Wandering thoughts

There's no real rhyme or reason to this week's blog post. Such is life.

The gig hunt for freelance work goes poorly this week. After a brief spurt of several projects, I'm in a lull. Such is the reality of freelance work: it's feast or famine. There have been some nibbles and a couple of projects I think I've got a good chance of acquiring, which would be great. Hope springs eternal, as the saying goes.

The Diamond Gate will, at long last, be published. Yeehhaw! This is an epic fantasy finished in late 2014, given to two beta readers for critiquing and editing, and finally--finally​--finished this week. It's been uploaded to CreateSpace and the digital (Kindle) version will follow shortly thereafter. By the way, I do mean epic. This book at a 5 X 8 inch paperback size has over 450 pages. Lots o' swashbuckling and derring-do going on here. And, parents take note, it's what I'd consider PG-rated. Yes, there are intimate scenes, but they're more of the fade-to-black variety than explicit.

On the home front, our focus has been on the lovely Lady Anastasia, my 31-year-old Morgan mare. The last half of March she began dropping weight fast. Like it melted off her. For those who aren't familiar with equines, more horses live about 20 to 25 years. Stasia's doing really well at this point to be above-ground. I'm not looking for miracles, I just want to keep her comfortable. Starving to death because she can't properly chew her hay doesn't meet the requirement of comfort. So she had her teeth floated today.

In all honesty, it's a bit surprising that she still has teeth. Many horses that make it to their 30s don't. The wear was pretty even, but her molars had sharp edges that needed to be filed down. So, the veterinarian sedated the old mare, filed down her teeth, and subjected her to a half hour's indignity. Stasia will get over it. And she'll be able to chew better.

And, finally, I received a request to review another novel. I agreed to do so. Since editing of The Diamond Gate finished sooner than anticipated--sorry, family, for ignoring you while I worked on that--I began reading. I'm at the 30% point and...well...I've noticed several comma errors, overuse of passive voice, a few misplaced apostrophes, and long, convoluted sentences that need to be broken and separated. (Get the irony here?) I don't like the characters much. The heroine is rude and not a particularly sympathetic character. The hero might be interesting, but he's set out to destroy the heroine's career because she's a rival, even he aims to seduce her. Jerk. Romantic suspense it ain't. 

It's past time for me to get my rear end in gear on writing fiction, not editing or reviewing.