My fabulous editor Juliet dropped me a line this weekend to let me know that her editorial letter and the marked-up manuscript for Blood Engines is coming my way next week, and will probably land on my doorstep Tuesday. She also told me the book is rock solid and doesn't need macro-level changes, just a line edit. This makes me so happy. With Rangergirl, she tore my book open and laid it out on the table and helped me rebuild it stronger, faster, better... and my goal with Blood Engines was to give her a draft that fired on all cylinders and didn't need as much work. I'm surprised and gratified to discover I did my job so well. It's also a weight off me, because now I'm confident that I can turn her changes around by the end of next week, probably, and then I'll be done with the hard part. (The proofreading and copyedit stages, while somewhat tedious, don't really bother me -- I go to a café and sit and correct things and OK changes and write "stet" for most of a day, and I'm done.) I'm also pleased, because I think if she liked Blood Engines so well, she's sure to love Poison Sleep, which I think is even better. So, y'know, I'm feeling good about this whole two-book-deal portion of my life.

Yesterday was kind of crazily productive. I rose, puttered around the house a bit, then typed up one of my erotica stories to submit (pseudonymously, natch, because secret identities are fun). Last year at Blue Heaven I wrote two erotica stories -- I had an editorial request for such a story, so I wrote one, decided I didn't like it, and wrote a second one to submit instead. Yesterday I pulled the first one out of mothballs, read it, realized it would actually be pretty good once I fixed a problem or two, and proceeded to fix said problems. It's in the mail now. Then we went to writing group, which was fun, and easy, since it took place in Oakland (we sometimes meet in faraway places like Pacifica or Mountain View or Los Gatos, for our group is scattered across the Bay Area). Had dinner afterward at a yummy and cheap Ethiopian place. Mmm, yum. Heather and I rolled our overfull selves home, and I decided to do a little more work, writing my next Caught in the Net column. Then I realized I'd be out of town next weekend, and wrote my column for that week, too. Then, just because I already had my bookmarks folder open, I went ahead and wrote the column after that as well. So now I don't have to worry about it for three weeks. Whoo!

Writing the sex-on-the-net column is odd. Mostly I gather links until a sort of pattern starts to form, and write a column when I have several links about, say, sex and religion, or sex and sports, or odd sexual positions, or sex and geeks, or whatever. Early on my columns tended to have just one or two links and a lot more commentary and quoting from the sites, but now, nearly twenty weeks in, I usually have four or five related links, less cutting-and-pasting from the sites, and probably about the same amount of commentary. It's still a fun, interesting gig, and I have my "reserve parachute" subjects I can write about if I completely run out of ideas (sex and superheroes, or a round-up of blogs written by submissives, etc.). Finding a lack of sex-related material on the 'net hasn't been a problem yet, though...

This morning we went out to the Coffee Mill for Big Cheap Breakfast. Heather worked on her laptop while I scribbled in my ol' journal, writing another scene in the Epic Fantasy Infidelity story. I know what happens in the next scene, too, and a pretty good idea what happens in the scene after that. Y'know, this could be a novelette -- hell, even a novella -- but though there would be many cool incidents and neat characters and so forth under such a scenario, I can't help feeling that it would mostly be a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. So I think this will remain a short story, with much of the fat sliced off. I think it'll be good.

This afternoon will be devoted largely to housework, I think... cleaning cat boxes and washing dishes and doing laundry. Oh, the glamour!