Shot From The Lip, But The Lip Is Shot

Time now, for a bi-weekly (?) round-up of all things devoted to moi. So let's begin at the beginning instead at the ending, for if we begin at the ending, then we're simply participating in a Daffy Duck/Bugs Bunny celluloid production.

On the writing front, we have a whole bunch to bloviate about. After a pleasant two week wait, my wonderful editor Leslie Fish dropped the hammer and e-mailed my new and improved manuscript late Monday evening. So thus, the rest of my week will be spent, after tramping over to Staples to use their computer (for a fee) to access my e-mail so that I can print out (for a large fee) my new and improved manuscript, in order to carefully peruse all 120+ pages to see what kind of outstanding editing job was done it. And yes, there is no sarcasm in this particular paragraph, as I am truly psyched to be another step closer to publication.

While I was waiting, I made some progress on my crime fiction story "Time To Go". I've been writing it from a first person point of view, so it's been an interesting battle to make everything present tense, including the dialogue tags. And remarkably enough (or depressingly enough), the words have been flowing from my pen with an ease I haven't seen in a couple of years. And yes, I said 'pen'. It seems with this story, I've been able to flesh out the story with a greater degree of comfort and clarity than if I had simply wrote out the entire story on the computer, instead of the first page and a quarter. Not sure what that means, and at this point, I don't really want to know what it means.

I'm also giving some serious thought to entering a couple of contests by the end of the month. Both are to literary journals, but I'm hoping to get at least an honorable mention for one of them. Which I know is a long shot, but both of these stories seem to be a perfect fit. One is the quirky little horror story that I been having a world of issues in trying to get published for the past several months, and the other is a new and improved version of a summer romance called "The Right Thing". That's the story that uses Newington's annual Extravaganza, which strangely enough, is going on this weekend, as the main setting. And, I will make an attempt at getting some video of the festival for the picture blog.

On the blogging front, one thing of note has happened that makes me mentally do cartwheels, is that I cracked 100 followers for my blog. I know for some of you it probably isn't that big of a deal, but someone like me whose had to battle over the years to get noticed for my writing, it really means a lot. So I am really psyched up over this as well.

The other thing of note is that I got a bunch of posts pre-written. I originally wrote them because I thought I would be doing some serious editing work on my novel and thus would've needed to have some stuff at the ready, but as I mentioned earlier, that will not be the case. In any event, the upcoming topics are as follows:

1} Not the edible Spam.

2} Music in fiction

3} Bad movies.

4} Humor. Be very afraid.

5} A day in the life.

6} Music that I hate.

7} Facebook.

8} Hot button topics, which might turn into a two-parter.

So that my friends, is what is new for moi as it applies to the wonderful world of grammar. And speaking of grammar, here is one of my favorite grammar oriented videos.