Friday Follies

This post is going to be kind of a mishmash of stuff with no great unifying theme, so bear with me. Keep in mind that I spent 16 hours either working or on planes/in airports on Wednesday and then all of yesterday fighting a monstrous, sleep-deprivation headache, so I'm still a little disjointed.

Next Friday, Lacey and Darcy are coming here to San Diego for our first ever critique partner retreat, and we are all looking forward to it. Of course, we've all also been working madly to get our manuscripts to a point where we can provide one another with meaningful input. And that means finishing this week so we all have a week to read through each other's stuff before the retreat.

To that end, I completed my first pass through Living In Sin late yesterday afternoon. It's still too long (a little over 116,000 words), but I did manage to whittle it down by about 10,000 words out of it while adding some stuff that wrapped up some previously unresolved plot points. There are a few scenes that could probably be eliminated or collapsed into other scenes, but I thought I'd make Lacey and Darcy (and Erica, who won't be coming to the retreat but will be reading and commenting) do the hard work and figure out which ones and how, LOL!

The other thing I've been working on for the past few weeks (which I debated mentioning on the blog because I wasn't sure I wanted to make it "public" if it sells, but in the end, I'm just to gabby not to tell!) was a "quickie" erotica for Ellora's Cave. Annie Dean mentioned the call for submissions on the Naughty Nuptials theme, due February 1, and issued something of a challenge to those of us who read her blog. I wasn't sure I'd be able to come up with an idea, but within 48 hours of reading the submission guidelines, a story presented itself to me and once that happens, all bets are off.

I wrote Carnally Ever After, a Regency-set short story (the mandated length is 10,000 to 15,000 words; my story clocked in at a little under 14,600 words), in just under two weeks, and, after making a few changes based on critiques from the ever-wonderful Darcy, Erica, Lacey, and Leigh, submitted it to Ellora's Cave on Wednesday morning. Publication date is June of 2007, so I should hear something by late May at the outside, I'd expect. We'll see what happens, and it was fun to write, however it turns out!

In other, completely writing-unrelated news, my oldest son (9 1/2 years old) will be playing Mr. Teevee in a production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tonight. I'm looking forward to it immensely.

So, what's your week been like? And thanks for the greetings while I was in Alabama. They definitely made me feel more "at home!"