Word count: 128393 | Since last entry: 827

As you may recall, my actual birthday this year didn’t go as well as I’d hoped (it didn’t suck, but it wasn’t special) so I rescheduled it for 2/25. This turns out to have worked quite well. The day started with Kate playing me John McCutcheon’s birthday song “Cut the Cake”, a much cheerier alternative to the usual Happy Birthday song, and presenting me with a delightful card. I also got a card from the Rosetown Ramblers.

In the morning I had a haircut, went to yoga class, and stopped at Powell’s to pick up a couple of copies of the recently-published anthology Transhuman, which includes my story “Firewall”. I haven’t yet received my author copy, so this was my first opportunity to hold the book in my hand. Hardcover, even.

In the afternoon I worked on revisions. I’m putting in two or three hours a day but not making as much headway as I need to in order to finish by 2/28.

In the evening, Kate and I went for a birthday dinner at Caffe Mingo. However, Caffe Mingo was closed for a private wine tasting (which, if they had a web page, I might have known, grr) so we walked down the block to Lucy’s Table, where we had a really excellent dinner. I had the vegetarian meatloaf with a parmesan-panko crust and housemade ketchup, which sounds oh so pretentious but was totally yummy.

So. An excellent David’s Birthday (Observed).

Today started off at the gym, where I met with my trainer and discovered my dissipated lifestyle is catching up with me… I weigh more now than I have in, like, ever. Admittedly that’s still only 141 pounds, but the trend is in the wrong direction. I must resume my previous good habits of diet and exercise.

In the afternoon I worked on revisions some more. However, I also received an email telling me that I need to send in only the first 50 pages on 2/28… plus query letter, cover letter, and two different synopses. As I have not yet written any of those, I’m going to put the revisions on hold for a little bit and work on the supporting documents instead, starting tomorrow. This may mean spending part of my time in Seattle and Victoria and Seattle next week finishing up the revisions, because I will have to send in the rest of the novel soon.

I also received email comments from a member of my critique group, indicating that the ending of the novel (which he missed critting on Saturday through no fault of his own) is broken. The other crits of the ending were also, alas, mildly to moderately unenthusiastic. I see his point, and though I don’t think I have the time to make all the changes he suggests I want to try to make some of them. I really don’t want to lose the SF maguffin from the ending, even though every single one of my critters says it doesn’t work. I know that a broken ending can be made to work, without change, by changing the setup, though this would require a lot of rewriting; alternatively, I might have to slay that particular darling and write an entirely new ending, which would require even more rewriting. Color me not completely happy about this. Still, better to find out the problem exists before submitting the book.

In the evening we had a lovely dinner at the home of Barb and J.C. Hendee, authors of the Noble Dead series, who just recently moved to Oregon. Very nice people.

And so to bed. Another busy day tomorrow.