anachred

I'm down to only 2 queries out now--I need to send out some paper ones, research up a handful more names. This is boring, as updates go, but I thought it probably ought to be said. I have 5 rejections on the wall (whoa, Hanson ambush...) and one invisible one floating around somewhere.

Something new about this stage is being able to look at the manuscript and think, This is the best thing I can make it.

When I was talking with my mother the other day about the rejection stats, she began to bring up the possibility that I need to revise, tweak those first pages...
and without feeling defensive or guilty, I said:

No.
Those pages represent the book that it is. They are as good as I can get them by myself.

Both cool and scary to have brought a project to that point for the first time.



This guy is now looking at me on my desk.
Dear. You *know* you ought to be revising that last bit of the series.
Don't make me call Birch, now, hmm?


ozark_hoodlums was updated today, starting Chapter 2: Crime in a Land of Vigilantes

Today the whole first chapter of Ozark Hoodlums is up!

RECAP: this is my Robin Hood retelling, set after the Industrial America crashes. I am posting it as an online serial, at ozark_hoodlums

Teaser:

Riley was used to having hunters cut across their land, so when a boy with a sun-burnt nose and frizzed-out curly hair came squirming out of the bush, a pistol held out in front of him, she was going to ask what he was after, groundhogs? She hesitated because of the expression on his face. Then he walked toward her, barrel extended in her direction, and the humor of it died.

“Look, you need to come with me,” he said.
She stood up slowly.
“What?”
“Get up, and walk toward the pond.”
“Please,” she said, panicking. “I don’t even know you. What do you want?”
“Listen, I need you to just come with me. I’m in trouble, I need safe-passage. No one’s going to hurt me if I have you, and I have to get out of here. I’m not going to touch you.”

This was ridiculous—not “touching” someone had to include not pointing guns at their head. She went, though. What else could she do?

He looked scared himself.

Read On...


Housekeeping 401

( a humorous letter on taking over the housekeeping & homeschooling )


ETA:


This is one half of Mirkwood. The two plys are now done, ready to be put together...

A Plug

I'm starting a new project: writing my Robin Hood retelling as an online-serial. For a brief description:

Ozark Hoodlums: a tale of truck-banditry and communes

Set on the American continent after the fall of our unsustainable industrial infrastracture. (Yeah...)



Riley is kidnapped by a boy her own age at gunpoint. She's shoved into a car, when she's never been in a running one before, and her captor threatens her life to make men blockading his escape-route let him by.

Piper is going to be lynched for stealing and selling the town's last treasured Advil. In a society hording the last remnants of medicine, it's an offense that puts people beyond reason--and justice. He has to run.

The first chapter is here: Pain in Post-Industrial America

I may post about updates here, but if you like the start of it, go ahead and friend it: I don't know how often I'll update. I will be, however, employing Cut Technology to spare friends pages.

And A Reveiw

This is the book I got in the mail, from Rosemary Clement-Moore! ~ It's really pretty...and it just came out in stores!

The Splendor Falls is as much of a classic Southern Gothic (I believe there is such a thing?) as you can get with a wise-mouth modern New York narrator at the helm. It was awesome. ^_^



I wanted to hate one of the characters who acts as only a scene-antagonist (not a baddie) because she reminded me strongly of a person I don't want to have to deal with ever again. But that was not keeping me from being absorbed in the story--the opposite, really.

Taut dynamic with the main romantic interest, truly mysterious mystery (at least to Gothic know-nothing like me), and snappy humor: WIN.