Weirdly, this kind of makes me feel like a real writer. [link] Was I really that out of line, pointing out that this guy's book on investigative protocols was edited poorly? Or did the pissed-off commenter run a Word spelling-and-grammar check on it herself?

I just finished Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction by Tracy Kidder and his editor Richard Todd, which is an excellent book about writing. It's obvious that Kidder's books have been collaborations with Todd.

Weirdly, this kind of makes me feel like a real writer. [link]

I think a good number of conservatives believe that Jesus *was* the love child of God and Ayn Rand.

I have a beta reader I'm swapping chapters with who is giving me good feedback, but moving very slowly. At a couple of weeks per chapter it could be literally a year before she gets through it, but I want to wrap things up sooner than that. Would it be rude to say keep sending your chapters but stop reading mine since my timetable is too soon?

OTOH, I'll probably be revising that long anyhow once my agent gets a look at it. But I don't know that for sure, and I'd hate to have a beta reader taking the time to generate feedback that I'm not going to use.

Tell her your timetable, including the bit about the agent, and leave it to her whether she continues to give feedback?

I agree with Typo, Gud.

Anybody want to move to Detroit?

Dream last night provide - well not really a plot bunny, but a way to get a character into really deep trouble.

Universes with vampires often are magical universes where laws of sympathy and contagion work, true? (Often, not always.) So a magician character wants to temporarily become a vampire. He gets hold of some vamp blood, and puts some of his own blood into a vial. Then casts a spell using the vamp blood to transform the vial of his blood into vampire blood. That turns him into a vampire. All he has to do change back to human will be to turn the vial of now vamped blood back to human. Only, if somebody else gets hold of the vial of blood, not only has he lost his ability to turn human again. Possession of his blood means they can do all sorts of nasty things to him, including enslaving him. (A vampire-magician slave could be very useful to the ill-intentioned.) Of course character does not have to be a "he" - just the way I dreamed it.

As I said not really a plot bunny. Just a way to get a magic using character into really deep trouble.

Also, now that I think of it - a good way to give a villain a powerful minion who can be turned against him at a critical moment.

In the interest of "something small, every day," I'm going to write a drabble first thing every morning. I would love prompts -- either one word or a situation (a tall man in a bookstore or something) or even a link to a found picture, like Teppy used to do.

You get virtual cookies for every prompt. And possibly actual ones, at some point.

Of course, it would be great if everyone played and posted drabbles here again, too.

I do miss the drabbles.

I suggest: New things. And: mist.