sex hair update (but you gotta read the boring stuff first)

A funny thing happened to my book on its way to critique group. We submit up to 30 pages at a time--most of us are novelists so we push that limit--and I am (after THREE count'em THREE restarts) now prepared to submit ms pages 30-60 or thereabouts. Well, I was doing a once over and I realized, when I got past about page 58, which is a chapter close, that the really exciting stuff starts to happen after page 59. All kinds of cool shit--a strike team is assembled to go after a baddie and there's an abduction, and lots of woe and angst and and conflict, and the characters are basically miserable.

They're miserable in pages 30-60, too, but they're on an airplane from 30-40 (a plot necessity, I'm afraid--gots to get from Cambridge, England to Grand Lake, CO somehow) and there's a lot of talk. Revelationary talk. But talk, nonetheless. Ok, so it does culminate in a fire and a crucial parental rejection, but still, it's talk. Talk is cheap. That's a line of dialogue that even appears later in the book.

So anyway, I'm buttoning down the dialogue significantly. All the scenes and info must be there, but I'm doing edits like I do on a short story. The crit group will probably all say, "Why so rushed in this? The dialogue makes the scene, but they seem like they're in a hurry."

Huh. Yeah.

Did I mention I'm working on a sci fi screenplay and I'm also playing with the outline of a non-fic parenting book? The fun bit about the screenplay is I get to watch movies for research. Yea! I'm hoping to get loads of work done in the next four days cuz the sig other will be off climbing big rocks in his Jeep instead of leaning in the doorway of my study saying, "Whatcha doin?"



If anyone's keeping track of my sex hair, it's now officially blondier for summer and two inches higher than my where my bra strap would be if I had one on.

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