It's done! (Well, sort of, for now, provisionally)

Just printed out the final version of Dynamite No. 1 and after wrestling with the wretched Cubmail e-mail program also managed to send the file electronically to my agent's lovely assistant. So even though I will still need to take the packet to FedEx tomorrow morning, I am hoping I might get an OK night's sleep with a sense of accomplishment. (Probably not. One of the more peculiar things I noticed as I revised the novel is that I didn't even notice how much I gave my own insane sleeping problems to my main character. Anyone who reads this book and my last one is going to see points of commonalty and make their own deductions about the psyche of its author.... I mean, there's lots that's not me at all, in both books, but this thing of young women who are extremely bad sleepers and wish they didn't have any feelings is pretty clear across the two.)

I initially started this blog as I was finishing an earlier draft and thought I would use this to chronicle the path towards publication. Obviously that was quite premature! I am not going to post anything about the official status of this project until I actually have a publisher. But as soon as I do, this is the first place you'll see it.... I will just have to try and be patient.

My grandmother is a plainspoken north-of-England kind of a lady; I think she was always very blunt in her observations but as she progressed through her 80s she got ridiculously more blunt in a very attractive and hilarious way. (Let's just say she doesn't like my current hairstyle!) One thing she said this summer that struck me was a sort of rumination on her own temperament. She's a good listener, and has always listened quite attentively even to speakers that most people find quite maddening. "People always tell me what a patient person I am," she said. "But I'm not patient at all!" And I'll say the same myself--I think I am widely taken to be an extremely patient person, but really I'm not, I just hide my impatience better than the next person and have excessive levels of self-control.

Wish me luck...