Wow! 118 people took a look at this blog today, and I've not got much to report except a big toe that is infected with cellulitis which "is a potentially dangerous bacterial infection that affects the deeper layers of the skin, including the dermis, or second layer of the skin." Soaking in Epson Salt and using antibacterial unguent and swallowing antibacterial pills. Lesson learned? "Do not pull hangnails off of toes".
Rewrite of Ghoul World is proceeding apace. Came upon a scifi publisher attached to Penguin that is accepting unagented manuscripts. Rare. Very rare. I must hurry to finish the current rewrite of the novel and send it in to that publisher before the window closes again. I keep seeing the book as a movie. The cinematic effects will be really fascinating. A world of workaday zombies who call themselves "ghouls".
Current reading? Poetry and The Great Gatsby for the 4th or so time. Fitzgerald and Salinger—I never tire of them.
Wow, good week. Nearly 200 people checked in, and a poem "Reams Of Poetry Adrift" has been accepted by Big Windows Review. It will appear online August 10 and in hard copy, I believe, in November, Issue 13. Thank you Editor Tom Zimmerman and students working with him.
Rewrite of Ghoul World is moving along. I keep putting different chapters first, trying to catch the reader's attention. I think I've got it now. Shifting chapters around creates problems for this old brain. Being a science fiction novel, a certain amount of information has to be presented. Making sure the same information isn't offered repeatedly or that it's presented in a coherent sequence calls for a much younger brain than my own. I hope I'm successful. I've eliminated nearly 2000 words in just 24 pages. I've a bad habit of thinking I must explain everything to my readers, and when I'm writing a scene, I sometimes put in too many qualifying clauses and phrases to explain the action, such as, "He was stunned. Before he could think about it, he strode to the door and disappeared into the fog." Sometimes, the sentence could as easily read, "Stunned, he disappeared into the fog." Depends. Every time I rewrite, I change things. Always.
