Happy Halloween!

Best wishes to all those out there who like Halloween as much as I do. It’s a gorgeous morning, the Demon Lord of Kitty Badness is curled up next to the laptop, watching the birds play in the birch tree. I have fresh coffee. My laundry is already started, which means I’ll finish up in time to do more than just chores today. All in all, I’m content.

I’ve been working on an As Yet Untitled for a book proposal. It dragged its sorry backside throughout yesterday, only to get a burst of oomph at about 10:00 pm last night and I burned through to the end of the chapter. Yes, it’s rough, but it’s something I can work with.

It’s a hard chapter, because it’s the set-up, nuts-and-bolts boring stuff that has to get out there so the reader knows what’s going on. In the Victorian novel, no one blinked if an author included whole chapters that were sidebars designed to explain all that stuff. In current fiction, no one has the patience to wade through the facts. So, authors proceed like harried mothers trying to disguise vegetables so that their kids will consume them. Enough cheese sauce will hopefully do the trick.

Personally, I think we should be allowed to put an FAQ in the back of the book and go from there.