It's Snowed! (the first of the season)

Trivia:  The big fluffy flakes are enchanting for now.  The roads are still clear.  The trees are also in full leaf.  I hope the accumulation is light enough not to break any branches -- even on the apricot whose branches block the view from my window.

Critical Reading:  On several of the forums/boards (whatever) I read, people mention they get tired of flabby series -- you know the ones were the first books are 300 pages of excitement and the tenth is 600 of, well 600 pages. 

I'm wading through one that may be overstaying its welcome.  I really loved Stephanie Laurens' early Cynster novels after my heart surgery.  She caught the mix of mystery and non-conformist Regency protagonists which made me a Georgette Heyer fan.  Laurens is now working on "minor" Cynster connections finding love in recent books.  I've found most of them a disappointment -- the one about Barnaby and Penelope being the exception.

Still, I bought the newest, Temptation and Surrender.  I'm almost 200 pages into a 500 +/- book.  At this point, I'm thinking a treasure hunt -- even for a financially-challenged MC -- is too slight a premise to carry a novel for 500 pages. It's essentially a girl-meets-boy, girl-resists-boy story at this point.  Example:  taking a page to describe a kiss?  Are American women so deprived that they crave a sensation-by-sensation read?

Why too slight a premise?   Well, the rhyme giving the clue to the treasure.  For one, it's been passed down from the 16-17th century to the 19th with out the rules of Gossip distorting it.  More important is the MC's interpretation of the the lines:  "In the highest house, of the highest ..."  While in the church on the hill, MC is thinking about the local gentry???  Give me a break, as the saying goes.  

(Only further reading will tell me if I'm all wet.  There 's got to be some twists coming down the line or the book will be bo-o-r-r-ing.  Guess I'll have to read more to see what happens.  Do I get bored or read to the end?)

PS:  I did get a copy of Realms of Fantasy at B&N.  I had to wipe the green from my face.  Read two great stories so far.  They didn't bore me.


Writing:  Life has been conspiring against me.  Like last night.  My local fantasy critique group (the three of us) were supposed to meet.  One is on vacation.  The other didn't show.  So there I sat, perched at the coffee shop with a full cup of coffee and a yellow tablet.  So I started scribbling about Maren, the protagonist of the idea I'm trying to ignore.  Got the first third of back-story into short-story done, all 500+ words.   (Yes, it has a middle and end summaries in blue ink at the end.)



Am half way done with slicing Tangled.  I'm suprised the thing is holding up -- though I have to tighten the motivations of the villien.  Still, Catsfeld is a day late but always a dollar ahead.


Emma?  I'm thinking she surrounded by a middle grade book rather than a young adult.  Rewrite anyone?  Yes, Kay.... couldn't you have seen it at the beginning?



Progress:  See above.

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?