A... finished project? And other miracles.

I can't believe what a slacker I've been on this blog. Sorry! Truth be told, I felt a bit antisocial after the miscarriage (and exhausted - a natural miscarriage is not a quick or easy process).

But.  I'm now back to normal (my version of normal, anyway). I'm done with the revisions of The Goddess of Vengeance Wore Pink Galoshes, which is now absolutely the best book I can make it. I know in two or three years I'll re-read it and there will probably be things that make me groan, because I'm not done growing as a writer yet, but it's so much better than the earlier drafts. It's so much better than my writing used to be.

Honestly, I'm starting to learn to love editing. It's neat to see how much my writing's improved from just a year ago when I wrote the rough draft of Goddess. It's exciting to work my way that much closer to the story I set out to write and to telling it effectively.

So now it's time to sub Goddess, and really focus on the next things -- editing my YA novel, Recovering Sara, and rough drafting the next novel (Too. Many. Shiny. Projects).

I've been reading some fantastic books, too. I just finished Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, which is not just a beautifully written modern fantasy, but an adult picture book. The author, Ransom Riggs, collected weird vintage photographs of children that form the basis for his characters. The photos and text work together beautifully, and there's something about the novelty of pictures (especially these intriguing, sometimes unsettling photographs) that I found very winning. But only because the story itself is so well told. Now I'm reading The Left Hand of God, by Paul Hoffman. I have mixed feelings about it in some ways --the religious aspects of it, the omniscient point-of-view that I sometimes find intrusive, personally -- but I'm so invested in the characters, the pacing is so quick and the story so interesting that I can't put it down. Though parts of it may not suit my personal preferences, I think it's a terrific book so far. (And I'm also reading the Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend, but that's not really so much for fun...)

What've you all been up to while I was gone?