Thursday, July 21, 2011

Natal update

It is my birthday today; I spent yesterday afternoon thinking intermittently of the fact that while I was sure I wouldn't be finished with BOMH today, it was strangely difficult to predict whether there would be one further day of work on it remaining or one further week of work. Very happy to be able to report twenty-four hours later that it really is only one more day I need; I've just finished an edit all the way through (including a couple of new scenes drafted for the final section), I'll type it all up tomorrow morning and then read through a hard copy with pen in hand for final corrections. Truly if everything goes as it should, I will be able to email it to my agent by the end of the day tomorrow and enjoy a guilt-free weekend...

(All this sense of urgency is largely self-created, as it is most likely that then nothing at all will happen with it for some weeks or months, but it will make me feel good to have it off my desk, and it frees me up to get back to the neglected little book on style, which I am eager to revisit. I have made a slightly wrenching but very sensible decision not to go to Ottawa after all in August; I need to stay here and concentrate on getting that other revision done before school starts.)

Light reading: Karin Slaughter's Fallen (quite good, despite a strangely unmemorable ending: I got sick of this series at some point, but it is a good example of an instance where killing off one of the main characters breathed new life into the series as a whole!); Karen Marie Moning's Bloodfever (many good things going for it, especially the lively narrative voice, but I think that may be it for me for the series: the proportion between content and pacing is off for me, so that I am basically reading the pages almost as fast as I can turn them over trying to increase the density of 'stuff' I'm getting from them, can't quite explain it but it is a strong subjective sensation I get with certain kinds of popular fiction); Megan Abbott's superb The End of Everything, which I loved; Robert J. Sawyer's pleasant enough but lightweight Frameshift, another Ottawa Chapters discount purchase.

Currently halfway through Glen Duncan's excellent The Last Werewolf: how come I never heard of this guy before?!? He has written a lot of novels, now I can get them all and while away an hour or two....

1 comment:

  1. I highly recommend I, Lucifer--I believe that was the first Duncan I read. Really looking forward to Werewolf.

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