Snowy Spring Morning

Here it is, a Monday morning in late April... and we wake up to 3 inches of snow on the ground. WTF?? My son and I spent 2 hours yesterday fixing up the backyard and throwing down some grass seed, so I guess this might help that, but we also planted some peppers in our 2 square foot garden. Hopefully those survive cause I sure do love my peppers!



Well I finally finished Drood by Dan Simmons last night. The book finally picked up about 400 pages into the 800 page novel. I skipped over a vast majority of the first 400 pages, I do have to admit. The novel was actually engaging and exciting at about the 400 page mark, and then dropped back down to not being engaging and exciting at about the 700 pages mark. I trudged thru the last 100 pages and then was completely disappointed and disgusted with the ending. It pretty much makes you question how much of the 800 pages really happened. I have to say it's the first Dan Simmons novel I've actively disliked.

I also read The Becoming by Jeanne Stein as a little bit of a break from Drood. I've met Jeanne several times and I have to say from the description that I didn't think I would like the Anna Strong novels but I was pleasantly surprised. I immediately went out to Amazon and ordered the set and am waiting to get them home to add them to my stack of TBR.

Not much else going on. 55K words in to TPZ. I think I wrote about 72 pages last week, which has to be something of a personal record. I'm not sure exactly how long the book is going to be, but I'd say roughly 100 more pages. If I can work hard on it this week and next I think I might get done with the first draft. 6 weeks to finish a novel will be a personal record for me :)

Starfest

My wife and I spent Friday snowed in and sick. Denver had one of the largest snowstorms that I can remember. Especially at this time of year. It started Friday and went prettymuch thru early evening Saturday. Not sure on the totals, but I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't get 2 feet in places. That didn't stop us from going to Starfest Saturday, which was kinda awesome. I handed out free copys of SLASH and The Hunger and when no one was looking put a bunch of flyers on a table for the web site. We'll see if that generates some hits!

I haven't had a chance to write since Thursday, both life and my day job have gotten in the way, but I did manage to do about 50 pages or so last week. Total word count is at about 33K words, so I'm nearly halfway there. After 2 weeks! The harrowing adventures of Duke Johnson in the Trailer Park against the zombie horde continues.

Currently reading "Drood" by Dan Simmons. Normally I'm a huge Simmons fan but I'm finding this one very hard to get into. When he's telling the actual story I'm eating it up but you can tell Simmons did a ton of research for it and he feels it necessary to tell you how and what they ate for meals and every single detail of every single minute of Dickens life. I hate to say it, but I find myself skipping over a bunch. I'm reading it on the Kindle, so no idea how far I'm in the book (this much!) but it seems like the main story should be getting into gear long before now and it really kinda hasn't. I'll power thru tho.

Off to write!

20,000 words in and going strong

20-25% done on "Trailer Park Zombies" after 1 week. That's a good start!

TPZ is set it in Litchville, Kentucky, and answers the question: If there were a zombie outbreak in BFE, backwoods Kentucky, would anyone notice?

I wasn't brought up in KY, but my family was and I've visted a few dozen times in my life. Not that I counted!

Currently reading book 9 of Simon Green's Nightside series - "Just Another Judgment Day". Pretty good. It's finally asking the question I've wondered since the end of book 6: where can it go from here? Six was apolyptic and refreshing and everything the previous 5 promised it would be and I honestly thought it'd be the end of the series. And then book 7 was published the same year. 7 and 8 kind of floundered (tho they were entertaining). 9 is back with full force!

Finished the new Dresden book last week - good as the promise it was supposed to be altho I was a little disappointed at who the "Turn Coat" actually was. Who? You ask. Yeah, I wondered that, too, after reading it.

My new blog!

Testin out my new blog!