February Update

February’s been pretty good to us here at the Jones homestead. I’m finishing up the drafting of the longest book I’ve ever written, and, as I think I’ve mentioned, with it divided into different parts some of them are finely polished and some are still in “stage play” format. (That means that I’ve got dialogue and a couple of  descriptive tags dropped in to key scenes.) This new method sure does seem to be working well. I think I’ll use the same method on my Paizo Pathfinder books when I start on them next week.

We almost bought a four horse trailer Monday until we figured out it was a Craig’s List scam. It sure sounded too good to be true, and then when we were asked to pay through a third party to get to Google Checkout we knew we were being had. Ah well. At least we caught it in  time and lost no money. According to this site, many people weren’t so lucky. My wife was pretty annoyed, and a little sad that she never gets the lucky breaks, but I think she’s pretty lucky being brilliant and capable and lovely as well, and I think we’re lucky we didn’t just send 2500 overseas never to be recovered.

I finally started reading some non-noir, starting with Ian Tregillis’ Bitter Seeds. After that will be Brian McClellan   (Promise of Blood) and Brad Beaulieu (The Winds of Khalakovo) and Matthew Thyer (The Big Red Buckle).

I’ll be curious to see how long I can stay away from noir, though, because I hear the siren call of Raymond Chandler’s last books, not to mention some more Max Allan Collins, some more Westlake, and some other authors far more obscure. It probably won’t be long. Interestingly enough, I’m still not that curious to try writing noir myself. I’m just using it as a window on observing writing techniques, and enjoying the heck out of some good stories.