I had to check and see when last I posted. It's been a busy month. I'm on the tail end of the second busy cycle for the year at work, and for some reason, problems just keep coming up to draw it out longer and longer. This does not interfere with my writing in the morning or evenings (not like the summer where I work on the train too), but interferes with me sneaking in some extra time on other projects like podcasting. That should change soon.

So, not knowing how long its been, I had to check and see what was posted last. Ah yes, the whining. Rejections continue to roll in, and I don't post about them here. When I first posted about a rejection, a lot of people said some harsh things about the agent who rejected me. Rejection is part of this industry. She wasn't cruel about it. It just was. So I don't talk about it, because that's like posting about that you just sent an email at work. That happens every day so why post about it (unless it's your commute, in which case you should post about it on Facebook so all your friends who drive or work at home can experience the crazy with you). Still, rejection is hard. No what's harder? The lack of acceptance. Give me a dozen rejections, two, three, as long as they come with that eventual and inevitable acceptance. That's not how this works, though. You get the rejections. The acceptance? Maybe. Wait and see.

Waiting is hard! It allows time for self-doubt and self-pity and then you whine on your LiveJournal. Combine that with where I was in my new manuscript. I see a trend appearing. When I get to the middle of a story, I get really whiny. lurkerwithout had to give me a smack upside the head because I was complaining how my story was shit and no one was going to read it (though if I never get a deal, no one ever will!). It seems I did the exact same thing with this new story. So all that emotion just snowballed with one another and caused a giant emo avalanche.

As for Wanted: Chosen One, I had a very good day on Thursday, not just in word count, but in story development. Things changed. A direction became clear. While I don't have it all yet, the majority of the second half of the story crystallized on Thursday. Bam!

If you haven't heard of Harper Collins' new social slush pile idea, go to Authonomy.com and check it out. This is a big idea and other houses will do the same. They've turned slush pile reading into social media networking. Readers do a lot of the job themselves. Now, of course, they can't replace unpaid interns and assistant editors who normally man the slush piles, but they can crouch on their knees in the muddy stream and find that dirty gold nugget that might have otherwise been missed. Hopeful authors wanting to get recognized by HC (and all its imprints including Eos) post a minimum of 10,000 words of their novel to the website. Others read it and "back" it, offer criticism, what have you. Depending on the quality of the backer and the number of backings, a story may be elevated in the rankings to be brought to the attention of HC editors.

Now, let's take this with a grain of salt. Anyone can post content there and let me tell you, anyone does. There is some really good stuff there. And there is some really bad stuff there. Some of that bad stuff is ranked highly. Why? Because the author knows how to network, how to game the system. So this isn't a miracle solution to find a publisher, but it is one more opportunity for your work to be seen and maybe you'll get some good feedback too. (Don't hold your breathe on that one. Most people just tell you how great it is in hopes you'll back their book too and you can go up the rankings together, lah dee dah.)

I've posted the first six chapters of Black Magic. When I'm finished with Wanted: CO, I'll shop it around first and then post it there as well. That's still a ways off. I was saying March, but I don't know. With some of the changes I figured out on Thursday, I'm now projecting 150,000 words, which is another 70k. We'll see. Good night, all.

Saturday's whining seemed to act as an emotional colonic, as I wrote 3000 words on my way into work this morning. I'll finish the day with 3500-4500 words. Not bad for a commute.

That last post was very whiny and left a sour taste in my mouth. I attribute part of that whininess to general stress (it's the second busy time of year for me and my time is being split between work, writing, podcasting, and Dragon Age in proportions that I'm not exactly pleased with). I'm at the library looking for a book to read and am very frustrated by the shelves of books that do not interest me in the slightest.

Wanted: Chosen One is not off the tracks, but it is rocking back and forth precariously. I was thrilled with the book's start, but I am now 61,000 words in and not a lot is happening. I seem to be pulling a Gabaldon, describing every step along their path. Somewhere 30,000 words ago the pace of the book slowed incredibly. Nashau also seems to be in a constant state of PMS. One minute he's happy, the next he's snapping at everyone and anyone around him. His character seems inconsistent. I try to explain this by the stress he feels at being unemployed (I know that feeling well), but that emotional state did not exist at the beginning of the book, it's odd that it should rear his head now. He's also a bit of a coward, yet he's snapping at everyone.

He seems to be an asshole when he has no right to be. Combine that with the lack of reading, and that's what set me on my rant about fantasy. Have you ever noticed that people in fantasy books are huge assholes? Even when they shouldn't be. They may be talking to the one person who can save their lives/the world. They may be speaking with someone that could kill them in an instant. But they're assholes nonetheless. This pervades fantasy video games as well.

Who the hell treats someone whose help they need so callously? The word is please. you should try using it!

So here's what's happening with Wanted. Podome and Nashau have met Bastin and Bastin has a thing going on with Jara, the second-oldest daughter of the owners of the Migrant Goose. I didn't see this relationship coming at all. It just kind of happened. Bastin hasn't been anointed CO yet and Podome is still quite insistent that it's someone else. Podome has a concussion from where a gate guard struck him and they're taking him to an apothecary.

This is all well and good except for the fact that, with the exception of Bastin escaping the Baker Boys and Nashau/Podome running away from a Cheynean assassin, there is no conflict in the story. They just bitch and tell stories.

I know what the end is. I have no idea how I'm going to get there. I just kind of keep rolling along, trying to find my way. If I keep rolling the way I am, this thing is going to balloon to 200,000 words or more. Can you imagine a 250,000-word fantasy novel without any action?

I've taken a wrong turn somewhere. I just don't know where. I don't want to go back, though. I worry that I'll just get mired in revision without making the way forward any easier (or actually making it harder).

It's He-Man's fault.

He-Man didn't begin like the cartoon character he became. He wasn't Prince Adam and his weird wizard thing Orko. He was a Conan rip off. When He-Man wasn't kicking butt, he was on the beach sunning himself on a rock. He didn't turn into some wimpy klutz. He became a pin-up model. How do I know this? Because I had the good fortune of buying He-Man when he first came out. Like any child, I wanted the toys my friends got, and when I was 4 and 5, that meant He-Man and GI Joe. I come from an incredibly conservative Catholic home and how I ever convinced my mother to let me have fantasy action figures, I'll never know. I hid any fantasy novels I read from her until I left for college, but somehow He-Man was deemed safe.

That was the seed. I loved GI Joe as much as He-Man, at the time. They spurred my imagination, but only one of them inspired my creativity. Even after my friends had moved on to better things and I resignedly boxed up my own figures (which would one day be given to my nephews as a present), that seed germinated. He-Man was why I read the Chronicles of Narnia. The Chronicles of Narnia are why I (tried to) read the Lord of the Rings. And that road took me to Tad Williams.

The Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn trilogy struck my 14-year-old self with such immense impact that I would never dream of doing anything but writing fantasy. I've grown since then. I've dabbled in science fiction, spec fic, I've written plays, thought of literary fiction. But no ideas come more readily, no words come more easily than when I'm writing fantasy.

This is strange because I hate fantasy. I don't hate fantasy, obviously. I love fantasy. I'm just tired of the tropes that seem to be regurgitated onto the page year after year. It's why I wade through George Martin's incessant description of everyone in the room. Because he breaks the mold of what is a fantasy book. Dragons, elemental people, mage orders, white robed chosen ones, magic ships, blah blah blah blah. I stand in the library looking at the bookshelf and desperately search for something that doesn't make me roll my eyes. Wiliams, Martin, Bujold...is that it? Are those the only three authors I can read?

Well, no, I enjoyed Elantris enough to finish it, which is more than I can say about other books that couldn't hold my attention longer than five pages. But still, I see so many stories told and retold. The world/kingdom/empire is ending and this plucky protagonist will discover his true power/prove his worth to this mystical order/find this mystical artifact and learn secrets of his own mysterious past along the way. These were good stories (maybe) the first time we read them. How does the fantasy industry sustain itself by telling the same stories every year?

Here's a spoiler for you. The Third World is coming to an end. What happens at the end of the series? IT ENDS! There is no plucky protagonist who saves the world. The heroes die and the Fourth World begins.

I've never had a problem with being in the minority before. People like Martin (whose use of dragons is exactly how I like it) have made a name for himself. I can too. But as I wait (maddeningly) for an agent who will want to represent me, that niggling self-doubt returns. The same stories wouldn't be told over and over again if people didn't like reading those stories. What's wrong with having magic in fantasy? It's fantasy, after all. If you don't want magic, write literary fiction. What does it mean that I could not read more than five pages of the Talisman of Shanara or two pages of the first Dresden book?

Well, it means I don't like those books and everyone has their own preferences. Yeah, I know, quit whining, Joe, you fucking drama queen. Well listen, I want to relieve some stress so this is where I do it. I know there are readers enough for my style as well. It would be nice to hear it more often. I don't care if Dresden gives TPC or Bearswarm a hard on. Any book that starts by telling me how cool its main character is is not a book I'm interested in reading. Penny Arcade's Franzibald novels seem spot on to me.

Still, I've now read everything that Bujold has written. I've read everything Williams has written (other than the Otherland series that I keep false-starting on), and I'll be old and gray before a Dance with Dragons ever comes out. So what's left? I've picked up Butcher's Furies of Calderon. I don't know why. It's either that, or go back to reading Pride and Prejudice on my Blackberry (no nook for me now that I bought for new tires).

Have you made it this far? That was a lot of whining. Apologies to Butcher for panning your novels. I'm sure you're a nice guy. I submitted to your agent, but omitted the part where I only read two pages of your novel before I gave it back. Apologies to Butcher's agent. Clearly you've done a good job at selling Jim's work. Care to take on a new author whose characters usually die at the end of his stories?

So, if you're like me, you have to be wondering one of two things. 1) Is he always this whiny? Read this journal enough and that question answers itself. Just ask LurkerWithout. 2) How does he know any of that stuff about He-Man? Well, when the figures first came out, they came with little comic books. Parents complained, of course, because parents are stupid. They said it was too dark and/or too violent. There wasn't a sorceress of Castle Grayskull, it was a ghost. And it was AWESOME. He-Man was a bad ass 24/7 whose metal armor (what little there was) could deflect lasers and other technological wonders that could otherwise overcome his manly manliness. His tiger was a bad ass tiger 24/7 and all the evil characters weren't minions of Skeletor. A lot of them were pretty damn evil all on their own. He-Man wandered the countryside and fought evil monsters and asserted his awesomeness while defending Castle Greyskull.

Those comics were some of the most influential things I've ever read in my life. It was He-Man, Vonnegut, and Williams. Put those three in a pot, stir in some angst, and you get me.

...okay, I should probably get back to writing. Want a spoiler about Wanted: Chosen One? They all die at the end. That's how I roll.

My progress fell off last week with the effort I put into launching the Game Locus Network. I've fallen into a yo-yo routine as this week is so swamped, I don't know if I'll have time to release any GLN content at all. Not the best start. Add to that, I just bought Dragon Age: Origins and my desires are being pulled in every direction. Lately I've been writing on both Saturday and Sunday, but not this weekend. This weekend was DAO. I wrote on Sunday, a decent amount if not my best, and then came home and played again.

Thankfully, I can neither podcast nor play Dragon Age on the train, so I am still getting my writing done. I just have to fight the urge to catch the flu so I can stay home and play video games. :)

I went to update the word count on the About page and noticed that I've written 21,000 words since last it was updated. That makes me happy. :)

I don't know if I'll post another excerpt after this one. This is the first seven chapters and a good start. I'm a bit wiped. I've written 14,000 words in just a few days. Every time I wondered if I should just slow down and read some more, I just kept cranking it out. The story was coming too easily to stop. Now, however, I'm going to go home and sleep. I was podcasting until 2:30 last night and I'm totally wiped. I'm shocked that I managed so a high word count for today at all. So, here are chapters 4-7. I hope you enjoy.

( Wanted: C.O. chapters 4-7 )

There is an episode "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" where DL Hughley's character Simon is talking to Matt Alby (Matt Perry) about hiring a black writer for the show. Matt, an award-winning writer, is offended that Simon believes him incapable of writing "black enough" and cracks a joke then and there to prove it. Simon says that yes that was a good joke but it never would have made it on the air because his liberal guilt would have prevented him from ever actually saying such a joke in public.

It had never been articulated to me in that way but as soon as I heard it, it hit me like a hammer. He was absolutely right. There are simply certain ethnic situations that I am incapable of writing because I would feel guilty doing so. Granted, I am not a master of urban dialect (and we're not just talking ebonics, as urban drawl changes based on the urban environment, Baltimore being different than St. Louis being different than Atlanta, etc). At the same time, I get bothered when my writing is dismissed out of hand as something I should never attempt given that I'm white. Especially when writing about St. Louis. I didn't just work down by the river. I didn't just post job openings in the River Front Times. I explored that city from neighborhood to neighborhood, I listened to the people that were around me. I watched what was happening. (I should probably stop comparing the May Day celebration on North Grand and Natural Bridge to a Nelly video because anyone that wasn't there never believes me and thinks I'm being racist.) While I certainly did not live the urban black environment (I grew up poor white, not poor black), I have more exposure to that culture than some of the black girls I've dated!

Yet when I write, I feel guilty. And when I describe what I'm trying to accomplish, I'm pre-judged.

This makes writing Jehovah's Hitlist particularly difficult. The wealthy have moved to new cities built on platforms above the old, high enough that if the oceans rise again, they won't die. The rich have segregated out all the minorities they tried to marginalize of the years, so easily accomplished because of limited resources and the right connections. Now the INner-city (really the under-city) of Denver is organized into segregated neighborhoods, creating the illusion of the stereotypes that damned them to that existence in the first place. Gang life is the only way to survive and those gangs form on neighborhood lines, the blacks in one, the poor white trash in another, Jews in another, and so on. That racism is so ingrained in a young man who's grown up knowing nothing else that he uses that terminology without any consideration to what it means or that any other epithet might be more appropriate. How difficult is it for me to intentionally put racism into my work just to create the world in which he lives. Jehovah starts the story infiltrating Hadi territory where all the Mohammeds live and thankful he doesn't have to deal with the Jew Crew or the Kendall Street Queers. I have, through all my effort, avoided the N word and I honestly don't know if I'll be able to use it, a word that I abhor when not repeating Chris Rock or Bernie Mac (again, something I should stop doing, I know).

(Of course, the Jews don't call themselves the Jew Crew, but that's neither here nor there.)

I'm setting my jaw and plowing forward and while readers won't ever know how hard it was for me to write that way and how committed I am to illustrating the ingrained horror of the guy's life, they will quite promptly and matter-of-factly dismiss that effort as the pathetic attempts of a white guy trying to write a black character. If any of them are stupid enough to say as much to my face, I may have to kick them in the teeth.

I've tried to start Jehovah's Hitlist twice before. The first time it was when I wrote the original timeline that inspired the story. SCOTUS gave W the presidency and 45 years later or so, Europe is covered in ice, the AIDS-ravaged survivors of Africa are blockaded from leaving, and Denver is ocean-front property (which lead to my first incomplete reading of 1984). The story was titled "One Nation..." I don't think I got past the second paragraph.

That eventually got shortened to "The Nation" which didn't get past the second page.

The Nation was never very inspirational as titles go (the only worse title I currently have plotted is Sepsis, which is horribly lame but very appropriate for that story). I quickly abandoned that title. Luke's reference to King having a character called the Hanged Man helped me doubt whether the story was redundant. Having seen numerous uses of Hanged Men in earlier works than King (such as The Black Company), I no longer have any qualms in using the character as I originally intended.

So, that led to the advent of Jehovah's Hitlist (a name of a Bender album I've always loved). I've decided I'll try to write this one first and so far so good. The spec fic timeline is still the foundation of the setting, but I won't include it as a preface (I think I lost it when my Vaio died years ago).

I'm past two pages. Will post chapter 1 when it's finished. I was hesitant to start, but once I got started it felt good.

If the title gets nixed by the publisher, I may suggest In(di)visible Nation, though the duality of that title may be too abstract.

So the House on Sandwich Notch Road turned out to be an itch that needed scratching. Nowthat it's been scratched, all motivation to continue is gone. What do I writen next?

In the last week I've read Horizon (sharing knife 4), the first 19 chapters of An Echo in the Bone, and the first two chapters of Moss Hart's autobiography. But I haven't written anything. What do I write?

After 6 months of nothing but Black Magic and Barbecue Sauce, finding a new project is proving difficult. I have so many I can pick from, but none that scream PICK ME!

Part of me wants to write the chapter between Omar and Cy where Cy has to explain Speech and why Omar's house burned down. That doesn't fit in the novel and I don't know if it works as a short story. It's lots of exposition. And really, shouldn't I start something new rather than dwelling on something that's finished?

I don't know. Maybe I'll read some more until there's another itch to scratch.

So an unexpected benefit of the economic downturn is that I can sit at the counter Jackie's Diner for as long as I like without taking the spot from a new customer. There aren't enough new customers to crowd me out. It being labor day weekend, you might think people are leaving town, but in fact, they're all coming in town. So, for the first time in a long while, I had to give up my seat. But all my other go-tos are closed for the holiday! Where am I going to write now?

Also, yesterday should have been 19% and today I'm at 21.7%. Moving on up! If I could find a place to write, I could do even more. Maybe Borders. I just bought three books the other day.

That last post was written on a Blackberry while I paced through North Station, waiting for the commuter train to arrive. Based on the number of errors, clearly I shouldn't pace and type. :)

Editing is going well. I've fully scrubbed the first 7 chapters, so almost 10% complete. You know when you're scrubbing the tub and you get that pool of dirty water but then you rinse it away and there is sparkling white porcelain beneath? That's what this feels like. Having finished the manuscript and fully evolved the characters' relationships, I am now able to revise the beginning and align it with those relationships. I can also seed certain character attitudes that didn't properly come across beforehand.

Once my vacation comes, I'll lay into editing more fully and see if I can't plow through more of this. I want to have a finished second draft by my birthday.

The gerand is a seuctress whose siren's song I find difficult to resist. I cast her away almost every paragraph I edit, yet still she persists.

Reading as much as I have lately, I've witnessed by best-selling, well-established authors that show don't tell isn't as hard and fast a rule as you might think it is. There is a delicate balance between the two. Having started by telling, I swung hard the other way and only showed, which created a rather bland succession of events that lacked any context. Rewriting Kayla's (wa Dawn was Christie) chapter from her perspective, I have once again swung too far back to telling. I'll find a balance eventually.

It's both intriguing and satisfying when just a small addition makes a chapter a hundred times better. It makes me happy.

I have read four books since I finished my novel, three of which I only read last year. This is a good thing. I enjoy Bujold's Miles series enough that reading the novels again is still exciting, but the stories are still fresh enough in my mind that I can focus on other things, like when she takes the time to explain through exposition and when through dialogue. Which works when and why. Her use of adverbs, and even the progression of the quality of her writing. Compare Memory with the Warrior's Apprentice and you notice a definite growth in the writer's ability.

This has exposed errors in my own decisions, errors that I aim to correct and look forward to the rounder, more complete story they will create (for all my attempts, Dawn is still a relatively two-dimensional character, even if she is no longer the damsel in distress that she was before. And Dawn has not been a fitting name. I need to find something different that isn't too exotic but not too mundane either).

So this morning I went to Jackie's and edited the first 28 pages of the manuscript. Sure there's a crapload more to do and I might be faster just typing (especially since I'll have to type all these corrections), but editing by hand has a number of benefits. It slows the process down and requires me to weigh each action and word choice. It allows me to see how those decisions are framed in a larger context (not something as easy to accomplish on a 10" screen. And I edit in red pen, so let me tell you, there's some serious humility going on when you see swaths of your text crossed out mercilessly. Chapters 1 and 2 (1 having been previously revised even [for the audio sample on my website which I guess now I'll have to revise]) took some considerable straightening. Two is in a much better place than it was before.

Chapter 3 hasn't suffered too much from corrections yet. It was originally chapter 6 and it is heartening to see how much my writing improved between 2 and 6. Hopefully that means the rest of the manuscript isn't as crappy as I sometimes felt it was.

I didn't sleep well last night. While I had more to say on the subject, thinking right now is difficult and I want to go back to the couch and play some Wii.

Bye.

I have a couple paragraphs left in the battle scene outside Weck-n-Wings. Following that, I have 5-7 chapters remaining and then I'm done. Total manuscript length will clock in around (probably just under) 110,000 words for the first draft. The chapter I skipped (chapter 51, a flashback to when Christian has kidnapped Matty and forces Cy to steal the Middlesex Chalice from the Tower of London) is 99% going to be cut. I lamented at the time that I thought the story was getting bogged down in flashbacks and that was the chapter that made me feel that way. Other than cementing the relationship between the three Speakers, it doesn't have a lot of value and I can do the same, more slowly and interspersed, in other chapters.

As part of a meme, I went back and picked a word from an early chapter (page 134 of the manuscript, around word 21,000). Holy crap is there a lot of work to do once this thing is done! Revision, revision, revision! I hope I don't have to revise so much that I break the story and can't finish it (which is what happened when I tried to revise the original short story).

Get excited! Best estimate, this baby publishes next autumn. I know that's optimistic, but dammit, I want to be optimistic right now.

Working on the chapter that was part of the original short story. Was the opening scene. Searching for salvageable bits. Holy crap this thing sucked! How did any of you read that? I should just scrap the entire thing and pretend it doesn't exist.

Having attempted to use the MBTA's commuter rail wi-fi along with my work laptop VPN, I have determined that it doesn't work. The VPN doesn't like such an unstable internet connection and just doesn't bother giving me access to my company network. This makes my work laptop little more than a word processor. A word processor that weighs a ton. I own two laptops of my own and would much rather use one of those for work if I have to. So I leave it at home so I can work from home when I want/need to.

Why is this relevant to this journal? Because that means I'm writing on the train again. Only a couple of days, so far, but they've been good days. I wrote the fight scene between Christian and Cy. I burned down Omar's house. I had Alice Henderson get all uppity with Cy without saying anything, and I dramatically changed how objects work. Before they were totally reactive. You Speak to them and they respond, otherwise they're silent (aside from the occasional expletive for humor's sake). This just didn't seem right. If they truly have their own voice, why don't they use it? It's not that Speakers give them a voice, it's just that normal humans can't understand what they're saying. So, for example, when Omar comes home from the funeral and slams the door, it was originally him slamming the door. Now it's the door shouting, "Omar's home" because a door slamming is a means of speech for it. This is most readily apparent when the house burns down. It might not be as emotionally gripping as I want to be, but I'll tidy that up on a second pass.

I'm also making Dawn Jewish and thinking of changing her name again. Her Judaism won't really matter by way of the story, just a little bit of character background for her.

With the exception of chapter 51 (a flashback chapter that demands research), I am now to the area of the book that overlaps the original short story. Seth finally confronts Cy and they have their epic stand-off at the City Museum. Weave into that Dawn, Omar, Cy's apathy toward life (which really hasn't come through as much as I thought it would) and some barbecue sauce and you have an end of a book.

I'm already at 93,299 words, though, so my 100,000 word novel is looking like it's going to be 125k. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I need to tell the story as it needs to be told. I may cut some of the flashback chapters as there are significantly more than I originally expected. We'll see what stays and what goes after I finish. The key here is, though, that I WILL finish. This is good because I would have hated to have to give up writing. I enjoy it so.

I don't carry both my work laptop and my writing Eee PC to and from work. That's just too much. I only carry the former. So with the exception of a half hour this past weekend, I haven't been doing any writing. Work has just been too busy. I've been able to focus on work without the distraction of writing, so I've gotten a lot done (a lot being two words, Ken), but no writing.

Work gave my laptop to someone else who has a "family emergency" (and those quote marks are well earned) which means I get to bring my Eee PC along again. So this morning I scrapped a planned chapter and replaced it with something infinitely better. I'm glad to see that reading Charles Stross hasn't negatively impacted my writing.

I've been cranky for a couple of weeks now and I figured it was stress from work, which it absolutely is. The longer my work hours, the shorter my fuse. But I didn't realize how much an impact not writing was having on me, and I should have given that I've experienced this in the past. I wrote a chapter (a short one) and revised the succeeding one to account for these revisions and I feel GREAT!

I need to finish a flashback chapter (chapter 51, but I need to research when Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London were built. It was originally set in these locations but I think I've now moved it early enough that neither existed yet) but all other chapters 55 and earlier are finished and I've got the first paragraph of 56. I think I might have mentioned this before, but for as much crap as I give Luke about making French jokes, I make a LOT of French jokes. It's okay to make fun of the French. They've earned it. Just do it for the right reasons. Freedom Fries was embarrassing and stupid.

Anyway, yay for today! I had delicious coffee. I'm about to have delicious oatmeal. I'll have delicious Digorno pizza for lunch (spicy chicken and I added chipotle peppers and garlic) and hopefully will kick ass at work today. I hope I can be as productive on the trip home as I was on the way into work. Should wrap things up around chapter 70 I think I estimated in an earlier post? Didn't I? Or was it 80. Either way, I'm on 56. That should tell you how close I am to the end!

I mentioned this before, but Black Magic and Barbecue Sauce was summarized as a retelling of Hancock. There is no Jason Bateman or annoying French kid, but there is a person that is outside the normal human experience and feels isolated, alone, and apathetic. There is a former wife that he can't be with (but for totally different reasons).

It's a theme not unique to Hancock but damn if I can't stop thinking about that. I started this story before Hancock was even released goddamnit!

You know, one of the things I find most satisfying is finishing I couldn't finish before. You know those chapters that are just so crappy that you have to stop writing them or they'll kill the entire process? But then yoi go back and delete stuff and go forward again and then it stops sucking and you finish it.

Yeah, that's satisfying. :) Did that this morning. Three more chapters like it and I'll head into the climax.

Wwwoooooooooooooo, the end is near!