Deb, I'll be happy to take a look at it sometime in the next 24 hours or so.

After dinner I have to pull myself away from figuring out what Anna does with her pistol and get back to Lucy. Earlier this week I gave myself a swift kick in the rear by reminding myself I told an editor and agent the ms would be ready by the end of December. So I figure it's high time to learn to write to deadline, because I'd sure hate to not be finished on Jan. 2 and have one of them ask for the full.

Ginger, my mom was born in Liberal, her brother in Hooker. My mom lived in Guymon and her mom lived there for years. Nick was born in Guymon and I lived there for a couple of years before moving on. Wow, small world.

I would love to beta, but am still swamped with the paying work. I'm sorry Deb. I hate not having time for everything I want to do.

t Cue the Twilight Zone music

That's a really small world. My dad was head of the beef department at the Swift plant in Guymon in 1970-72. I lived there the summer of 1971 and took classes at Panhandle State.

Deena, I am all about the paying work, believe me.

DUDES. I finished the damned story. 2200 words tonight, nearly seven thousand words total.

I now definitely need betas. Will send to Anne and Ginger and I know Bev wants, and Susan. Also Nilly?

I'm now about 35% of the way through the Lucy rewrite. I just finished editing a chapter that just needed minor tweaking to get rid of a now-nonexistent character, and now I'm printing out 20 pages from the grand ball scene to be recast into James's POV while keeping most of the dialogue and action intact.

Damn, it feels good to be back in rhythm on this, after spending the entire month between the writers conference and the election fighting block.

Whoops! I'm earwormed now.

Damn, it feels good to be a writer....

I know nothing about architecture.

I adore architecture! I've got oodles of books on it, and I especially love Tudor/Elizabethan. Priests holes and the slighting of battlements--no, that's Civil War era--and the transition from defensible castles to liveable palaces, the High Table and screens passages--

Um, sorry. Buildings are neat.

connie, I agree, they are - but the details I don't know anything about are the "what precisely would the foundation of a small (eight to ten rooms) manor house along the River Thames have been constructed of in the 16th century? How deep would they have to set it, to deal with the clay content? Would it meet today's code?"

That kind of level of detail. I spent two weeks on basic Victorian playhouse design to get the right flavour in FFoSM, and this one's going to be even more intensive.

"what precisely would the foundation of a small (eight to ten rooms) manor house along the River Thames have been constructed of in the 16th century? How deep would they have to set it, to deal with the clay content? Would it meet today's code?"

New construction or on the site of something medieval? Converted monastery after the Great Schism?

t Where's my "Medieval English Domestic Architecture" book.

Hmm. Just wrote two pages with James reacting to seeing Lucy just before the ball that's one of my set pieces. It's either the hottest thing I've ever written, or it's even more purple than the crowd at the Homecoming Game at Husky Stadium. I wonder how long it'll take me to objectively judge.