Happy Fourth

Yeah, I know I’m technically early with my good wishes for the Fourth of July. It’ll be a short post this week too, just to keep up the streak.

I’m writing it on my second of two overnight shifts, then I work a closing shift Saturday. We’re open 10 AM to midnight Sunday and Monday then we pack up whatever is left and take it back to Tulsa. Sales are off just a little this year, a combination of price increases and the recession that’s coming whether we like it or not.

Youngest Daughter is home from her Hawaii-LA trip. During their bus tour of celebrity homes, their bus broke down in front of Kelsey Grammer’s place. She’s got a few weeks off before heading out for a three-week leadership camp. It seems like she’s been busier during the summer than she is during the school year. She brought me back an authentic Hawaiian shirt in a really nice shade of blue.

Reading

It’s crunch week for fireworks season so I didn’t expect to get much reading or writing done this week. I picked up two books this week: the non-fiction To the Uttermost Ends of the Earth, and Fool Moon, the second book in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series. I read the former during my overnight shifts. Telling the story of the Civil War battle between the CSS Alabama and the USS Kearsarge, I thought it was terrifically well done. Very engaging all the way through. This is the kind of history book I love, watching how paths cross and intersect to bring people together in a battle.

I’ll get to Fool Moon next week. I feel like I’ve tried to read one of Butcher’s other books before, but I don’t see it in my Goodreads list.

Writing

Writer Unfocused strikes again. Frustratingly, I started yet another damned story. No clue what inspired this one, but apparently I’m now branching off into the paranormal. The protagonist is a wrongfully convicted man who’s been executed and is now trying to find justice both for him and the girl he was convicted of murdering. The opening line really just popped into my head one day.

It really fucking hurts when the potassium chloride stops your heart.

I’m about 2,000 words into this one so far.

I’ll be forcing myself to get going on the In Plain Sight edits starting next week after fireworks season wraps up. I need to get at least one of the thirty-nine different projects I have going finished. It’s really starting to bug the crap out of me that I start so many and finish so few. Maybe it’s not quite as bad as I’m making it out to be, but I’ve got nine different stories going, not counting After, and most of them have no end in sight. Sigh.

There’s an excitement to starting a new story, and I love that little high I get as I’m exploring the setting and meeting the characters for the first time. But I need to do a better job of outlining before I start writing, so I can do a better job of finishing what I start. Because that’s the only way I’m going to get stuff published.

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