News:

I was futzing around and stumbled upon a podcast review of Question Not My Salt that warmed the cockles of my cold, cold heart. Genre Junkies did their review for QNMS for their Thanksgiving episode and seemed to have a blast discussing all the disgusting elements (plus some talk about The Substance and Thanksgiving itself). The second half of the full episode is spoilery, so it might be better to listen to after you’ve read it yourself, or if you don’t want to read it and just want to listen to other people talk about the gross parts.

This review was completely unsolicited as part of Crystal Lake’s marketing campaign. They were recommended the book by word of mouth in extreme horror circles, which is the coolest thing, and they really seemed to enjoy it. They agree that, as extreme horror, it’s on the milder side and acts as a good gateway into the subgenre.

As evidenced in the last post, I finally went to see Wicked, which is such an important musical for me. It’s meant different things in every decade—it changes as I change—and as someone who grew up a belter and mezzo soprano, both Glinda and Elphaba’s songs have been formative in the development of my singing voice (which is just for my own enjoyment, which I feel ambivalent about on the best of days). I’m not the only musical theatre kid who was ridiculously pleased at how well the musical was adapted to screen. Everything we could want and more than we possibly could have expected. Approached with so much love from everyone involved.

I’m watching Die Hard tonight for the first time ever! I’m looking forward to experiencing a quippier Bruce Willis. I mostly know him through his more stoic phase. Not to mention a young Alan Rickman.

Works in Progress:

I’m nearly finished with the first round of edits for the Dracula reimagining. Then I’ll send it on to my alpha reader. She usually gets my first fruits to help me on the developmental end of things, so I’ll know how to approach first-round edits. But because I wrote the DRI out of order, I wanted to make sure the disparate parts flowed as a whole and there were no glaring consistency errors. So far, the part I needed to make the most changes to is the end, which I wrote first, so that makes sense. I should probably finish with the first round by the end of the weekend.

I had a nice lunch with my alpha reader this week, too, and we talked about her notes on Masque and how to approach some significant changes. I took additional notes, and although Masque will probably be my greatest challenge to rewrite since Nocturne (my issues with Meridian usually had me reworking the plot entirely rather than rewriting the plot I had, which is what I did with Nocturne and will do with Masque), I’m really excited to see what I can make with this story, which has good bones and some great scenes to work with. As gothic alt-history, it’s really demanding on a detail level, and that’s not necessarily where I shine (because I can’t just make shit up the same way I can with modern fantasy; even where I change history, it needs to be justified, and I need to understand the history to change it in the first place). But this story is so important to me and deserves my full loving care and attention. It’s been with me so long; I just want all the best for it now that it’s finally a manuscript.

I’d hoped to have Masque and the DRI edits finished by the end of the year, but now I’m aiming for the end of January, which is usually when early submission calls for novels close.

Books I’m Reading:

The Fisherman by John Langan
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Sister, Maiden, Monster by Lucy A. Snyder

Things I’m Listening To:

Christmas playlist

Things I’m Watching:

Home Alone
A Cinderella Christmas
Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies
The Thing
Wicked
The Christmas Cookie Showdown series
Holiday Baking Championship series
Holiday Wars series
The Great British Baking Show series
The Irrational series
Elsbeth series
Ghosts series
NCIS series
Longmire series
Columbo series
S.W.A.T. series