Baked goods, bads, and morally ambiguouses.

In response to the Revise My Novel! poll, I have decided to scrap this novel.* Instead, I will be writing a novel in which a much-slapped hero and heroine have lots of hot sex while saving the universe from the Zombie Strom Thurmond Horde and blowing stuff up. The League Of Insufficiently-Clothed Gentlemen will also make an appearance.

I've been having printer trouble, which I suppose is inevitable with my elderly iMac and almost-as-elderly inkjet. Something's wonky with its paper intake, so I have to steady the paper with both hands or risk repeated jams. Because of how my workspace is set up, this means that I have to stand with my arms around the printer.

In other words, my printer is so insecure it needs a hug to function.

( I also went wandering on the Internet... )

Also, in the continuing annals of Bad Ideas In Musical Arrangement, it should be noted that "I've Been Working on the Railroad" is a poor song choice for a holiday carillon, even when played slowly and in a dirge-like minor key. So is "The Sound of Silence," for that matter.



* Kidding! KIDDING!

See that? That's the face of the earth. Here I am, down here, having fallen off it.

It's been a very busy month so far, and I'm only now starting to take a breath. I had three weekends in a row that were packed to the gills with Stuff, I've been trying to get the Awful First Draft of Provisionally Titled Gate Novel complete so I can stop disliking it, and the busy season has started at work. To top it off, I somehow came up in the rotation for my writers' group again, so I had to cobble together the vague short story idea I'd had into something readable. Still don't know whether I've succeeded in that.

( Weekend 1: San Francisco and Tahoe )

( Weekend 2: Wedding (not mine) on the Cape and lots of fire )

( Weekend 3: Viable Paradise reunion )

Next weekend looks blessedly unbooked, which is a very, very good thing, because the weekend after that, we're hosting a dinner party. The apartment's currently a pit, and I'll be doing some serious cleaning and moving-of-furniture (shut up, wavyarms) over the next few days. I also need to learn how to make a decent mole sauce. Rendering Templars down does not seem like the best option, plus they're hard to find these days. Maybe I can substitute Freemasons; I hear they're recruiting.

Reread the novel last night. It's not bad. There are some lumpy bits, some places where I wasn't watching what I'd changed, and Chapter 1 needs a better punch, which I think I may have figured out. But overall it's a good read. I think I can shine it up nice and pretty.

I'm encountering a mild marketing dilemma, though. At the moment I have a three-page prologue that takes place the night before Chapter 1 (Those of you who've read this already, the draft has changed considerably). It involves a phone call from a dead man, which will prove to be the catalyst for the rest of the story.

Now from what I've heard about trying to market a novel, either to agents or publishers, prologues are not good. Elmore Leonard's rules for writing say to chop off the prologue, and I've talked to a few people who claim to be allergic to prologues. (My words, not theirs.) I've also heard that agents or editors don't tend to look favorably on prologues. But I think much of this concerns prologues that are backstory, and this isn't really backstory.

So how do I handle this? I don't want to ditch the phone call, so I'm still starting the story there. Do I integrate it into Chapter 1 and lose the nice little end-of-chapter punch I'd had? Do I call the prologue Chapter 1 and renumber the rest? (Though if I do that, the first gunshot doesn't come till Chapter 4; it's currently in Chapter 3.) Or do I just leave it as a prologue and damn the torpedoes?