I noticed that a number of old posts are suddenly surfacing on the Livejournal feed. I have no idea why that's happening - I haven't made any changes to the posts, so there's no reason why they'd be popping up again. Apologies for the annoyance. Hey, at least they're not big-ass novel excerpts. :P

It's been so long since I posted, I had to go back and read what I'd blogged about almost three weeks ago. Since then, a couple of interesting things have happened:

1. I turned in 1/2 of my sooper-sekrit project. Yes, 1/2 - it's been split in two, and I'm right now polishing Part Two (this is what has kept me so busy, along with sending out a few more submissions). I already have news about the fate of Part One (it's good news), but the future of Part Two is very much up in the air. It all depends on the needs of the project as a whole. More I cannot say. Why like Yoda am I speaking? :P

2. After this project is completely out the door, I'm pretty much finished with the short stuff for the rest of the year. There are a few stories that I finished earlier in the year that I'll edit/revise and send out, and a couple more prose poems I want to work on, but those are going to take second place to rewriting my old biomechanical spider/steampunk novelette "The Girls of the World" into a full-blown novella. And I want to start working on the outline for my novel. Those two projects will take up the rest of 2007.

3. Travel news! My sister will be staying in Leuven, Belgium this August and September (as a guest lecturer at the university), and she's invited me to come visit her. So, at the end of August, I'll fly over to Belgium for a few days, then we'll both take the train to Paris for a bit to visit friends of hers, then it's down to Venice for four-five days, before heading back through Germany to Leuven. It's my mid-life version of the Grand Tour, and I'm pretty excited about it. Especially amazing is that to date, I've made enough money from my writing to pay for the plane ticket. That's something to be proud of. I've also made tentative plans for an even more spectacular trip in 2009, but I'm not going to spill the beans until it's finalized. Let's just say it involves tropical things, and maybe some ruins and dormant volcanoes!

I guess that's all the news. Ok, so maybe my life is still not very interesting. I think this is the part where I should insert some Shakespearean dialog. ;P

Labels: horses, travel

...because my life is. Seriously. All I've done the past couple of weeks is work on the secret project - which I finally finished this afternoon. Of course I've overshot the word limit by almost half. Bleh. But on the other hand, at least it gives me something to work with when I start chopping. I have to admit, I get a perverse pleasure out of editing the bejesus out of my words. It's a form of masochism that I doubt most writers would reveal that they embrace - embracing booze or depression or miserable living conditions seems to be far more acceptable ways of torturing ones artistic side.

I'm currently watching old episodes of "The Outer Limits", downloaded from iTunes. Right now I'm watching the one with Robert Culp as the scientist who undergoes radical experiments in order to "turn" himself into an alien. I think it's rather amusing that the more alien he becomes, the more Shakespeare he quotes - in fact, in the most extreme moments of duress, when one might suppose he'd have forgotten the most basic human concepts and forms of expression, he gives Olivier a run for his money. Then again, this seemed to be par for the course with many of the SF shows of the 50's and 60's (don't get me started on "Star Trek", lol). I'm going to try this the next time my characters run out of ideas or find themselves in a bind. Throwing in a massive chunk of iambic pentameter from "Richard III" or "Hamlet" should pretty much solve all my problems from here on out. Yay! ;P

Labels: horses