Technical Difficulties

TIME: 30 min.
DISTANCE: 3.6 mi.
TOTAL: 21.1 mi.
NOTES: The great advantage to renting the rowing machine is that if it takes me until 9 o'clock at night to talk myself into exercising, that's just fine.
SHIRE-RECKONING: The Road goes ever ever on.

---

In other news, in case anyone is anxiously wondering, my actual deadline for Corambis turned out to be August 15th. I've got about 200 pages of draft left to go, and I've managed to get the word count down to 174,000, which means I even have some wiggle room to put the exposition in. Excelsior.

So there are--wow--over a thousand of you, and those are just the ones LiveJournal keeps track of.

This probably means it's time for another Welcome To The Jungle post.

So. Welcome to the (very small, tame) jungle. (Yes, there are four lions in this jungle. Yes, they do spend most of their time asleep, although I think at the moment Catzilla is battling a paper crane.)

I'm a professional writer (novels and short stories, though sadly not many of the latter recently). I rarely post about the specifics of my writing, although I frequently whinge post about the process. If you're looking for discussion of my books, may I suggest you check out the_mirador?

I have a Ph.D. in English literature (hanging in the kitchen, if you want to know). My specialty is sixteenth and seventeenth century English drama. I sometimes post very geekily about same. I also post about (other people's) books, science fiction conventions, cats, and anything else that crosses my mind (this is, in other words, a personal blog), and I'm in the middle of a series of posts about Due South.

I'm currently working on Corambis, the fourth book in The Doctrine of Labyrinths, the series started with Mélusine. It's due March 31st, and I have, right now, a dingo's breakfast of a first draft and 170 ms pages (approximately 40,000 words) of a second draft. Thus, as you may imagine, I'm not going to be posting much until the book is turned in. (From February 22 to March 25, I won't be posting at all, because heresluck is very kindly hosting me for a DIY writer's retreat.) Hopefully, this means normal service will resume in April.

If you want to add this blog to your reading list, don't feel you have to ask. Just go ahead and do it. I am highly unlikely to add anyone reciprocally--which is a reflection of nothing except my own ability or lack thereof to manage my time and energy wisely. I do read every comment that people make, although I don't reply unless I actually have something to say. (Sometimes, this means I don't say thank you as often as I should, and I apologize for that.)

My collaborator/writing partner/best friend is matociquala (Elizabeth Bear), and if you're not reading her blog already, my feeling is that you should be. Although I admit to bias.

So. Anything else you want to know?

(Also, if you'd like to introduce yourself, the comments to this post would be a dandy place to do it. There is, however, absolutely no obligation. Some people like to say hello officially; other people prefer to run silent. Both are equally cool with me.)