Pretty good week. Made 30,000 words on the current novel, but I’ll have to take a little pause: I got edits from the publisher for my next Addicted to Heaven book, A Gathering of Ghosts. He’s pretty happy with it, and says there’s not a lot to fix, so I’m hoping to get a quick turnaround and back to Shadow Spy’s Daughter.

Young adult 5+/5

When Starr witnesses the shooting of her unarmed friend by a white police officer, leading to national headlines and growing protests, she can no longer keep separate the poor neighborhood where she lives and her fancy prep school. This book was riveting from cover to cover. Starr was a believable teen caught in impossible situations, within a complex family dynamic and equally complex friendship culture—and the events that avalanched down on her made this novel a huge page-turner.

Attended NASFIC this weekend. Sold a few books, sat on some panels, and caught up with friends. Very small con, though–under 500 I’d say. Got some writing done, but not much.

Continuing to make my daily word count goals. Going to Nasfic on Wednesday. Programming seems to be rather thin, so who knows what the con will be like–bar con, likely. But without much formal programming, I might get more done on the book than I was expecting. It’s all good.

SF 4-/5

When John Perry’s wife dies, he joins a futuristic army that values the wisdom of old people, but puts them into enhanced bodies in order to fight aliens on other planets. I was really looking forward to this book,  but when I started it, I was a bit disappointed that the characters and underlying assumptions were clichéd. Then I learned from my daughter (with a PhD in creative writing) that the expectations of this genre (military science fiction) are that the central character must be a perfect cog in the machine while also being an outstanding uber-cog—if this doesn’t occur, the book doesn’t fit its genre expectations. Once I understood this and stopped being so judgmental, I really enjoyed the book!