Blessed and Mundane

I have news! "The Wingie" is slated for The Town Drunk's October issue. I love the timing on this: I wrote this story when Mads was about six months old, and now it's seeing the light of day as Isaac hits the same point.  I'm delighted to have sold it to The Town Drunk. It's one of my favorite short story venues, and I wrote the story with them in mind.

I sent Chapter Two off to the writing group last night, which leaves me feeling like I've accomplished something more than I expected to for the week. It's so rough that I cringed as I sent it, but I needed someone else to look at it before I could go any further. I'm leaving chapter one until I've finished the rest of this draft- the bones are there, but I'll need some of the later details before I'm comfortable adding the flesh.

I kept less than 15k words from the Solace's first draft and while the first third of the book is roughly the same, the rest will be all new. Radical plot and setting changes will do that. I'm struggling with the structure and juggling two very different voices and trying to keep up with research that comes out faster than I can read it. I keep waiting for the bits that render the whole book pointless. Then I can have a good cry and move on to the next one.

I'm still not sure I'm up to this book, yet. AUCTIONEER is looking more and more tempting, and has so much more shiny and so much less hard. That's what's really holding me back with SOLACE. Writing about grief and forgiveness is hard. Writing about art and aliens and flirtation? Not hard. Pure fun.

Next task: Chapter Three, with a cameo and the beginning of the sequel's set up. There is no sequel, but just in case.