End of Round Two

I’m sure you’re all be thrilled to know that I’ve finished the second draft of the first Quiet War novel. Okay, well, I’m thrilled. And exhausted. Something like thirty thousand words were cut, this time around (and a few new ones added), and now the baggy monster has a definite shape and intent. It still doesn’t have a title, but that will come along. (I did think of calling this one War, and the next, Peace, but only, I swear, for a moment.)

I should take a break. But I have an introduction to write, and a short story that’s banging on the inside of my head, demanding to be let out.

I have managed to do a bit of reading. Michael Chabon’s fine The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, and then, because I liked that one so much, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Michael Connelly’s The Overlook. Adam Roberts’s Land of the Headless. Al Reynolds’s The Prefect. Rajiv Chandraskaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City. Samuel R. Delany’s Dark Reflections. And Endless Things, the fourth and last part of John Crowley’s patient chronicle of becoming and unbecoming.