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Hey Folks, Even though it’s a Saturday, I didn’t get up until almost 3. There’s a ball game starting at 1 that I want to watch, and if my wife wants us to do anything together, I will give that precedence. So possibly a short day today. Days like this are why it’s good to have a few days in the bank. (grin) This WIP is filled (thus far) with psychological minutae, so up to this point it’s necessarily slow going. This one will fluctuate, but I’m hopeful. The first novel in this series came in at around 53,000 words. … Read more

Hey Folks, Some good stuff in today’s “Of Interest,” as in the purloined topic, “Crappy First Drafts,” which I blatantly stole from my friend, Dan Baldwin and his Writing Tip of the Week. One note on James Scott Bell’s examples at the Kill Zone blog: Nobody, and I mean nobody, says “ta” for “to” or “ya” for “you.” Folks in Minnesota say “ya” occasionally for “yeah,” but even they never say “ya” for “you.” When writing intelligently (meaning with the reader in mind), dialect and accents are not rendered “over ta the saloon” or “What ya doin’?” (Read them aloud. … Read more