Ethelred the Unready

My novel, Promiscuous Mode is in scenes (ordered numerically to be sure) in a Word folder. There are 73 scenes (plus recipes) that need to be put into a master document. I put off doing this because a) it is a pain and b) I knew if I didn't have it done, someone would request the whole manuscipt.
Sure enough, an agent requested the whole shebang. The first 100 pages had been put together when those pages were edited, but the rest, yuck. First of all, I have to go thru each chapter and get rid of 80 per cent of the "justs." "Just" is a word I appear to be fixated on in my writing. The editor noticed this. The word count will probably go down by 1000 just by (oops!) eliminating 'just.' Just a darn minute.

So Ethelred the Unready is me. That name comes from a funny parody of history, 1066 and All That. If you don't know that 1066 was the Battle of Hastings, the book probably won't be that hilarious.

In my new book, Festival Madness, I am having a delightful time writing about Burning Man, which I will miss this year. It's a fantastic place to set a novel. Can't imagine why I didn't think of it sooner. Or why everyone else didn't also. If you don't know what Burning Man is, visit www.burningman.com. It will give you an idea. The event itself is beyond description. Well, I'm writing about it, so maybe not completely beyond.

Aloha,

Grapeshot