Oh, my. A week at the beach makes all the difference in the world. Elizabeth, me, and our friends Holly, Val, Clarke, Josh, and Cammie (and our dogs Whit, Sam, and Kayla!) spent Saturday to Saturday at the "Moonraker," a nifty little beach house right on the oceanfront, down on Oak Island, NC. Even with the tire-squealing of Cougar Time, a teen hangout across the street (every time we heard a loud car or tires peeling out, we'd all yell "Cougar Time!"), we all had a blast. Even the dogs had fun.

It was a great time for Elizabeth and me to get reacquainted after a very busy year with her in school and me working hard at my own writing projects. We've been so busy that we haven't been making time for each other, and our relationship was sort of stuck at the same point. So this week we got to take some nice walks on the beach and spending time together under the Incredible Shrinking Canopy on the sand, and that allowed me to put everything back into its proper perspective.

Life's too short to not enjoy every second of it. I finally realized that this week, after spending much too much time ignoring it. I used to think that if I just kept on pushing myself and working, I wouldn't notice the fact that I wasn't enjoying myself. No more. Spending time with Elizabeth and our friends really helped me see that I have a ton of things to be happy about, a million things to be grateful for.

Sitting down with my journal and writing in it longhand one morning on the "Lido Deck" of the Moonraker while everyone else was sleeping helped me see this.

I will most definitely be continuing with the hand-written journal. So don't be too surprised if my entries in here taper off a bit. There's only so much time in the day, you know?

In writing news, lots of nifty writing-related stuff has been showing up here and there. Got my contract for my story "Coal Ash and Sparrows" from Asimov's in the mail last week, along with a form reject for the Imaginings antho. Also revised "Goddamn Surfer Redneck Zombies" and sent that back to an editor who expressed interest in it. And one of my older, mainstream stories, "Winter Hunt," is being reprinted. Neato!

And now that I've done some tweaking to an older story, thanks to feedback from fellow writer Scott, I'm going to get back to work on my novel. I wrote a page in longhand on the novel at the beach, then put it on the back burner so I could enjoy the company of Elizabeth and our friends.

I did mess around with some short stories I've been meaning to write, and I read a fun novel, dgk goldberg's ...Doomed to Repeat It, which had a great final 1/3 but needed some serious copy-edits. Felt a bit rushed, but a marvellous ending once the main character travelled to Europe. I also read a good article about the Dave Matthews Band in the latest Rolling Stone, a magazine I haven't read in ages and really enjoyed. Elizabeth and I listened to "Busted Stuff" by DMB over and over this past week -- a great, great album. Later.

Now Playing:
"Busted Stuff," Dave Matthews Band

Today's Words:
600 from earlier this week (transcribed from my journal)

Novel Words:
74,200

Today's Quote:
Everyone turned and followed the gazes of the two older men, in time to see Janna, forgotten by her mother and everyone else, step through the snow in front of the ship and reach up to the fence protecting it.

"Janna!" Shontera cried. She'd been right at my side, she thought, already running back across the field. Hadn't she been right there with me?

Janna had her hands on the fence. The electrified fence, covered in its warnings and disclaimers.

All distractions vanished from Shontera's mind. She was at the fence in two heartbeats, reaching for her daughter.

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