I’m still waiting to hear from two of the six publishers I queried last month.  I am choosing to believe that they have not replied yet because an outright rejection would take less time.

Meanwhile, I came up with a list of 12 new places to ply my wares, and I’ll get started on the new round of queries one of these days.

Meanwhile-meanwhile, I finished listening to Simon Winchester’s book about the 1906 earthquake. He’s a bit snobby, but it was a fun book.  I am also almost finished with Go Set a Watchman, which is an interesting study. I can see it posing as a sequel (sort of; there are some plot probs that should have been reconciled if that was the intention) but I also see it as the discarded first draft it apparently was. I find it interesting that the idealized, childlike view was the one that sold; I think that says more about audiences than it does about the writer’s abilities. I can see why this version would turn people a bit, and I’m not surprised that its attempt to show different points of view was met with hostility–regardless of anyone’s love of the original. I don’t think it’s as horribly written as some of its louder detractors say, though I’m not sure if I’d feel this way if I were reading it on the page instead of listening to it on my commutes.

I’m not actually reading much of anything on the page these days; work and family obligations have worn me out to the point that reading for fun seems too much like work, and thinking about reading makes me think about writing, which only adds to the Ugh, No, Work-ness aspect. We are going to a lot of movies, however, and I’m getting my storytelling fix that way. (The Martian was excellent, SPECTRE was excellent fun.)

But mostly I’m in a trough. Anyone got any good recommendations to get me going again?