hey, now that the Phoenix is back, I'm ready to see if anyone wants to read the first part of my book in progress. It's raw and I haven't made the edits to the MS I have made to my hard copy of it (I have to edit on paper, it's a thing.)

I've gotten a few takers and they are much appreciated, but working in a vaccuum, you know -- the more feedback, the better.

Let me know! It's about 25 pages thus far.

What kind of book is it, Erin?

Erin, send it along. Happy to early-beta.

Susan, basically it's a fantasy, set in real time, only with a slightly skewed alternate reality (that could be real) in which supernatural creatures exist. God, does THAT sound familiar! But I'm trying to pull in some creatures that haven't been done to death, and I'm playing with the Lilith legend.

Research has been pretty fun, but I was agonizing for about a month of "How am I going to pull in all of the Hewbrew midrash and Babylonian stuff and create a true to legend world structure?"

Then I remembered the whole "Duh, I'm writing this and I'll skew the myths as I wish" part of poetic license, and research was a lot more fun after that.

And Deb, thank you! Insent.

Erin, received and backsent. I'll likely get down to this in a good unbroken reading on Friday morning (tomorrow night is avonex and also writers group). A few questions in the email I sent.

Erin, I'd love to be able to read it, even though I may not be a good beta due to langauge barriers and lack of experience (which means, I'm really curious to read, but not sure I can really offer any help).

Research has been pretty fun, but I was agonizing for about a month of "How am I going to pull in all of the Hewbrew midrash and Babylonian stuff and create a true to legend world structure?"

Posting. Right. Here.

No, really, if there's any Hebrew/Jewish mythology was I can help you with (research in the original language and the like), I'd love to.

Erin, send it to me and I'll give it a go--I asked first because I feel like I'm a better critic with the kind of stuff I actually read, y'know? I don't always have that luxury in my writers' group, and I'm never sure I'm offering useful critique in those cases.

Susan and Nilly -- insent, and thank you!

Sending out the draft-so-far to several people has inspired me to make the friggin' line edits to my saved copy, so hopefully I will finish that tomorrow.

Oh, man, I have to offer some major thanks, right here.A lot of people need thanking, but this one goes out to Beverly: I'm finishing up the final input updates to "Still Life" - which was written first ten years ago and as such needed some major updating - and she caught a honker that I'd flat-out missed. A timing thing: when I first wrote it, the lead character (female) was in her late thirties and there's a section where her mother is talking about life in the fifties, because that's when said female lead would have been born, to make her late thirtyish - in 1994, when I wrote it.

Problem is, the lead character's still in her late thirties, nearly forty, but I didn't update that bit in mom's recollections. So doing the, er, math? She'd be in her late forties, my age.

Yike. Easy fix, too, but purely cultural - discussions of tailfins on cars on whatnots - and I purely missed the update.

Gah. Whew. Mental roses being sent Bev's way.....

Mwah! You're more than welcome. It's a great read, even knowing how it ends. Where does it go from here?