Where have I been? Neck deep in my zombie novel mostly. I sent chapter 1 out to my novel crit group, and revisions on chapter 2 are coming along steadily. The main hurdle is getting all the details right when one of my characters loses part of a limb. Fun stuff. I ended up completely scrapping the original first chapter and rewriting it from scratch. That’s how it goes sometimes . . .

I just received my copy of Dayshift Werewolf from the 3-Day Novel Contest site. It was the 2005 winner, and I’m looking forward to reading it. I’m also working on Dirty Money, from Manic D Press. It’s definitely something I would have eaten up and worshipped in high school, the whole punk-artist girls following her dreams, trying to find her place in this crazy world, trying to avoid the usual 9-to-5 drudgery.

And finally, there’s the backlog of random stuff I’ve written over the last few months in need of revision. I’ll get to it someday, so long as this zombie novel doesn’t kill me first.

What’s up with this time change crap? I like the fact that it won’t get dark so early, but geez, the first day or two always fly by way too fast, not to mention, I lose a valuable hour of sleep. If I were president, there would be no more time changes. When I was a kid, I didn’t mind it so much, but now that I’m old and feeble (i.e., 26) and have a day job, that lost hour of sleep is pretty devastating.

I’ve been hammering away on my zombie NaNo novel nonstop since Friday, and I’m fairly pleased with how it’s coming along. The only thing I’m a little unhappy with is the narrative voice in a few places, but I’m hoping feedback from my yet-to-be-formed novel crit-group will be able to give me some pointers for improving that. I still haven’t written an ending for the thing. I have the old ending I wrote, but it’s atrocious and will be rightfully discarded. I have an idea for a new ending, a far simpler ending than the old one. Let’s hope it actually works when I get there!

After letting it lie for a while, I’m working on my NaNo novel again. My frustration with the ending was what caused me to put it aside, but after having a little epiphany, I’ve decided to dive back in. I might post a short excerpt from it soon.