A Pause To Reflect On Nature

I've finished the (admittedly draft) rewrite of the last chapter of Quite Contrary.  I've been assigned a new, official editor, and I'm waiting for her to contact me.  The one thing I'm absolutely sure she'll want to keep from the temporary editor's requests is a rewrite of the last chapter, so that's no waste of time.  It just plain needed fixing.  I'm considering revving up my inspiration to resume Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain, but I expect to be hip deep in editing before the week is up.  So until then, I have a break.  I don't give them to myself, so it's a pleasant feeling.

So this leaves me walking around in the neighborhood, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air and green growing things, when the robin equivalent of Kill Bill breaks out in front of me.  There's multiples of these little buggers swooping and tweeting and going after each other.  I wish I could have gotten a picture, but it lasted for about three seconds.  Three seconds of hardcore avian violence that will scar my innocent mind forever.  It was awesome.

In other avian news, I think ducks read my blog, and they're not happy about my descriptions of their demeanor.  The fellow pictured below now lives on my front lawn.  I look out the window, and there's this duck, watching me.  Front lawns are not normal nesting sites for mallards that I'm aware, but he's sticking around.

Let Us Celebrate!

Now that the contracts are signed and they're stuck with me, I would like to thank the good folks at Curiosity Quills for choosing to publish Sweet Dreams Are Made Of Teeth and Quite Contrary!  I was totally stunned that they want Quite Contrary.  Yes, it's more publishable than Princess Knives And Her Many Fantastic Adventures In Hell, but it's still some harsh little girl stuff.  Apparently they like that sort of thing!

Boy, did they sign the right person.

The fuss and the mass of editing involved is slowing down The Inscrutable Machine (which I am definitely going to call Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm A Supervillain from now on) considerably.  Right now I'm throwing around inspirations because an entire chapter of Quite Contrary has to be rewritten.  In the long term, it means I'll have more to say, more reason to say it, and incentive to write like a fiend!

For those of you following along at home, 'a fiend' is definitely what I write like.