A Quick Howdy

I haven’t been writing here lately, because I’ve been writing elsewhere a lot lately.  As in my latest novel.  I’m hovering around the 35000 word mark, which in the world of 80000 word novels, is, you guessed it, almost halfway done.   I’m not going to spill the beans on this one yet, but when I read what I have done, it is easily my best work ever, and I think, really freaking good.  It is coming so fast, that if I could sit down and write all day, I could knock out the final 45000 words in less than 10 days.

Because I’ve been writing, I haven’t been reading as much, though I did read John Scalzi’s ‘The Ghost Brigades’ (good book, worth the read as the sequel to Old Man’s War).

I’m also reading a book my sister-in-law’s husband gave me for Christmas last year called ‘The Devil and the Dervish’, which is translated from Bosnian, I think.  I can read four or five pages at a time, and it’s 500 pages, so it may take me a while.  It’s not exactly Grisham-esque in its pace, but it is not…bad…

I’m also reading a collection of short stories called ‘Steampunk’ to become more familiar with the genre… not that my new book has anything to do with that…, and the stories are quite interesting.

Movie-wise, we watched Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” last weekend, good movie, a trifle long at times, but so worth it to see Grace Kelly.  I admit it, I have a crush.

The weather here in the Pacific Northwest currently sucks bull testicles.  It’s that bad.  Epically bad.  Atrocious.  Rain.  Cold. Rain.  Rain.  Rain. Rain.  Rain.  Rain.  More Rain. Sun (tease), Rain.  Rain.  Rain.  You get the picture.  The least amount of sun in Seattle since 1953, and we’re an inch of rain away from the all time wettest May-June ever.  And we still have 9 days left, with rain in the forecast for every one of them.

To keep our cheery dispositions, we’ve taken to watching uplifting TV series like HBO’s Dexter (Season 2), and the current season of ‘Deadliest Catch’.  Nothing like Miami serial killers and arctic storms to make you feel good about where you are.

In other news, I will be attending the 2010 Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association Conference in July, and I will be moderating the session entitled ‘Working to a difficult deadline’ which will be given by Gordon Kirkland, a Canadian author and humorist.  Two Canadians at the front of a room full of Americans.  Last time that happened, their names were Bob and Doug Mackenzie.

Lisa is heading to Denver this weekend for her first dance competition of the year, so I’ll be alone with the little ones by myself for a few days and nights.  We haven’t broken the news to them yet (so don’t tell them), since Lorelai freaks out when Momma goes for a twenty minute walk at night.  I may be heading to the store on Saturday morning to buy a bunch of movies if the weather doesn’t cooperate.

I was going to write – write tonight, but I had to reinstall a bunch of software on my PC, so you get this update instead.  Consider yourself lucky.