Zero Drafts And Hip Tats

I really don’t have much to report today. Yesterday was the first rock-climbing class (not mine, mine got rescheduled) and it looks like the kids are going to love it. I also visited the dentist yesterday. Big fun. They act like I’m a big baby when I insist on the nitrous, but I don’t care. It’s stressful enough enduring fillings; why suffer if I don’t have to?

Today I got the outline of the first of a pair of hip tattoos. I was kind of dreading it, but actually the hip isn’t that bad. My back was loads worse, especially around my ribs. Ouch! But the hip was ticklish-painful in a couple places, otherwise not so bad. Yes, I will probably have a couple pictures when everything heals up. I just hate looking at pictures of freshly-done tats; they look so raw. Plus, I’m pretty pale and I flush very easily (you wouldn’t think it, but I do blush at the drop of a hat) and it always looks worse on me, especially since I only get black-and-white work done.

Last but not least, I finished the zero draft of a teaser for Angel Town, the last (planned) Kismet book. I’m giving it a day to rest, polishing tomorrow, then sneaking it in under the wire for inclusion in Heaven’s Spite. Now I can turn my attention to the Selene & Nikolai short, which I planned the skeleton for yesterday. I will post more about where and how the short will appear (it will be in a print anthology if everything works out all right) as soon as we have definitive answers.

Whenever I do a short story, I usually do at least two or three “false starts” before I find the real story. Then I bang my head against the first few scenes of the real story, and finally in exasperation do a sort of halfass outline of the rest, scene by scene and planning for each scene to be 1-1.5K. Then I let the thing rest for a day, and suddenly when I go back to it everything spills out in a rush like it was just waiting for me to show up. I’ve learned not to agonize over this process too much. The false starts are frustrating, but they sometimes provide a base for other things, so I just stick them in the graveyard and be done with them.

And…that’s all the news that’s fit to print. I’m going to go back to my coffee and poking at the short story now. After that beast is zero-drafted I have a first pass on the fourth Dru book to perform, and the end of May should see me with nothing on my slate but proof pages and Angel Town.

Ahhh, that sounds like heaven. Catch you later.

PS: I am still ruminating on my next laptop possibly being a Mac. Feel free to go comment, answer questions, give me the benefit of your thinking.

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