I am declaring a moratorium: I may not start any more short stories until I've finished at least ONE of these eleven languishing stories:
( The List )

TIME: 20 min. (the length of Kris Delmhorst's lovely EP, Horses Swimming)
DISTANCE: 2.2 mi.
TOTAL DISTANCE: 71 mi.
NOTES: Again, 6.5 mph or so, and no shin splints. This time, I have the leftovers of a 7 A.M. charley horse in my left calf, and at about minute 17, my right calf began making "Hey what about me?" noises. I don't know, I just live here.
SHIRE-RECKONING: In Buckland! Black Rider left behind. Two miles to Crickhollow.

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FYI, I am groveling slogging working my way through the CEM of Corambis (has to be back in NY the 23rd; I'm on p. 147 of 751; you do the math because I don't want to). So there will be more Due South posts (and another Q&A), but it's not going to happen until after this manuscript is back out the door. (The radio was playing "I Will Survive" in the car yesterday, and oh god I know what she's talking about. I should've changed that stupid lock.)

Why, yes, as it happens, the Corambis CEM* is sitting on my desk, due back in New York the twenty-third.

Why do you ask?

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*Copy-Edited Maunscript

(There was no Project Valkyrie today, as the weather was just too fucking gross.)

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What I haven't been posting about, obviously, is the revisions for Corambis that are due at the end of the month. I haven't been posting about them mostly because this is the part of the process that is difficult to articulate in a way that makes it interesting to people who haven't read the book yet. You know, when your writer-friend tells you, "I moved the chunk where Gilbert finds the pruning shears in the abandoned mental asylum from Chapter Four to Chapter Two, and OMG it makes the bit with Tabitha and the two ormolu swans in Chapter Three look like I meant to put it there all along!" And you smile and nod and metaphorically pat your writer-friend on the head and try to insert something that looks like a conversation into the conversation.

You know how it goes.

And maybe later, when the book is published and you read the bit with Tabitha and the two ormolu swans in Chapter Three and realize that, yes, of course the chunk with Gilbert and the pruning shears had to go in Chapter Two, maybe you call your friend up and go "OMG the pruning shears! You were so right!" and the two of you shriek and giggle like hyenas who have just found the most sumptuous elephant carcase of their lives.

Maybe.

But my point is, this kind of revising is neither particularly intelligible nor particularly interesting from the outside, and of course the sentence-level stuff even less so. So I'm not posting about it. Just trying to get it done.

I'm also not posting about this head cold, and believe you me, you're grateful for it.

I am back home after Fourth Street, which was exceedingly excellent. I will try to post more and better later (although with Corambis revisions due at the end of July, don't count on it), but for now I just want to remark that I listened to Peggy O'Neill's album, Love, Lust, and Frustration, on repeat all the way home, and it is awesome. If you like women blues singers, which I do.

I now have 101 ms pages of continuous narrative of Corambis, or approximately 23,700 words. Most of this past week has been struggling with the effort to write transitions between salvaged bits of text, which, as writing tasks go, is about as fun as sticking your fingers in a pencil sharpener. And I've got some more of it still to do, but I figured breaking triple digits was worth an update.

Chapter 17: 10,218 words

Summerdown, thus far: 147,926 words

What remains is dénouement and the part where I end this entire four book monstrosity. And then I get to go back and fix everything that's currently broken and put in actual words everywhere I've got [blank].

It may be a Frankenstein's monster of a draft, but a draft I will have by August first.

You may, as jaylake says, continue shopping. No need to return to your homes.

My big accomplishment for today is that I got them off the goddamn train.

2,118 words. About half of the second scene of the climax.

(GUILDENSTERN: Ahem.
ROSENCRANTZ: I don't know how the next scene starts! Shut up!)

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peake posted yesterday about this attempt to define a "slipstream canon." Or possibly I mean a "slipstream" "canon." Or, well, here. Have some quotation marks--""""""""--and punctuate as seems best to you.

( for them as cares, click with the clickyness )

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(ROSENCRANTZ: There! See? I'm writing. Satisfied now?
GUILDENSTERN: [reading over ROSENCRANTZ's shoulder] No.)

525 words. AKA the first scene of the climax. Tomorrow I get into the meat of the thing.

Also a lot of stupid flash games.