Words, words, words.

Hello, my darlings. How are you?  Me. I've been busy. November always turns into a busy month for some reason.  I'm plugging away on "Red Thief and managing to just barely keep up with the daily nano goal.  But it is all worth the ride right now because I am loving my characters and the story is unfolding a bit at a time.  I know it is the right story to do right now because it sits in the back of my mind at all times, bits and pieces coming to me while I'm in the midst of doing other things.   David Baldacci said something similar at the Bouchercon convention.  He's constantly writing, even when he isn't.  The story is always in the back of his mind.  "Eyes in the Ashes" was like pulling teeth and the characters hid and I had to really stretch to finish that story.   I may have 50,000 words by the end of November, but doubt the story will be done.  And since I write the story in longhand, trying to keep up by typing my output daily but you know, some days that just doesn't work out. 

My short story class started at the beginning of the month and I'm discovering that I've actually read quite a few. So I'm having some "oh, yeah, I remember that story."  It's a bit more time intensive than expected as well since the professor expects journal responses to questions by Thursday and response to discussion questions by Sunday.  Lots of analyzing and writing.  Other than my short story class,  I haven't been doing a whole lot of reading.  I may have read one book in the past two weeks which is pretty much a record for me.
 
I just realized today, that my birthday ... "hello 51!" ... is on Sunday.  Seriously, I almost forgot about it.  Now I need to come up with a list for Father and James.  I really don't need more books, do I?  Ahem....  I don't have the foggiest idea because I have everything I need. Hmmm!  Maybe some cool notebooks and a supply of fat, festive pens.

James is now officially a huge Harry Potter fan.  We've read almost all the books together. He read a couple on his own.  We're currently reading "The Deathly Hallows."  I've been reading it out loud to him and we are taking it slowly, a chapter or two a day.  When you add that in with the rest of his lessons and all the other stuff we're reading, my voice is shot by the end of the day.  James helps. He likes doing the voices of various characters, so he interjects here and there.  The story is giving James all kind of interesting dreams.  No, I won't be taking him to see the movie in the theater.  It's just a bit too much for him. We'll wait til it comes out on DVD. 

Father has given up the Chairman reins of the local AES professional section and is concentrating on finishing his mic preamp design.  The prototype had a successful test run in a local recording studio in which they ended up using it to record an album.  Thumbs up from the local musical community is always a plus and he has lots of folks champing at the bit for him to finish the thing, so they can buy it.  Talk about pressure....

Time for me to get back to writing.  Hopefully will have an update on my nano numbers by the end of the week.  

The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes.  ~Agatha Christie