Okay, I’ve twisted this thing around a number of different ways and I can’t get the prologue/epilogue to fit around A Difficult Dinner. It’s an idea I liked, but it was an after thought and was never really integral to the story. I’m going to drop the idea and call it done.

I’m going to put this thing to bed for six weeks. That’ll give me some distance from it and allow me to get a good start on Sitting Duct. I know that when I pull it out to do the editing that I’m going to have quite a job on my hands. I don’t exactly write finished copy. But the idea is for me to just keep plowing forward to get the story down. I’ve had far to many 30-page false starts because of going back and editing while I write. The outline really helps to keep me on track.

A Difficult Dinner, first draft done. Sitting Duct, starting tomorrow with a thousand words a day. Tonights writing, probably 1,500-2,000 words that I didn’t keep.

Is it done? Yes and no. I finished the story this weekend. It’s all finished at 118,981 words. But after giving some more thought to the whole idea of adding a prologue and an epilogue, I’ve decided that such an endeavor would be a good addition to the story. I’m going to do both from the point of view of Matthias, my main vampire character. I’ll whip those up tomorrow night. They should add another 1,000-2,000 words to the story.

Also, I’ve got a couple things I want to add to Chapter 13 and take out of Chapter 28 before I put it away for it’s six-week nap.

Weekend writing, 4,676 words.

Managed to get new 1,052 words last night done on the manuscript. That brings the total up to 114,305. I’m going to really go at it tonight after Karin’s birthday party and again tomorrow morning. I still think it’ll be done this weekend.

Also, I recieved a nice note from Holly Lisle today in my email. Thanks Holly. But she pointed out that my comments aren’t working. I checked and it seems that the preview works, but the actual post doesn’t. I looked at it, but I didn’t see an obvious problem and right now I don’t have time to look at it. I’ll get that fixed as soon as I can (Probably at work on Monday). So in the meantime if you want to leave a comment you’ll have to do it in the guestbook or send me an email.

I finished listening to Donald E. Westlake’s Road to Ruin on CD. I have mixed feelings about this one. Parts I liked. Parts I didn’t. Overall I felt like it would have made a good movie. I think I’d listen to another one of his books. Now I’ve moved on to Birthright by Nora Roberts, this one seems like its really out of my usual reading spectrum. I wish they made more fantasy audio books. Oh well, I’ve got to go to the store and buy paper plates. Later.

Wham! 422 words and then full stop. Chapter thirteen is bugging me. This would not be a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that I’m on chapter twenty-eight. But thirteen is an important one and it ties almost directly to twenty-eight. So last night was full of maps and images, figuring out how to rewrite the scene on the boat so that I can do all the exposition I want to do and make the fight/escape as logical and plausable as I can. And fretting about chapter thirteen.

I’m not worried that it won’t get done. I’m just worried that I’ve not given enough to the reader back in the middle. I’ve asked Doug to take a look at it. He’s familiar with the story idea and maybe he can point out the part that’s bothering me. Because I don’t seem to be able to see it.

Total word count stands at 113,253.

So I came in last night as Tasha and Karin were getting home and Tasha tells me they’ve been out looking at guitars and such because Karin wants to learn to play. There was a moment of hesitation (I’ve seen what the kids have done to the computers I’ve given them) before I offered up my unused, but very nice Charvel and Crate amp.

See, when my first wife and I were dating, back when I was young and full of everything (1989ish) I used to write song lyrics. I also dreamed of putting those lyrics to music. In order to further my ambition, the ex bought me a guitar to learn to play. It was a nice, red Charvel electric. I think it was around $400 which seemed like a lot to spend for something I didn’t know how to play. I learned a few cords, but never got good enough to play even a single song and it went into the closet.

I’ve held onto that guitar for years. Always telling myself that I’ll take the time to learn to play it. I never have, and probably never will. So I was hesitant to give it up. It’s mine and leave my stuff alone.

But that’s selfish. If the girl wants to learn, more power too her.

I resisted the urge to attach all sorts of conditions to letting her use the guitar. Don’t draw on it. Don’t wreck it. Treat it nicely. But in the end I said nothing and just gave it to her. Letting go is hard sometimes. It’s hers now, I know that. I knew that when I gave it to her.

I have suspicions about what will happen to it, but I hope for the best. Besides, when I opened the case it was pretty obvious that oner or more of the little devils had been playing with it already. A broken string, a missing volume knob, and a big chip out of the neck. That all made it a little easier to give up.

So happy birthday Karin. I’ve given her my guitar, amp, and the how-to-play books. I hope she has better luck than I did. She seemed to be very happy about the whole thing. Sometimes being a dad is great.

Just want to send a birthday shout out to my daughter, Karin. She’s 15 today.

I didn’t get around to putting a post up yesterday, but things are going well. My hero has figured out where the vampires are. His plan to surprise them failed because of the treachery of his vampire cohort. After being captured and brought on board the biggest, baddest vampire’s yacht he managed to find the girl, but their escape plan was foiled. Things seem to have gone from bad to worse. But it’s good for the story. Two more chapters should do it. One to bring this all to a climax and one to wrap things up (not sure if that’ll take a whole chapter or not?).

Doug and Joel think I should add a prologue and an epilogue in a whole other voice and from a different point of view…. I like the idea, but I’ll have to write it and see how it works out.

So the count stands at 3,650 words over the last two nights. Total word count, 112,831.

Lets say you’ve lost some weight, your novel is coming to completion, and you’ve just had LASIK done on you eyes. Everything is coming up roses and you’re feeling a little bit cocky, what could possibly bring you crashing back into the cold reality of life. Dog poop. Yes, I said dog poop. Saturday was a perfect day, cold and dry, to pick up dog poop and boy did I end up with a lot of it. Once the snow melted it was everywhere. Good thing I got it picked up on Saturday, because we had a 3-6 inch snow fall on Sunday.

Another day and I could have ignored it for another week. Oh well, it’s done now. Moving on.

Went to the Michigan vs. Notre Dame hockey game on Saturday night with Denis. Got to send him some kudos for passing the ticket along. Michigan won, 6-3. Michigan came out strong, looked weak in the second, and then seemed to get it back together in the third. It was a good time.

George showed me the webservice that he is using to keep track of his RSS feeds, Bloglines. I like it. In particular I like that I can get to it from any machine I might be at. That’s the beauty of a web-based service. It also offers some other features like My Blog, blogrolling, and a blog search, but I’m mainly enammored with the concept of having one page that shows me which of the blogs I read have been updated.

There wasn’t any writing this weekend, but I’m going to get back on the ball and get back to it tonight. The plan is to have the first draft done by the end of the week. The end of the month at the latest.

My hero, Thane, is beginning to pull it all together. He’s growing and changing, realizing that this is the big one. The one that determines if he’s a man or a monster. If he wants to save Sherice, he’s going to have to go in with a plan. Because if he uses his usual ‘damn the torpedoes’ methods he’s going to get them both killed. And he doesn’t want that to happen. The climax is coming along nicely. I’m in a good position to finish this one by the end of the month. That’ll give me Sunday to polish up my outline for Sitting Duct before starting on it Monday.

Finished writing tonight with 1,069 new words. That brings the total word count up to 109,181.

I installed GreymatterAntiSpamHack so unwanted comments should no longer be a problem. Pondering’s now has Comment Throttling, to prevent a user on a given IP from posting too frequently in succession; Link Checking, to eliminate excessive links in a comment; and best of all a Black List, basically MT-Blacklist for Greymatter, to detectd suspect content. We’ll see how this works out. Comment away.

Also, I added some links on the front page that had been requested by a few people, reformated the Writing page a bit (though I still haven’t gone through and made sure those docs were edited prior to posting), and I removed the Forums.

Yesterday was a wasted day. I took the day off work because of this ongoing attack of gout. I hadn’t been able to sleep the night before and I slept fitfully through the day. In order to stay off my sore foot I stayed in bed most of the rest of the evening. I did get up and answer some emails, but decided that wasn’t a good idea and went back to bed.

So no writing was done last night, but I did figure out how I’m going to start the next scene. Which is good, because I always have a hard time when I leave the writing at a scene break. It’s always easier to come back to a scene in progress than to try and start from scratch. Well, it is for me anyway.

I did finish reading The Gap Into Conflict: The Real Story yesterday. I think it’s pretty telling that Steven Donaldson spends 20 pages at the end of the book explaining himself. I can’t say I enjoyed it. The writing was good and the pacing was good, but I just don’t want to read about a man raping and abusing a woman for 200 pages. I don’t think I’ll be reading the rest of that series. Also, I finished listening to Rainbow Mars. All I can really say about that is ‘eh’. Some of the ideas were neat and at times I liked a couple of the characters, but for the most part it seemed weak in character and dialog.

I gave Witching Moon by Rebecca York to Tasha for Christmas in 2003(I think). She never read it, but I think I’m going to give it a try. I realized after I was two chapters in that it’s book three in the series, but I’m going to keep going. If i like it I’ll go back and read the first two. So far I’m waiting to be convinced that lycanthropes are as cool as vampires, not sure if she’ll be able to convince me that they are.

I think I might be. The end is in sight and all of the sudden I can’t get more than 500 words a night done.

Word count now stands at 108,112 words. I started on chapter 27, but I just can’t get the words to flow. Setting it aside for a week was a mistake, but it was a mistake that couldn’t be helped. What with the eye surgery and all.

Well, I’m done for now. I’ll try to get a good block of it done again tomorrow.