Okay. October starts tomorrow. And dayjob-work might finally be settling back down a bit--if not tomorrow, exactly, it'll be settling well by mid-October (right around the time two dear friends get married).
I only point this out because it seems to me that it would be a good time to finally get back on track with some things. Like my novels.
This week, after attacking my newest story head on and failing, I decided to sneak in the back way. Without explanation, does that even make sense to anyone else? No, probably not, but this is one of those stories that I can't talk about before it's done.
I will say this--it's a deeply provocative title. It may be a provocative story. All in all, it's provoking me to write it...
And that's how I know it's time to stop with the short stories and start back with the novels: all my short ideas have been trapped in a gravity well of ennui.
I am really digging yWriter. I have gone to town on some partial novels I have completed, getting them loaded into the program. It's the sort of busy work that is not writing, but it's also not precisely catwaxing. There is a need to load these things into yWriter. Since I can't settle down to other things, I may as well. It's soothing, like filing.
My newer novel tells me not to be fooled by apparent lack of progress: it will be done mid-December. I'm not so certain, and I wonder where it gets this sense of self-confidence.
I Love Bad Boys by Lori Foster, Janelle Denison and Donna Kauffman (53) [romance]
Entirely readable.
Crystal Singer and Killashandra by Anne McCaffrey (54 & 55) [science fiction] (reread number ajillion)
I first read these back in 1987 or 1988, when they were some of my first science fiction encounters. I loved them then, and even now I can read them and recover nearly all of my early love, especially when I block out all memories of the newer sequels.
I feel there's some deeper analysis I should be doing when I reread old favorites, but less face it, we return to books from our childhoods because we want comfort, not because we want to win some prize for literary vivisection.
7:45 PM
Okay, so my goal tonight is to write an entire four-thousand word story. I have right now a handful of vague notions and images: "vampire planet"--vampire describing attributes of the planet, not a planet inhabited by; "the Greek ships wait and Troy is gone forever"; gender divisions and alien plagues. I'm aiming for a brand of space opera that pays (in my mind) a sort of homage to early Anne McCaffrey, plus or minus a Tanith Lee sensibility. Can it be done? We'll see.
I have spent about fifteen minutes tonight (plus some time earlier in the day) selecting an appropriate moon in our solar system as a setting--initially, the setting was going to be Neptune, but I decided to find a more reasonably terraformable world given the plot going through my head.
I have "Possum Kingdom" on infinite loop on my iPod.
I set my timer for fifteen minutes (and it took me four minutes to write this, so it's really 7:49).
8:04
70 words. I spent about ten minutes trying to figure out where to start the story, and naming the character. I have the opening paragraph, though. And I'm hungry. I have some more things to think out, now that I have some initial steps, so I'm going to make dinner, scarf it down, and return.
8:34
Done eating. Back at it.
8:47
230 words. We're not off Earth yet.
9:05
429 words. Still on Earth. Farewell parties go on too long. I'm sure I (and the protagonist) aren't the only ones who think that.
Snippet:
[Her neice's] eyes panned down Heather's body, and stopped at the hem of Heather's skirt. "You have big knees, Aunt Heather."Heather raised an eyebrow. "Thank you, Jillian. You are an observant girl, and very truthful."
Jillian shrugged. "I know." She wandered away to play with her cousins.
Heather shook her head and set aside her wine. "And to think, we used to blame the patriarchy for body image problems."
9:29
630 words. ALMOST off the damn planet.
9:55
722 words. Got stuck on global birth rates for a moment. Have decided that there are between one and sixty million people at play in this story. Head is spinning.
10:21
794 words. But the last seventy were super-important world-building mojo. And we're at the spaceport.
11:01
1,246. Still standing in the spaceport, arguing. I think I'm only writing filler right now. I'm cutting it.
Most of the process was automated. A computer checked Heather's identification, and requested the name of her most recent terrestrial male ancestor."Philip Sydney," Heather typed.
"Philip Sydney's Diaspora Number?"
"140-603-2573-410."
The screen flashed twice and a message popped up: "Wait for official."
"Wait for official what?" Heather asked.
"You too?" asked the woman at the next kiosk.
Heather peered at the other woman's screen and saw the same message. "I guess so."
"Ridiculous amount of trouble to go to, if they're going to eat us."
"I wonder why that's the most prevalent rumor."
"A basic human fear, being eaten," the woman said wryly. "I blame it on the fact that they encourage mothers to eat our placentas."
Heather quirked an eyebrow. "You have an icky sense of humor," she said. "I like it."
The woman held out her hand. "Anna Park."
"Heather Korovin."
Before their handshake was complete, an official came over. She started with Anna, briskly stepping up to her screen. She tapped and gestured until a family tree appeared on the screen. The official said, "A woman has already reported in with your ancestor."
"Really?" Anna frowned. "Who?" The official said a name, but Anna shook her head. "I don't know that name."
"Sometimes family groups argue, split up, move away, lose contact. I can't guess what happened, but your family's quota has been filled. You're free to go."
Anna stepped back, face ashen and shocked. "But--"
"Please, ma'am. I'm very busy. You're free to go."
The official had moved to Heather's screen and was scrolling through her family tree. In a half-daze of hope, Heather asked, "Am I free to go, too?"
"No." The official looked up. "Philip Sydney wasn't your only male ancestor to emigrate."
"No? He was my grandfather."
"Your grandmother's father also emigrated. He has no genetic representative listed."
"My grandmother's father died in the plagues!"
The official sighed. "That was probably a stepfather. Family connections are strange, memories are tenuous, secrets run deep. The Diaspora was eighty years ago! I see it all the time."
"All the time?" Heather asked. She was angry, but she didn't know what to fight about, so she decided to take offense to the official's cavalier attitude. "You've only been taking people in for two days."
"It feels like a lot longer," the official said.
Heather swore.
Anna stepped forward. "I'll go in her place."
"Not allowed," the official said.
"Then I want to see my relative, the one who already filled the quota."
"Good luck finding her," said the official. "Ms. Korovin? I've selected your ancestor. Take the print-out and follow the instructions and you're ready to go on."
"Thanks," Heather said bitterly.
"Welcome," the official said without a trace of irony, and moved away.
Anna darted back to her kiosk and stared at the screen. She pulled out her e-pad and scrawled furiously for a moment. Heather took the promised print-out.
"It was nice meeting you," Heather said.
"Yeah. I'm going with you," Anna said.
"Uh...
So, yeah, I wasted some time on that, but that is novelesque scenery and Anna doesn't fit into this short story.
So. Back down to 797 words.
11:30
I'm on a better track. 1,022 words. Probably not breaking 4,000 tonight though. I'm quitting at midnight. I have made it to space, but I'm not quite sure what to do now that I'm there.
Midnight
1,312 words. I'm not enamored of my progress, but on the whole, I've done much worse with even greater expectations. I'm so far from done, though... Hopefully, not more than three thousand words from done, yet. I remember when I used to know how to write short stories. What was that like?
I've managed to work out the human society part of this story pretty well. The aliens are eluding me, however. I need to do some fundamental brainstorming before I run at this again. If the world were just and good, I'd be able to work before going to the library tomorrow, but the world is not just and good, and I need more sleep than that.
Orson Scott Card said in an interview on It's the Story, Stupid--provacatively enough--that Stephen King does not, in fact, teach the kind of writing he does in On Writing. OSC provacatively says something along the lines that King is rehashing what he taught as a high school English teacher.
I paused to think about that for quite a while. Okay, not that long. But it stuck with me.
Later, the podcaster of ItSS (who strangely doesn't have his name easily findable on his website... unless it's CharlesP, but even then, not super obvious since it's not on all the entries) mentioned a tip given by OSC in a workshop, which is to look at your pages of dialogue and just pluck out a random exchange, as though the speakers just skipped ahead together to a later point in the conversation--like real life. An interesting suggestion. I've done it by accident before--here "accident" means "desperate to reduce wordcount, I took out a fairly meaningless little bit right in the middle of a conversation that wasn't pulling it's weight, and made my characters look much more insightful in the process." So, I guess I knew that one, even though I didn't know I knew it.
I have listened to even more podcasts since the review I did for Elizabeth. For the record, that review was me talking to my peer; it's my belief that Elizabeth and I are at about the same point in our needs in terms of writing advice, and I was very subjectively judging the podcasts on a personal preference scale with a little bit of "what might Elizabeth need to know" thrown in for good measure.
I may review some more for her later... though in brief, I've been listening to the AmericanWriters.com podcast, the aforementioned It's the Story Stupid (which largely reviews writing books and picks out choice bits of advice), and Dragonpage Cover to Cover. I haven't figured out if I love any of these yet, but I know they pass muster into the "worth a listen" category thus far.
In other news, I did manage to finish my rewrite for Ideomancer but I'm letting it sit for a day or two. I need to give it to my husband for a reaction shot, too; his cues are subtle, but I think I understand by now that the dubious "are you sure?" face is actually code for "I smell cat poopies" and a blank stare means "too elliptical" and a shrug means "well, I don't think anyone is insane for buying this." He's honest, but the honesty is all in code.
And in still other news--which is not so much news as "grand plans" (the kind that precede "great expectations"), I have decided to write a short story tomorrow night. I'll hunker down with it as soon as I get home, and I'm not standing up until I reach 4,000 words or have a complete story. If I manage it, it'll be a (precedented) miracle--a feat I've not managed in years, though--and if I don't manage it, it will have tried.
I am planning to write the first of my "Beauty and the Beast" retelling trio that I have known I was going to write for some time, but didn't realize until today that I'd be writing three separate versions of the story. This will be the non-fantasy one--the far distant future but realistic-ish one, actually, because only one of them will be a fantasy story--called either "Thaw" or "Migrado." ("Migrado" is a much better title, but it lacks direct relevance, and to make it fit, I'd have to abuse the idea somewhat. The sequel could be "Migrado," I suppose. But that's not the "Beauty and the Beast" retelling, and it's not the story I'm writing tomorrow night.)
That's the news for now.
Mad props to the Tech for Writers podcast, the first episode of which managed to totally change the way I think about the software side of novel-crafting and give me some great information on suspended animation.
Pamela Templin reviewed a great many novel-creators in her podcast, and yWriter was the one that leapt out at me as fitting best with my style. I had looked at it briefly while peering at Sonar (submission tracking software), but never was lured by it until after spending countless frustrated hours trying to make Microsoft Word do my bidding. (I was writing using the outline function, which was fine(ish) right up until I moved some folders around. Then all my outline links broke, and I wept. WEPT.)
My two tiny complaints so far with yWriter are: the wordcount update doesn't aggregate as often or as quickly as I'd like, and you can't underline--I think because you use text files.
The WONDER of the program is the built-in storyboard feature and... drumroll... a "find problem words" feature. Yes. I really can track the number of times I wrote "watercress" (two) in my novel. Plus... free. FREE. It far outweighs the underlining issue, and overall, less underlining? Not so bad. I need to rely on it less, anyway.
Bubbly.
Here are the other entries I brainstormed for A Field Guide to Surreal Botany after I made my first submission, so certain was I that I'd be rejected quickly. I call it a happy day all around that they took my entry and I didn't have to think any of these through.
Enough of that... tosses brainstormy post-it note.
The usual speedy rejection from JJA at F&SF. For now, I'm going to call that one time I broke through to GGV a fluke. The fact that I did it once is a pleasant novelty only. Probably my best published story to date didn't make it to GGV, and if that's my best and yet not to their taste, there's nothing gained by worrying about it. I'll keep subbing there because it's what I do, but I must remember to smother expectations before they go out the door.
*
Rewrites? Driving me a little mad. I have made a flawed story. I don't know how to unflaw it. I think I may've told the wrong story from the wrong perspective. I think I'll just have to bull on through, write to editorial order, and hope that it works out in the end. If it doesn't, I know how to write the other story. If it does work out, the other story can be the sequel.
If only running around screaming helped.
'Kay. This entry is for me more than you, but you're free to sing along.
Mr. Klecha and I are up to no good. Watch this space for details.
I have not done any research in a while. I should probably remedy that.
I wrote about half a villainelle the other day. This marks the first time in an extremely long time that I've felt even the remotest edge of an urge to write poetry. And of course, it was the easy half...
I cut about 1,200 words out of my draft of "Wedding Dress Tea Parties" for a variety of reasons. In part to get to the main action quicker. In part to get it down to novelette-length from novella-length. These were good reasons.
Somewhat related to the last paragraph: I find my stories trending longer and longer lately, and for good reasons--I have more ideas to convey, more story to tell, more character to develop. This is part of what I mean when I say that maybe short stories (i.e., under 7,500 words) may not be my natural length. Unfortunately, I can't prove that 100,000 words is my natural length, either. Right now, I seem to be most comfortable in novelette territory. Which is a ridiculous territory to hang out in from a career standpoint; these lengths are hard to sell.
Still no word from Interzone on the story that was held over for the second then third reading. I choose to read this as a good sign, overall, but am also prepping myself for disappointment. Not prepping enough, I just realized, though: I haven't picked my next market yet. I have to do that. It's the best way to prepare for rejection.
One other market has been holding a story of mine for a while longer than promised (and longer than estimated). I am more in the "it's probably lost" mentality for that one.
Am working on a rewrite for Ideomancer. Managed to use the phrase "stay calm" six times in two pages. Have come so close to tearing up the story and stomping it into little pieces and starting over from scratch... yes, playing the role of "worst enemy" tonight will be... Mer Haskell!
Regarding the politics of shelving a book which contains your name but not your work: does that go on the ego shelf?
Because there's no room on my ego shelf for it. Because right now, the ego shelf about two centimeters of space between a box of incense and a stack of travel sized foreign language dictionaries (topped by a stuffed snail). The ego shelf, in fact, holds a copy of the Darker than Tin... chapbook anthology (which was my payment for "Heretic's Day Out") and a CD of flashquake vol. 4, no. 1. I should take a picture. "World's Smallest Ego Shelf."
"Huntswoman" was honorably mentioned in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror.
I had sort of figured that someone would tell me if that were the case, so rather than risk disappointment, I had put off taking a look. Today, I had nowhere to be after work, so I buzzed the local Barnes & Noble (right on my way home), marched upstairs to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and walked up and down the aisle six times before finding it. (Shelved under D for Ellen Datlow with all the other D books. Yes, Borders does this better--anthologies are on their own shelf.)
And on page 467, it was there.
*checks off another milestone with a small squee*
I really meant to write an entry about this a while ago. In fact, I think I'd had the whole thing written and then lost it to the ethers--but that's okay! Because I've vetted even more podcasts since then! But now Elizabeth asked me to recommend some writing podcasts to her, and I realized it was time. So, presented in my order of preference, here is the list of podcasts I've listened to over the last six months.
The Secrets (Michael A. Stackpole)
Stackpole has published 38 novels and has broken onto the bestseller lists with his Star Wars novels. So--credentials. He's keen on popular writing, and thinks highly of Stephen King. Stackpole is--in case the Star Wars bit wasn't clear--a sf/f genre writer, among many other things.
The podcast itself has good production values, Stackpole's voice is clear and understandable, and he has a good sense of humor as well as a fair amount of good advice on a wide range of topics. Naturally, I differ with him now and again--that's going to happen when writing advice is being given--but I always come away feeling inspired in some way, even if it's just to smooth over a paragraph of previously written stuff, but usually, he makes me think about much bigger things. Topics cover everything from first chapters to character development to career management.
I'm probably not praising this podcast highly enough, actually, since this is the only on-going series whose episodes I don't delete off my iPod. I have listened to every podcast he has available at least twice, and I'm saving things for at least another round.
There are 24 episodes currently available on the iTunes subscription page for the podcast, so there's a nice backlog to go through.
Getting Past Being Joe Blow Neopro (Tobias S. Buckell)
There are just six Joe Blows, and I value them all. These are another set of no-delete podcasts, and I've listened to them about five times now. Whenever my enthusiasm for the whole business flags, these manage to pick me back up.
They are largely centered on the neopro's career, but there is an excellent bit on original source material that I think a writer at any stage could benefit from. Beyond that, Toby's work ethic comes through in these, and that's always a good energy to be around.
The production values are excellent, and they're read by a professional reader.
The Kissy Bits (Kiki Opdenberg)
An on-going series about romance writing. Kiki is an early-career writer (I'm not sure she's sold anything yet), but she's got a pretty excellent handle on things. I appreciate her perspective, and she has good advice even for people who aren't writing romance novels. Check out the excellent episodes on Emotional Honesty and the First Kiss, for example. Kiki wisely points out that the vast majority of books have a romantic element in them, so you can't go wrong listening to this. I have kept a few episodes for repeat listens.
I count 14 available episodes... though I'd skip the Chick Lit episode, since it seemed to me to be more about identifying the Spotted Chick Lit in the wild than writing it.
Kiki has a charming Australian accent, though occasionally, her sound quality feels a bit muddy.
I Should Be Writing (Mur Lafferty)
Props to my hometown girl Mur. Well, actually, I don't know that she's my hometown girl at all, but she sounds like all my friends in high school and junior high--that is a grade A Southern accent she has there, and all the people who fake Southern accents should go listen to this podcast and get a clue. Southerners can still sound Southern and educated. Er. Wait. How did this soapbox get under my feet?
Ahem. Mur's podcast is conversational and straightforward, and delightfully honest. I have not listened to the greater part of her work, as there are only 10 of the nearly 50 episodes she's done available on the iTunes subscription, but I am a dedicated listener from here on out.
Mur's advice in the eps I've listened to tend towards the macro, not the micro; I did catch an episode about villains, but mostly, her advice seems to be about getting over the fears and foibles that stop you from writing or stop you from submitting--call it career management for the Freshman Writer. Good production values, and an excellent podcast.
We're up to episode 5, and while I enjoy these podcasts, I've not yet met one that I feel requires a repeat listen. It's possible these eps don't gobsmack me because I've read most of the corpus of Holly Lisle's writing advice on her website--I have to wonder, how much can one's advice change in just a few short years?--but the episodes are pretty solid. I'm a smidge disappointed that episode 2, called "Plotting Trilogies Series, Part One," has not yet been followed up on.
Good production values, however, and it appears that there's a keen interest in answering reader mail. The most recent ep about originality vs. uniqeness, I thought, was really nicely done; even though it was advice I didn't need, it's good advice, and goes hand in hand with Toby's podcast about original source material. I think if you read those both together, you might really have a good grasp on how to go about making your work stand out.
Writers on Writing (Barbara DeMarco-Barrett)
This is actually a podcast of a radio show, so it's a little slicker, a little more polished than the average podcast. It's also non-genre, whereas the podcasts listed above are. This is done in interview format, and I've honestly only listened to episodes with authors I recognized so far.
Somehow, radio-as-podcast strikes me as a little less dynamic than podcast-as-podcast. It feels less personal, less intense. So, this one doesn't register very high, perhaps because it's too much like listening to NPR--which I love when I'm in an NPR kind of mood, but I'm not in an NPR kind of mood when I've pulled out my iPod and turned to the podcast playlist.
Weird, I know.
Anyway, I've not given this one a fair shake yet, though I've liked what I've heard.
Paula does these as interviews with writers, much like Writers on Writing, but this is fully a podcast, not a radio show, and somehow, it makes a difference! I've listened to many of these episodes, though I have to say, they're usually so long that I lose interest at some point. Twenty to thirty minutes really seems to be my podcast sweet spot. (Of course, that also happens to be the length of my commute.)
There are eighty-three episodes available, and at least one of them has to resonate with any writer-listener. Topics are wide-ranging, though they usually concentrate on a type of book: the comic novel, the true crime novel, the urban novel... though just as often, there are really excellent career-related episodes about marketing and publicizing your novel, or auditing your royalty accounts. I would call the focus of the show much more macro than micro--we aren't getting into minute writing tips very often here.
I really loved the "Podcasting Science Fiction" episode with Steve Eley. I probably could/should have listened to it before submitting stories to Escape Pod... on the other hand, I didn't, and it's worked out pretty well. The podcast was recorded some months before my acceptance for "One Million Years B.F.E."--which was not previously published anywhere (which is against Steve's preference), and which Steve added sound effects to... (which he had not, he said in the podcast, ever intended to do). Go, little story! Defy the odds!
Writing for Young Adults (Arthur Slade)
I sigh to think about this one. I really wanted to like this podcast, but they're just too short, and with too little content. I can't even settle in to think about what's being presented before the podcast is over. I listened to eps 1-11, and then I gave up on this one.
It's a pity, though, because I love Canadian accents.
The Survival Guide to Writing Fantasy (Tee Morris)
I'd heard such good things about this podcast.
But then there was the one minute introduction of sound clips from various war movies. And it really was only one minute, because I checked the iPod, but it seemed like five minutes, and I was so bored.
And then there was a nice interview with Terry Brooks, and I thought, "Okay, I could like this podcast. That was a good interview."
And then the next episode I listened to began with a kerfuffle between the podcaster and a detractor on his website, and I was immediately turned off. And it just seemed to go on and on and on. So I went on to the next episode after that. And I don't even remember what bugged me about that episode, but I gave up, right then and there--unsubscribed, came home, deleted the eps of the iPod.
It's a pity here, too, because the buzz about this podcast is good, and because the name of the podcast is also terribly good.
---------
Now, I've recently subscribed to a half-dozen more writing or writing-related podcasts, but I haven't even listened to the first one of those yet. If anything really strikes me, I'll holler.
My desk is a mess. My story is a mess. My plan is a mess. My files are a mess. Everything came to a screeching halt when I went on vacation, and just when they lurched back to life, there was a second screeching halt when work got crazy.
Sadly, this job doesn't even suck the greater part of my soul or brain or energy, like so many jobs would. This sort of month is unusual. It does, however, always suck my time away. Sucks it away like whoa. An hour a day for lunch. An hour for commuting. A (half) hour to make myself look presentable. I steal as much time back as I can, by writing in breaks and lunch hours, by listening to podcasts on writing and science fiction on the commute, but there's still that pesky 7.5 hours in which I am expected to be as creative, involved, and dynamic as I am when writing. When the job sucks away mental energy while in the shower, at lunch, on the commute, I'm bitter. When the job sucks away the breaks or eats into my lunches, I'm downright cranky.
Last weekend was a good breathing space, and I accomplished a lot. However, I crammed so much angst and stress into the four days I worked that it was all I could do to brush my teeth.
I'm taking up meditation again. There's no other way.
I finished rewriting "Rampion in the Belltower" and sent it off to F&SF. I do not actually know if it does what I meant it to do--be a clear alternative to Rapunzel, that is. It's not an apologist's tale; there's no "but the witch was really okay"--the witch isn't even the witch, she's a stork. In other words, it may be utterly unrecognizable as Rapunzel, and it may garner rejections for referencing source material that clearly isn't.
And that's rejectomancy, my friends, in it's purest form. "This is why it could be rejected." But the thing is, I think the story has it going on in ways that defeat just about every other short story I've ever written, so I'm just preparing myself so I don't get slammed out of left field. The good news? I did have that held-breath moment of wondering "What happens next?" when I read through it recently, and that's always a good sign. And what I borrowed from Rapunzel was done just because I wanted the tropes--captivity, tower, prince--to turn them on their heads.
The zombies are there for a completely different reason, of course.
Now, to perform an appendectomy on "Wedding Dress Tea Parties" and maybe whip off the last segment of "Almanac," and we'll be done with short stories for a while. I'm not anywhere in sight of my usual goal of writing 12 new stories a year, but if these are the three I have to show for it, then I'm well-pleased.
Speaking of goals, I've managed to read 52 books this year, which means all I read from now on is pure goal-profit.
Safe-Keeper's Secret by Sharon Shinn (52) [young adult]
You know, I think I read this series out of order, but that actually made this book cooler, if I did.
The premise is the same as in Truth-Teller's Tale: there are people in the world who have a magical ability (binding?) that makes them keep secrets, and there are people in the world who can only tell the truth. It's a lovely conceit. Shinn once again manages to obliquely visit the problems of modern society--in this book's case, incestuous sexual abuse--through secondary characters, while main characters remain unscathed. I'm not sure if this is good auctorial distancing to introduce uncomfortable topics to younger readers or the bad sort of auctorial distance wherein one keeps the main characters safe.
I'll let you know some other day. :)
***
In other news, I had a nice weekend at the lake, wherein I swam, kayaked, and wrote my fingers off. I'm ready to send out "Rampion," believe it or not, having shaved it down to a mere 7,500 words. Which plucks it out of novella-length and back to short story length, if you're not demanding that 7,499 be the actual cut-off. Whatever. I don't think I can pare off another ten words, to be quite honest.
I also may've solved the ending of "WDTP"--better late than never, I guess. I would that I'd solved both the ending and the beginning before I sent it off to F&SF, but that's the nature of the beast. I'll probably never sell there--if only because nothing I ever send there has had time to go through my editorial remorse process. In fact, the process seems to come about only when items are sitting in JJA's slush pile, and no other. Alas, eh? Alas.
The Wrath of Mulgrath by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black (50) [children's]
A good conclusion to the series. I don't have anything very real to add to my previous conclusions, but I do like how the authors handled the parents' divorce and the kids' reactions to it. It was real. Not lovely; just real.
Reforming a Rake by Suzanne Enoch (51) [romance]
This is the book in the series that comes before Meet Me at Midnight, and all I can say is that I think I was in a better mood when I read this because I enjoyed it more than MMaM... even though the sexual attitudes of the hero were just obnoxious. (I suppose they were rakish, actually. But, bleah.) I don't know if you could write a real Regency rake and make him agreeable to a modern feminist (but now I'm wondering how I could do just that... here we come, time travel romance concept number 384).
Anyway. I was sad it was over, and have gone hunting for the third book in the series.