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Showing posts from February, 2016

What I read -- Jan 2016

Kind of late with this, oh well. “The Coldest Girl in Coldtown” by Holly Black. Valentina was excellent. Great opening, relentless pace. You almost need those short chapters of exposition to have a chance to breathe. On that, what is with these short, 3-page chapters of exposition? This is not a complaint. There were some in Razorhurst too, and something else I read recently. It’s just new to me. The “you can never go home again” theme, the consistency of Aidan, the not wanting to be a vampire, the ending.  “The Magician King” by Lev Grossman. I read about 40 pages and then went looking for my copy of The Magicians, to read the last chapter. I couldn’t find it so I resorted to Wikipedia. I was trying to remember when Julia had popped up again. Turns out it didn’t matter. Quentin’s part is mostly Voyage of the Dawn Treader. But we’re really here to find out what the heck with Julia anyway, and there’s plenty of that. Seriously, who names two main characters Janet and Julia?

In process January 2016

1st draft “Water Leopard”. Had roughly 22000 words at the start of the month, finished with maybe 30,000? Editing "Lucky Kate”. Had some notes but a mostly finished draft at the start of the month. Now I’m down to one paragraph that needs rewriting. "Milo". So I’d made some notes but hadn’t really changed anything. I moved a lot of s tuff ar ound beca use the plot and character in teractions were all kind of smushed at the end. “The Cicatrix Diary”. This short story needs a decent title, if nothing else. I typed up the first half and it didn’t seem that bad – kind of charming, and made some minor changes while doing that. It’s got some nice moments! Then I typed the second half and realized there was no antagonist and no plot, and the ending d id n’t really work. Fixed the plot, changed the setting because the old one added too much complication , chose a different bad guy. It is way better now. Connecting I have a plan, I just need to g