Alrighty then

I went to bed at 2:30 in the morning, mostly because I was bound and determined to get at least a small smattering of words into Chapter 19 of Lament, after having done my very first second draft wordiness edit on the Prelude. But I made the mistake of taking (generic brand) Midol before I went to bed. This was a mistake. The stuff has caffeine in it, which kept me rather more awake than I liked for at least two hours. Round about eight or so I woke up again, far too mentally alert to ignore how my back had started to complain now that the Midol had worn off.

In between I did manage to sleep, but my brain served me up what was hands down the strangest crossover dream I have ever experienced: The Quick and the Dead and Harry Potter. Cort was quite bemused to find out he was a wizard.

Thank you, I just had to share.

Wake up, beta readers!

Posting this outside the Writing filter, because some of y'all aren't on that filter, and I'm going to need all the help I can get for this, because Lament of the Dove is going to be a big monster book.

I'm trying something wacky here, since my muse has been balky lately: I've pre-emptively started edits for the second draft, which is mostly for two things: 1) reducing the word count, and 2) fixing the continuity errors I know about. So the commentary I'll be seeking will be for things that will go into the third draft. Right now I'm thinking that I will release chapters to beta readers in sets of three, just for giggles, to include a chapter for each of my viewpoint characters.

As always, if you're neck-deep in your own writing, you are under no circumstances obliged to beta mine. Nor do I ask any one beta reader to tackle the entire novel. Even if you only do a few chapters, that's totally cool. :) Comments both big and small are welcome, anything from nitpicky proofreads like "you left out a word in the third paragraph of page 189" to "you have a huge gaping plot hole in chapter 12"!

And for those of you who don't already know, I keep a private mailing list for my beta readers to send out occasional updates on what's open for reading. If you'd like to be on that list, and if you want in on the beta reading for Lament, give me a shout!

(crossposted to scuzzboppers)