't the place for politics.

Trivia:  The big spring snowstorm has arrived, but is melting on the road and sidewalks.  Sounds nice now, but it's supposed to snow until midnight tonight when the stuff will turn into ice.  Fortunately, we'll go out to lunch and do errands around noon.