Melonade

Has it really been a month since my last post? Doesn't seem that long, but I guess blogger wouldn't make it up. Yeah, probably not.

Well, I've been taking a mini vacation from working on the book this month. I didn't plan to, but that's what happened. And I'm okay with it. Really. No, really. Okay! So I get a little cranky when I don't write. There, I've said it. And what have I been doing instead, you ask? Not a lot. Video games. The occasional movie. Finally jumping on the RSS bandwagon. Tennis and nerd games.

I've given myself July, but come August I will be back to writing. I've cleared off the desk, and it's time to get back to work.

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Now playing: David Crowder Band - A Beautiful Collision
via FoxyTunes

We interrupt this new music week to bring you an exclusive bulletin:

Much to the delight of my music-loving self, I (and my sister and two of her friends) have secured tickets to go see Great Big Sea in October! The closest show to my current location? 8+ hours away in Albuquerque, NM. Awesome.

Hopefully, the new GBS CD will be in my mailbox tomorrow.

My webiness has waned in the last few weeks, but I'm not sure why. Perhaps it was just 'net overload that made me back off from facebook, twitter, urbis, and this very blog. The thing is, I didn't really even realize that I was doing it, and I didn't miss them much. I'll try to remedy that by stuffing as many links as possible in this post.

Tuesdays are climbing back up on my list of favorite weekdays. Since we've got fancy cable now, BBC America is my go-to channel. Besides Gordon Ramsay yelling at every chef in the UK, they've got comedy night on Tuesdays. The 1st show is Coupling, which I've seen before, followed by my current favorite show Not Going Out (I had an instant crush on Lee Mack and am still trying to figure out exactly how that happened.), with Absolutely Fabulous bringing up the rear. Apparently AF was a very popular show in its day, but I've got to admit that I just don't get it yet. I'm still watching to see if I will understand it one day. If someone told me they arranged for me to live in England, I'd take the offer in a second.

The other reason Tuesday are great? New music! This morning before work I picked up Coldplay's new cd. I saw Coldplay last time they came to the city, and they're coming back this summer. Friday night is the KC Clifford concert/cd release, and next Tuesday Great Big Sea's new cd should be arriving in my mailbox from our northern neighbors (Canada, not Kansas). I would love, love, love to see them live, but I have a feeling that would require a special trip north for my favorite Canadians; they don't seem to do much touring outside of the Northern states.

It's full-on storming here today, with lightning and thunder and flooding roads. My favorite weather, actually. And today's soundtrack is brilliant.

This week mental_floss has got a guest blogger- a grammarian! She's written some really nice refresher pieces on grammar and punctuation, and an interesting etymology piece. Tomorrow she's answering reader questions. Check it out. Your commas will thank you.

By the way, June is shaping up to be a lovely music month. Well, late June, that is, as both Great Big Sea and KC Clifford are delivering new music to their fans and soon-to-be fans. Let the countdown and change collection begin!

Another week, and I'm looking back thinking, "Where did it go?"

I got some work done on the book, but not enough. Last night we had yet another tornado scare, and I had to rush home from the grocery store to make sure my sister had stopped panicking. And it's hard to concentrate when you know the weatherman could tell you to seek shelter at any moment. Hopefully tornado season will be over soon.

I've gone back to editing a hard copy rather than directly on the computer. For now, I think it's best. I'm working on the first 12 chapters, and I've posted the first 8 on Urbis to get some stranger feedback. This is where the frustration kicks in.

Urbis is a great writing community site. If you're a writer and you want to get useful criticism on your work, I recommend it. The only problem is that you have to wade through some of the less-than-helpful reviews to get to the good stuff. Lately I've been longing for some specific criticism, and I get fluff that doesn't help at all.

Am I going to stop using Urbis? Certainly not. Several of my submissions are the top-rated in the YA category, and I intend to add to that list. If nothing else, there is the thrill of seeing that someone new has read my work, and the tension of wondering whether they will like it or not.