It’s 3:30, and that means I have three beautiful, precious golden hours in my lap before I have to do The Next Thing, which is go to my writer’s group. Over the past week I made some progress on both Max’s sequel and last year’s WriMo (over 50K but still lacking an ending), so you’d think I’d be grateful and busy. But no–I’ve spent the last twenty minutes staring into space and listening to jungle noises on myNoise (see blogroll of links–>). Am I Blocked, with the capital B? No, I think I’m just lazy.

Beta readers scowled at the New Max, so I’ve gone back to Max Classic. I have a week of of-course-unpaid-forced vacation coming up (thank God it’s a five-week month); so I think I’ll finish the query letter thing and get some closure on that. After that, I put both Maxes up on Amazon and start polishing the WriMo and start aalll over again with that. It has strong female protagonists and is more conventionally urban fantasy, so maybe I’ll have better success.

As I write this, it occurs to me that perhaps my problem is obvious and psychological: I don’t want to say goodbye to my characters. Max in particular showed up in my head back when I was dissertating, although I had no idea who he really was. Maybe I should go for a Maxian trilogy? It’s traditional . . .

Can’t wait for November and what I think of as its writer’s vacation of NaNoWriMo: It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to come out of my fingers. I’ve already decided to take Eureka as my model and do a kitty again; just for fun, just for me, and of course just for you, fellow beast-tale fans.

On to tea and something unhealthy! I’ll try to bring you something diverting from the writer’s group tonight.