What I really need is a babysitter. BabyGirl is a phenomenal sleeper usually (and she's not quite twelve weeks old!) but this deadline is beginning to panic me. And then there's the whole "no business posting here with a hundred pages left to write in two weeks" thing. :-)

I would love a beta on some of my other stuff, yeah! For these books, I think it might confuse me, a) because I pretty much have to rewrite based on the editor and packager's input, and b) I'm not exactly writing them the way I planned to anyway. For instance, I envisioned writing the series in first person, with a different character narrating each book, but a majority vote decided they should be third person instead. Which is not a bad thing, per se, but I've got seven teens to focus on, and developing a unique voice for each their perspectives has been daunting, to say the least. Point being, there's so much stuff I want to change or do differently already (or stuff I liked that got revised or changed without a lot of input from me) that I'm not allowed to do, more opinions might make my head explode. But if any of you want to look at it out of curiosity, yeah, great.

And when the book is turned in (hopefully first week of March), I'd love to share some of the other things I'm working on and get some feedback. And I'd love to read everyone else's stuff, too.

Must. Get. Back. To. Work.

Ack! Hope I didn't kill the thread. Trusting everyone is off writing diligently.

Deborah -- Found Arabella on the web; I'd never heard of it. I'm definitely going to look for a copy this weekend. And I would love to read the story you're doing for them. The length is so restrictive, though -- I'm impatient to read some of the stories and see how you develop a romance with conflict in such a tight space.

AmyLiz, you didn't kill the thread - it's Angel night.

Mine's a ghost story, and the romance is the secret that caused the haunting. It's the discovery of the truth that highlights the romance. I'm probably about 500 words away from the end, but it's going to need a thorough beta read.

Well, I'm no writer (I'm a physics student), I just like to lurk here and watch the work process of the others, and even if I could write, it wouldn't be in English, since it's only my second language (my mother tongue is Hebrew, which is very different).

However, I find watching the creative process fascinating, and I love reading, and I am still thrilled by the possibility of communicating with the people who are behind the words, so to speak, so I love getting to read anything Buffista-written (as long as they remember that I don't really know what I'm talking about and just use this as an opportunity to read things written by people whose words I like).

Nilly, do you want to read what I've got so far?

AmyLiz, when you're ready, you'll have lots of volunteers.

Deena, yup, definitely.

Cool. Insent in a minute, then.

Well, I'm no writer

You may not be a writer of fiction, but you're a writer of Nilly, and a beautifully talented one.

even if I could write, it wouldn't be in English

I wish I could read Hebrew, if you're even better in that.

Wrod. Story about writing and Hebrew...Philip Roth, an author well known for getting characters into...compromising sexual positions, visited Israel once, and did not know very much at all. His translator taught him the words for boy and girl and said that should be a good start for him.

His translator taught him the words for boy and girl and said that should be a good start for him.

BWAH! That's right, Roth knew Yiddish but not Hebrew. I wonder if someone taught him the word for "breast"?