Formatting and the Written Page

I got dinged in a contest once because the reviewer took out a ruler and decided that my margins were 0.95", rather than the industry standard (and contest required) 1.0"! Nothing was said about the content of the story, but everything was said about the format.

I've had newbies in my writer's group ask about ms format. I can recite it off the top of my head:

1. 1" margin all around
2. double-space
3. 12-point
4. Courier or Courier New *
5. single-sided
6. chapter starts 1/3rd of the way down the page **

* see this link for using Times New Roman http://agentquery.com/format_tips.aspx In reality, get the agent/editor guidelines and follow them.

** this is a matter of judgment. One site told me 1/2 way down the page. Now I go 3 blank lines, the title line, a blank line, and then verbiage.

Word count is a critical thing. I won't go into the definitions of lengths. The results you get from different methods are all over the place. There are a number of ways of figuring this.

1. if using M/S Word, use the Word Count tab under tools.
2. count the spaces and characters and divide by 6
3. turn orphan off and divide the total page count by 250.

For example. Minus One comes in at 409 pages in Courier New. That works out as 124,446 words in Method #1; 664,142 spaces and characters, which equals 110,735 words in Method #2; and 102,250 words in Method #3. How long do I think it is? Oh, about 100,000 words.

The important thing is to be consistent. I found that going to www.sfwa.org and using their methods works the best, which puts Minus One at 102,250 words, and if you allow for partial pages (i.e. those pages with just a couple of lines on them) you can be fairly close. There's also a method of counting the words per line on three different pages and so on. I'd rather use the tools I outlined.

Now a word about getting things uniform. The margins are easy, but Word, and presumably WordPerfect (I also use Open Office) will do things to the bottom of the page so you don't have the same number of lines per page. Turn Orphan Control off in M/S Word. Do a CTRL-A to select the entire text. Then go to the Format Tab and select paragraph. Then select Line and Page Breaks. Click on the box for Orphan control until it is blank. Exit. You'll find that you the last line on the page will always be in the same place (until the last line, of course). This evening out helps when calculating the word count.

Headings - I do this now so it's automatic. I use Headers, and in the upper right hand corner put in Last Name/Title*/Page #. If this is a chapter, I'll put Last Name/Title*/Chapter #/Page #. So, to pick on Minus One again, this looks like Bretthauer/Minus One/135. *if you have a long title it is permitted to use a key word from the title: Bretthauer/Engage/Chap 3/5 which is page 5 of the 3rd chapter of Engage the Enemy More Closely.

Why the upper right corner? Because the majority of editors and agents are right handed, and would hold your m/s in the left hand. And if they drop it on the floor, or it gets knocked off the desk, this will help them reassemble the story.

Page breaks and end of chapter/story. I use a # for line breaks, centered. This is an old typesetter mark that said line break. At the end I use # # # to indicate chapter or story end. Do I have to say The End? You can, but you don't have to. I did have something get mislabeled because the person posting the story was expecting "The End" and it wasn't there. That got straightened out in a hurry.

Alternatively, use * * * for your scene and chapter breaks. Whatever you do, make it consistent!

Courier New vs. Times New Roman. The former is a fixed-pitch font, the latter is a proportional font. This means that in Courier New, each character takes up the same space. An 'i' is the same width as a 'Z'. I do the former rather than the latter in a submission unless requested otherwise. Agents read for a living, and their eyes get tired. Nobody ever lost a sale by making it easier on the customer. But check Writer's Guidelines or Writer's Market for suggestions. Don't use a fancy font. I know Courier looks boring, but you are not there to jazz it up. That's what the typesetter does. Your job is to get the story in the hands of the editor who will buy it. That's why you check Guidelines. If they want it in Verdana, Arial, Bookman, or New Century, a click of the font tab will give it to them. But you'll find most want it in something easy on the eyes.

What about special characters and formatting? Don't. Okay, so you have to do some things. Use underline instead of italics. Don't use bold at all. Why? Only underline shows up when you use Courier or Courier New. And turn off the conversion thing that converts two dashes -- into an em-dash. Again, you want to make things clear.

None of this applies if it is an e-publishing as those have their own rules and you have to rely upon the editor to convert it to the format he/she wants. It's worth some time to learn a little about HTML. And you can always edit HTML in Notepad.

One final point: You've created your m/s and it comes in as a bloated 156k file in M/S Word. How do you trim out the goo and dribble Microsoft puts in everything? Open it in Wordpad. Save it. Reply yes to the request to save it as a .rtf and then close. Magically all the things that were eliminated but so helpfully kept in the file by Word are gone as they are not supported by Wordpad (which is a bare bones version of Word). You'll have to check your margins again (Wordpad likes 1.25" margins) and your header will have been wiped away. That's easily adjustable.

So now all you have left to do are the ideas in your story.

When you want to be a writer, sit down and write. You'll make mistakes. But you learn by doing, and you'll gradually get better. And after a million words or so, you should be ready to be published.

Happy writing!

My initial reaction to getting home from PNWA is/was drained and depressed. Part of that was the Agent/Editor interviews, part of it was the heat, some of it was the sessions, and some of it was the state of the industry.

Industry - there are fewer large publishers, and what you get from them, assuming you land a contract, is less help than before. So you'd better learn how to do the marketing yourself. Small Pusblisher? They're great in that it's very likely you can find one, but they'll print 2,500 copies of your book, and that's it. It's up to you. And they go out of business with surprising frequency. POD? Bookstores don't like them because there's no return policy for unsold books. And the sheer amount of garbage that was produced in the first wave of POD printing has led to a stigma that they're all crap. Web? Sure, but find a way to do so so you get paid is a challenge. Remember, it's all a numbers game. People are tight with their entertainment dollars.

Some of this came out in the editor interviews. There are 5-6 of you around the table with the editor. He/she starts with those words: "I can't acquire anything." You give your elevator pitch anyway, and judge the reaction. Then they answer questions and explain how a book becomes published. They have to "love" it. They promote it to the editorial board, who has to "love" it. Then the senior or managing editor, again, who has to "love" it. Then you have marketing. Again, "love" is a factor. Finally, after all of that, it gets put on the schedule, usually a year to 18 months out. Do editors edit? Yes, though they've pushed a lot of that down to the agent. The editor edits, then the copyeditor does his or her thing. The average editor does between 12 and 20 books a year. And did I mention the layoffs in the publishing houses? Since a lot of them were acquired, there have been layoffs and shrinkage as they want their book divisions to be as profitable as possible.

Agent interviews - here's a secret. Constantly check the board near the agent interview rooms. That's where cancellations are put. You might score another interview or two. Know what the agent is looking for. Have your pitch ready and honed. This is your one-paragraph pitch. Know how long your m/s is. First time novelists, they're looking for around 100,000 words. You get 10 minutes. And the agent won't be taking anything back with them. The good news, electronic submission is getting to be the thing. Server space is so much less room than paper. Your goal is to have them ask you for your work. The dreaded words are "I'm sorry, I don't think I can represent that." That is all too common. But did you know that in fully 90% of the time the author doesn't send anything in?

Work on your elevator pitch - this is the 1 minure or less summary. It's called the elevator pitch because you have to be able to give it in an elevator or in a bar. A lot of work gets done at a conference in the bar. One of the people I met spent 20 minutes talking to an agent in a bar. That's a good reason to go to the site and stay rather than commute.

Sessions - these are 90 minutes long, and at most you can get 5 in. That's a depressing ratio of minutes to dollars spent. The good news, there's a lot of really great information. I attended the ones on marketing, small press, and legal affairs. The world-building one was pretty good in that I ended up with a lot of questions to ask about background in a story. And you get an idea of what you should have been writing two years ago because of the way the industry is tending. There are also nuts-and-bolts things you can pick up. For example, writing query letters. Three paragraphs. Writing a pitch, both elevator and sit-down (and you are encouraged to practice it frequently). All of these are things to know. They assume the other nuts-and-bolts things are taught in community colleges, high schools, colleges, or wherever. For sessions in general, you pays your money, you pick and choose.

Overall experience - PNWA this year had the feel of an organization that is changing to suit the member's needs. In the past it was very much an old guard type organization, and they did things, but you didn't see how it benefitted you, the writer. That's changing. The big thing about a conference like this is to give you face time with the agents. Think of going as an investment. And you get free meals out of it at breakfast and dinner. Reaction from others? I met several people who've decided to keep writing, but only for themselves, with maybe a POD contract. I think that was the most depressing thing to come out of the experience.

On Writing Jags -

A writing jag is when you get totally consumed by the writing. You come home from work, you write for several hours, you go to bed, sleep poorly, get up and write some more.

Another way to say 'writing jag' is to look at numbers. How about these? I started writing the novel Minus One on March 23rd. I finished the last update on April 23rd. 103,000 words. Or this: in the first week I wrote 50,000 words. THAT is a writing jag.

So what is Minus One about? It's a mystery, but it's also a novel of personal growth and change. Jan Sutherland is a singer in a group that does folk, some country, and some oldies pop. She, her twin brother Jay, and the other three members of their group (Angie, Charlie and Pete) are "Friends Making Music". When the novel opens she is giving a farewell performance. At the end she walks off the stage, is cuffed, and transported to the Women's Prison in Hannah, KY (a fictional place). There she is to serve 7 to 10 years for manslaughter.

The story flashes back to how this happened, and then resumes with her time in prison. She is paroled after 5 1/2 years, and reluctantly is persuaded by her twin brother to go back on stage. The group has changed their name to Minus One as a reminder to people that they are a singing group that is minus one member. When she rejoins them, they become Minus One and Sister Jan, a country group that also does some traditional and some folk.

There is a caution for language. There's no lurid scenes of sex or even very much violence (though she did kill two men).

I did some research on prisons, and the story draws from an amalgam of prisons in the US. Conditions in state prisons vary widely. Some, when someone is paroled, give the former inmate a bus ticket, some money, and that's it. Others, such as Virginia, Washington, and Colorado make a very strong effort to rehabilitate the inmate so they can re-enter society. There are some very dedicated people who have to balance society's desire for punishment with society's desire to make these inmates functioning members of society. It is not an easy path. And the work of parole officers is often only seen in the exceptions when someone resumes a life of crime.

I picked Kentucky for the location of the story because of the music scene there, that it still had links to the folk music world, and it was in the middle of the country. Jimmy Jack's, a restaurant/bar that is a central location in the story is based on my memories of O'Reilly's Pub in downtown Indianapolis (which, despite the name, is not Irish). Indianapolis has a very active music scene, and some of that was transplanted.

One other point (I might blog about this some more later); Jan and Jay are that very very rare set of twins: male and female, but who appear identical except for the male and female bits. That happens in something like once in every couple thousand sets of twins. It is both important and unimportant to the story. It helps personalize Jan by showing the differences between her and Jay.

I'll let the reader ponder the rest of the story. Prison isn't a pleasant place, but what some people call coddling has been found, through a lot of experience, to be a very effective way to lower the recidivism rate. These are people in there, and we need to try very hard not to make enemies of them.

The Good News --

First, pitchers and catchers report today. Baseball is back, even if they're only doing their physicals today.

Damned funny game, baseball. The defense controls the ball, and the offense only gets to do anything when the defense messes up. You have no clock, but you have time-outs. And defense can dominate a game and completely alter a player's statistics. An example: putting Ichiro! in right field against a line-up of left-handed pull-hitters will lower the pitcher's Earned Run Average because of Ichiro!'s defensive skills (and that arm of his).

But baseball season gets underway today, at least the Spring Training portion where players practice and sharpen their skills in large, climate controlled environments like Florida and Arizona.

Second, www.crossedgenre.com will be carrying one of my dryad stories, The Eyes That Catch! This garners an official "Woo-Hoo!" The story will be in the March 1 release of the e-magazine. They also have a print version that will appear on April 1. Detective and urban fantasy. Interesting combination.

Third, www.beyondthefarhorizon.com, also known as BTFH, or Gina Wylie's site, is about 35 chapters into Kalliste, having previously done Counterfeit Line (which will soon go back in the shop for some maintenance). Kalliste was my "practice novel", the first one that I actually did all the way through to the end. From it I extracted Kalliste's Storytime, which certainly garnered all sorts of feedback (including from archaeologists and other professionals in the field). The story certainly needs some rewriting, especially knowing what I know now. But as an example of organic plotting (plot as you go), it was certainly educational.

Fourth, Setosha is nearly rewritten, and I got enthused, sort of, for Firestar again. Have I done anything new? Firestar, with a different starting point, and a different conflict. We'll see how it goes.

Other things (Fifth): I entered Kassandra's Song in Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award contest, and I'm submitting both Crosstime Cop and In the Heart of the Woods for PNWA's literary contest this year. I have to get cracking, only one weeks to go on those.

So, yeah, so far this year it's been pretty good.

Good News!!!

I just learned that Spiked! will appear in The Dark Whole Anthology. Publication date is tentatively put as December 2008. The publisher is Down in the Country press.

Here's the link: http://www.press.downinthecountry.com/theblackhole.html

Woot! Woot! Woot!

Wow. I was pretty sure it'd make it into the anthology, but there's always that element of doubt. They wanted a fantasy with an element of darkness to it, and the ending of Spiked! gives that as the eco-freak is trapped in a tree that's about to run through the saw at a sawmill.

There's still work to do, galley proofs to check, mainly, and any editorial corrections the editor requests.

This feels kind of cool in a way I can't quite put into words.

Next Steps

After a brief email exchange with Joshua, I sent the first 57 pages of Firestar to him. Why 57 and not 50? The section ended with page 57. Now I cross my fingers. In the meantime I tweaked 17, 20 and 21 to remove references to Heather (Corey's sib-sister) being pregnant, and to give Corey some beginnings at political skill.

Why? Heather's pregnancy will be a stress element for Corey in the next book, and the political skill will come in handy farther down in the story arc.

So what is the next step? I've already alluded to Morosini's Children. I'm still working on the beginning of it. Read books on the racks at a bookstore or in a supermarket. You start off with a bang, either in the middle of the action (en media res), or with a puzzle. Three examples come to mind.

Crosstime Cop - Marge says "This is stupid." which makes you want to find out what is stupid, and why.

Counterfeit Line - There was nothing like a dead body to brighten up the day. Right away you need to know why that is. You turn the page.

A Perfect Murder - Sarah Hammond, in my writer's group, used a line: It was the perfect day for a murder. to get the action underway. You need to find out why, and who, and so you turn the page.

There's a phrase for this: "shoot the sheriff in the first page." In other words, get the novel underway right away. Don't do mood setting, gradually focusing in on the characters and action. I did this in the first draft of Counterfeit Line. During the Maui Writer's Cruise I was strongly advised to get to the action sooner. Four chapters became two, and at the end of chapter two the main character had been thrown through a mysterious doorway. The story reads tighter for it. Russian authors of the 19th Century have a lot to answer for (IMO). Much better is to study Chekov and other playwrights who get you involved right away.

So what is the line or opening in Morosini's Children? Damned if I know...yet. But as I see it, Corey has to state the problem early on so we know what her "must do" compulsion is. That's the McGuffin, the kernel of the plot, and everything revolves around it. Of course Corey has other problems:

1. her project is a research project, and that means a different level of funding and administrative support than a military project;
2. elements of her Family want all members out of Space, especially her, who is a real hero. They don't want her at home in uniform as that will inspire other girls in her Family to go into Space. So they want her to resign from the Navy (besides, she has three birthrights, so she might as well use them).
3. the Families Navy is gearing up for offensive warfare to put the Idenux away once and for all, and the Children go on some raids;
4. Sonia is revealed as having an important job that impacts Corey's work, and the complications that follow from that. Of course that revelation has to remain secret from the Family. Nothing is easy.

That might or might not be enough, but that's all that I extracted from the original source (which was the original version of Firestar).

But it all starts with a great opening. One person said you have only 5 pages to capture a reader, others think it's the first page. Nobody said writing is easy.

Another Update --

It's that time, but first a plug. I know Liz Lyon. I met her at the Maui Writer's Conference and Cruise in 2004. She has a new book out: Manuscript Makeover. It is chock full of excellent advice on how to revise your manuscript.

The process of writing can be funny. Some people go all the way through a chapter or short story, then go back and revise. Others use revision as a way to get going so they can write the rest of the chapter. Some write the entire book before revising. Some write the book, and then start all over and write the book again. We writers sure can make a lot of work for ourselves.

I think I'm in the second category, kinda-sorta. I write the chapter, or most of it. I revise constantly. I add, I move things around, and I finally finish it. I send it off for feedback. Then I revise. Then I print it out and copy-edit the thing manually and add my revisions/changes. Then, finally, I print it out again and make copies for the writer's group. If it's Woodinville, it is probably a short story. If it is Phinney Ridge (though we meet at Northgate), it's probably 9-10 pages of a chapter. These latter are read aloud.

Later, much later, I go through it again, first on the computer, and then by hand with a printed copy. Then I collect it all in a copy that once again is sent off for the editorial review.

The members of your editorial review come in a variety of flavors. You must pick them carefully. You don't want "Gosh wow, that was the greatest thing I ever read!" That's nice to hear, but doesn't make you a better writer. You need someone to look at the overall thrust of the story, and you need someone to get into the nuts and bolts.

Look at Wingman. The original draft was terrible. I showed it to someone that I worked with, and he pointed out where I'd gone wrong. I rewrote, then rewrote again. This time it went to my own editorial team. Semi-colons, commas, spelling, split and unsplit infinitives, and ellipses later, I incorporated the changes I wanted. I sharpened the ending (it's subtle). THEN I finally sent it off to the editor/owner of the whole story cycle. He had things that I fixed. I read it to the B&N writer's group, and a couple of other things were fixed. I finally submitted it to Stories On Line. Since then I've made a few more changes to it, fixing minor things that had escaped every one's attention until it was available.

I've gotten almost as much feedback on Wingman as I did on Three Valleys - Sammi. Woof.

There's a lot of work involved in all of this. So it makes perfect sense that Firestar, which I thought was nearly done, is not.

I ran it by one of the editorial team. He pointed out that Corey is mostly an observer in the last two chapters. This is wrong. She has a problem to solve, and she has to solve it. That's what a protagonist does. So I cut scenes, I rewrote scenes, and I am rewriting the last bit of the book completely. That meant I had to rewrite earlier parts of the book, adding scenes, changing others. A lot of work.

However, it is coming together, albeit slowly. Part of Corey's problem is she knows how to beat the Idenux, but she has to convince others that her solution is the correct one. The Families are almost Medieval in their approach to things, and Corey has made some enemies. And she is a neophyte at the political aspects of command. She has to learn how to move and survive (and prosper) in the political environment of the Families where a lot of things are personal.

Then I have to set up the next book, Setosha. But where do I put K-303? That will be interesting.

Are there other things? Engage the Enemy More Closely is on hold. I got to chapter 4, and hit a wall (called Firestar). So I've been copy-editing Different World. I can see changes I need to make in the latter. I also saw where I was working myself into a box, and I think I've backed out from that approach.

In the meantime, Spiked! may have been bought! We'll see. Let's not jeopardize things by talking about it too much.

And after a prolonged absence (or at least it felt that way), I've returned to the world of The Construct. More on that later.

More on everything later.

This and That

So this is a few days early...so what, it's my blog. Various updates follow.

Naval rules
I've heard good things about Seekrieg V. They've individualized the ships, and the damage is more detailed. Not good for massed fleets, but good if you want the shell-by-shell method of naval gaming. I'll want to try them out, but that may take a bit.

General Quarters 3 is out, though I haven't gotten it. I didn't get a chance to see it played at Conquest, either. I'm hoping it's like GQ1 and 2, but I suspect not. The chatter on the GQ Yahoo Group makes me think otherwise.

My own dabbling has been to take Battle Stations and whatever version of Seekrieg I have. The latter is to limit rate of fire and give realistic hit totals. I played Battle Stations with range estimation and saw somebody put 28 hits into a destroyer with 3.9" rounds. Shouldn't have been much left. Obviously most gamers don't know how naval shooting is done, and put their weapons at max rate of fire regardless of the range. More later.

The Salamis Project - revealed here for the first time (sort of). This is an attempt to do the Battle of Salamis on a 1:1 scale. The rules have to be simple: Greek triremes sink opponents on a 4-6, Persian triremes on a 5-6. Boarding is simplified, movement is simplified, and turn sequence is Side A goes, have combat, Side B goes, have combat, major morale, repeat as necessary. I was going to use printed ships; now I'm looking for a very cheap source of triremes miniatures.

Writing
I completed (more or less) Spiked!. This is the story of a dryad who works for a large forest products company as a forester. First, hamadryands are tied to specific trees; dryads aren't, though they tend to favor types of trees. Jennifer Oaks is from the oak tree part of dryads. She has to deal with someone who spiked a tree. 'Spiking' a tree is when someone drives several large metal spikes into it. When the sawmill blade hits a spike it flies apart, quite likely killing or wounding the workers in the sawmill. At the very least it destroys the saw. The idea is to keep people from cutting trees.

Jen was an interesting character to work out. She's a dryad, so she can 'enter' trees, and even live inside them. But she's also a bit insecure (she's a long way from home and her family). I try to handle this with word choice and 'voice'. Her only support is her cousin Chloe, who's a hamadryad. I think this one could sell.

I think there's also room for more stories about Jen.

Lexeon
I have finished the first major rewrite on Lexeon, and have run it by Milt. I shrank it by 3 chapters, and feel I could shrink it by some more. We'll see. I'm not going to work on it for a bit, sort of let it estivate. Still have to sell Firestar first to create the market for Setosha and Lexeon.

Different World
Read the first half of Chapter 5 at Writer's Group. Minor changes, more when I got going and did some seriously looking at it. I finally got started on Chapter 6. I get these blockages, and in this case I knew another system here at home had a part of a possible Chapter 6. I finally found it, and things got unstuck in a hurry. In that Chapter 6 John and Gina declared their love. Nope, don't want it. Gina has to suffer (and so does John). That's best done by a rip-roaring argument brought about by misunderstanding and miscommunication (though Gina does most of the arguing and yelling). Have to do some more plotting here. But the rest of the chapter includes introducing a couple of minor characters to each other, and recapping how Gina makes money in that world (part owner of a brassiere company). And then we have the police investigation, which is only part of the story.

Devlin and Sammi
Blockage again. I tried working on both of them today, and got just a few words out. My subconscious obviously wants a different approach. I think Sammi is closer to breakthrough than Devlin. Besides, I need to get a Sammi chapter out there. It's been a couple of months.

Other
Baseball season is just around the corner! And right now the Ms are in first place (well, everyone else is, too). They've got decent starting pitching, and Felix. They've got a decent bullpen, and JJ. Hopefully Arthur Rhodes, too, and this kid Brandom Morrow from the U of W. A solid defense on the left side, and decent on the right. And Ichiro up the middle. Now if their hitting comes around they won't be in the cellar. It won't be 2001, but that was a season for the ages.

Play Ball!!!!!

Time for an Update

So where am I with things?

First, I'm now involved in editing a second author's work. Winemaker, whom I met through Nick Scipio's forum, is in desperate need of an editor. He suffers from too many words. I've been coaching him on what to do with the manuscript when it is done, now I'm seeing his prose.

Second, I've reread The Shattered Sword, which is a look at the Japanese side of the Battle of Midway from primary Japanese sources. Fascinating. If you're reading this, and you haven't bought and read this book, do so. I also read Clash of Carriers about the Battle of the Eastern Solomons. It isn't as good as The Shattered Sword, but it has a good contrast between the air action over the Japanese carrier Ryujo and what happened over the USS Enterprise.

Third, I've been reading the Dresden Files, the Harry Dresden stories. He lives in Chicago, and he's a wizard.

Fourth, my writing has sputtered a bit. Let's run through the stories.

Firestar: I got off the stick and rewrote the ending (from Chapter 16 on), mostly utilizing an earlier ending. The focus is on Corey, and her doctrines, but also on her maturation as a commander. I then submitted a modified first chapter to the PNWA Literary Contest, and the first 3 chapters to the agent.

Setosha: I did this one in 2-3 weeks. Milt and I had a "discussion" about punctuation. Bottom line, I don't punctuate like a journalist. He decided to ignore my punctuation and concentrate on good English. But I'm a lot happier with Setosha than I was, and I did strip a lot of irrelevant things out of it.

Lexeon: I was stuck. It was 38 long chapters. I removed the parts pertaining to Boabdil, and tossed out some ideas of how I wanted to trim it to Milt and Colin. Milt suggested I look at doing what I needed to make Boabdil even more of a full book, and make it the third book of the series. Excellent idea! I have been working my way through Lexeon to see where I can pull Boabdil material out of it. I still might trim out some of the intelligence service material. We'll see.

Boabdil: see above.

Devlin's Story: I just posted chapter 60. Devlin didn't go to the US Virgin Islands. She discovered she can't 'cold turkey' her sex life, either. Sue had her baby (a boy), and Devlin's relationship with Danny is tapering off. One of the readers offered a number of comments, enough that I wonder if they've seen my notes (LOL). What will happen is that Devlin will gradually taper off her escapades, she will spend Spring Break in Arizona with Evan, and go to Emma's for "relief" when she gets back. Over the summer things will gradually slow down for her. Evan gets called up! I think I can do this in 3 chapters.

Three Valleys - Sammi: I'm stuck on Sammi getting ready for the ball. Chapter 25. I'll work through it somehow.

Different World: Last week I read DW Chapter 4 at Writer's Group. A bunch of changes. Let's see, Chapter 3 saw Elissa moving in, and discovering that all but the sitting room looked very 21st Century (thank you Eddie Bauer). At the end the police in New Essex discover a dead body from Seattle in the 21st Century. In Chapter 4 we learn more about the deceased, and in Chapter 5 (still in rewrite) the deceased is taken back to the PNW to be discovered. I'll have to reread some police procedures on what happens during an investigation.

Other Writing: I rewrote parts of Crosstime Cop to bring in more of Sir Oswald Mosley and making Great Britain more of a Fascist state. Then I rewrote the ending slightly, and did some tweaking. Jeff said it dragged a bit in the middle, and this is to sharpen it up.

I have also been working on a short story I want to take to B&N this coming Monday. It involves a Dryad who works for Weyerhaeuser.

Oh, plus I went to Conquest in early February to put on a game of King's War. Otherwise, not much gaming. Mostly writing or pretending at writing, or doing some editing for someone who asked me to edit.

But the good news? Baseball Spring Training is underway. Not that long to Opening Day!