MLK WEEKEND- DAY 1:In an effort to force myself to get work done this weekend, I'll be documenting my activities. Day one has proven to be relatively productive.
In addition to getting some laundry done, I've also done a fairly comprehensive update of my webpage. I'm going to try to do this from now on as soon as some new material, either an article, story, or review, becomes available. This is, of course, in addition to my attempts to keep the blog more frequently updated.
I finished the first draft of "Hero's Widow." It comes in at a whopping 8,700 words
(Microsoft Word count of 7,575 words), which is significantly more than I was expecting. Of that, 4,050 words
(Microsoft Word count of 3,525 words) were written today, from about 2:00 to 7:00 pm. It includes a very moving finale, I think, and one of the most vivid action sequences that I think I've ever written. Now it will sit in a folder for a few weeks, so I can revise it with a bit of distance. I'll probably get back to it in February, and hopefully will be able to reduce it a bit. If not, there is a market that's specifically looking for stories of roughly this length, although I'm not sure if it's "epic" enough for that anthology. It was conceived as sort of an "anti-epic fantasy," about the people who are not the great adventurers of the realm. But, honestly, I'm not sure how much I can take out of it.
The remainder of tonight (it's only 7:00 pm, after all) will be devoted to reading John Varley's
Mammoth. If I have enough time, I'll also write the review of it tonight, post it to FantasyBookSpot.com, and update my website with a link. The review might be a bit ambitious, though, since I still have half the book to read, but it has been going at a good clip when I've actually gotten a chance to read it.