ROW 80 ~ Sunday Update, 4/26

Update

Not a great week word-count wise. I had some VOTS web stuff get in my way on Weds/Thurs as well as 24-hour Readathon and VOTS league finals yesterday. I *did* print out the last bunch of scenes to picked them apart and edit them by hand. Sometimes that’s the best way of doing things for me. Fairly happy with where I am at the moment. I’m not going to get to 30K by the end of April, but maybe 20K. Finished or not, I’m going to hand In Need of Luck over to Eric on Friday for a read-through.

Goals

Writing

• 1000 words/day average on In Need of Luck in April or until done. – Wrote +2229 so far this week (Mon-Sat). I want to even that out to 3000 by end of day today.
• Daily free write. – Every day except yesterday, which was Readathon & VOTS finals.
• For May/June – Scene rewrites for PHYSICa.
• For May/June – Transcribe free write bits that might be useful to Abbott project.

Reading, related to writing

• Finish reading River City Empire (related to next possible writing project) by the end of April. – I got about 125 pages left.
• For May/June – Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands
  by Michael Chabon.
• For May/June – The Call of Stories by Robert Coles.

Publishing

• New descriptions/categories/tags for Weordan books. (April 15th)
• Brainstorm alternate tags for books already published. – We’ll probably take a look at tags for PHYSIC this week ahead of its promo.
• List of reviewer contacts. – No movement.

ROW 80 is a blog hop!

Please, check out how other Round of Words participants are doing with their goals.

Deal Me In, Week 17 ~ “The Problem of Leon”

Hosted by Jay @ Bibliophilopolis

“The Problem of Leon” by John Shannon

Card picked: King of Diamonds

From: Murder on the Ropes, edited by Otto Penzler

Thoughts:

Leon wasn’t stupid, but he was ineffably unpleasant and tiresome and permanently aggrieved…

Jack Liffey met Leon Krane when they were both in college. Jack would like to believe that there isn’t true evil in the world, that maybe with a little understanding everyone can be a better person. He tries to befriend Leon, but Leon is pretty insufferable. Leon, once a math major, goes on to be a mildly successful boxer, a real tough guy who expects the same from his children. The problem? His youngest son is missing and he wants Jack, now a PI, to help find him. Except, Leon has only become a worse person in the intervening years, attested to by his wife’s black eye. When Jack finds Leon’s youngest, how *will* he manage to reconcile the two?

“The Problem of Leon” is light on plot, but heavy with characterization. Leon is a pretty well-drawn character, even if the reader still doesn’t quite understand what makes him tick.

About the Author: John Shannon is best known for his series of novels featuring the character of Jack Liffey. This is my first brush with both the character and the author. This story provides a bit of Liffey prequel, set mostly during his college days.