I've just finished an hour of searching through the online catalogue for any and all English-language books that might discuss the 18th-century version of The 1001 Nights, translated by Antoine Galland, to be cited/discussed in my next thesis chapter. I've looked through well over 1,000 listings and tried out every keyword search I could think of. My. Eyes. And. Brain. Are. Dead!

But hey, I've got 8 pages' worth of printed-out listings to carry with me when I go to the university library this afternoon...

I also finished Chapter One of Thief of Souls this morning. Hurray! The nice thing about having written 4 chapters of an earlier version and spent time thinking about a then-middle section which has all been cut out (when I decided to start the whole book 15 years later) is that I have loads of back story in my head already! I know a lot more about the characters and their relationships than I ever would have if I hadn't taken the time to think out what exactly they were doing during those 15 years. So at least those 2 months of work last summer turned out to be productive in the long run, even though they felt like a bit of a waste at the time...

Yesterday I got the Coolest Blurb Ever for one of my stories, from a writer-friend who had just read a draft of my newest short story, "It's All About the Shoes":

"It's Jennifer Crusie Meets Worlds of Warcraft!"

Man, that made me happy. I grinned for about an hour.