2nd edit Done! Yay.

Song of the day: “The banana boat song” by Harry Bellafonte. Seriously, I keep seeing Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice.

So let’s start with the good stuff…I FINISHED THE 2ND EDIT!!! Oh-my-gawd! We were 16 pages away from the ending yesterday morning, and then, before I knew what hit me, we were at “the end” last night. It was a little anticlimactic, really. Here I was, steadily reading (out loud, mind you) going through the story, the final fight, the near death scene and then…poof, it was over and done with.

Of course there is still the 3rd and last (paper) edit, but since that tends to go much faster, because I can basically do it anywhere, we should be ready with ATOL by the end of the month, or in the first week of the next one. *deep breath* Meaning that we have to get going on that query letter if we want to start sending it out to publishers before fall, darn it. Sure, we’ve worked on the friggin’ letter off and on for the past few weeks, but still…I don’t know if I can handle the new pressure. Hah.

Just kidding. The new steps are always scary, but fun too. It’ll be interesting if we’ll be able to draw the same positive responses for ATOL as we did for Saving Nina. Of course I think it is good, but it will be fascinating to see if any of the editors will think so too.

Other than that, there’s not all that much is going on at the moment. I don’t know why, but on the overall it is just daily stuff that’s keeping me busy. Laundry, the dogs…as a matter of fact I just took Knight II and Chaos for a swim in the pool and almost got bowled over for my efforts. Seriously, Knight was feeling a tad overheated and just stormed in, splashing all over the place. Chaos, on the other hand was very civilized about the matter (good Chaos). He barged into the water like the tank he is and proceeded to swim three circles—tail held high—before he calmly made his way up the stairs to pose in the glimmer of sunlight. Gawd that dog knows how to strike a pose. Hah.

I don’t know what the heck is going on with the dogs by the way; for some reason they are once again attacking the fences and literally rip apart laminated metal in their efforts. Even now big brother and grandpa are fixing the man-sized hole they made just yesterday afternoon, little bastards.

While watering the plants and planting some onions yesterday we also took the opportunity to pluck a full crate of tomatoes, which are being canned (or at least trying to) right this instant. We’ll see how it goes. The zucchinis are finally going down in production a little, and the large field where the biggest batch grew we have turned the earth, added a natural fertilizer (two year old dog poo, yeah I know, it sounds icky, but the stuff works really well) and planted potatoes, yay.

We did a calculation and figured that in order to have nine months worth of potatoes we’re going to need fourteen patches a year of the stuff. It should be doable, but we’ll see.
Considering big brother had to do some maintenance chores throughout the house, a leaky faucet, a broken ac in mom’s bedroom, etc, I spent lots of time alone in the yard, weeding like mad. I’m proud to say that I yanked two patches free of the infernal stuff, creating some space for the remaining plants still in the greenhouse. Hah.

I finished two Tess Gerritsen novels and started on the third (this one not a Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles story, by the way) and have to say that so far I don’t really like “Life Support” I might change my mind later on, but not yet.
I did enjoy the Rizzoli and Isles, one, though admittedly the one that was mainly narrated from Rizzoli’s point of view drew me more than the one with Isles in the lead. I guess the first (Rizzoli’s character) is more to my liking.

Well, I’m going to leave it at this, it is time to start on the query letter after all, and, well…I don’t know what else to talk about anyway. *sigh*

P.S.
I changed the layout. What do you think? Good, bad, or just meh. Hah.