The Entry With No Dog Pictures

I mean, I could easily have more dog pictures for you tonight. They exist: fresh dog pictures. But I wouldn't want you to get bored!

So, what else can we talk about?

Zoe's Tale. John Scalzi's latest novel comes out later this month, and Amazon chose today to email me a promo for it, offering $8.48 (34%) off on the pre-order. Amusingly, Scalzi reports on Twitter that Amazon also promoted the book to him. As of earlier this evening, the Amazon sales ranking was numerically interesting:

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,434 in Books
Popular in these categories:
#41 in Books > Teens > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy
#42 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction
#43 in Books > Teens > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction


Now I just have to decide whether to order it through Amazon, ganged up with something else to qualify for free shipping; or to use the classic method of book-buying for immediate, tactile gratification. I'll decide in the next few days.

Heirs of Mâvarin. As Sara work on adding words to the second draft of her novel, I'm working in reducing the word count in my first novel. I'm halfway through Chapter 9 now, 350 pages in. I think the overall page count is 6 or 7 pages below where it was at the beginning of this particular edit. Chapter 8 alone lost over 500 words. I suppose that's not terribly impressive in a book that, if I work hard at it, will get down to 150,000 words. Still, it represents many awkward, unnecessary or redundant sentences reworked, reworded, recombined or removed. When I get to the end, I'll have no more excuses to put off submitting it again.

Mike and a new award. As part of his Weekend Assignment entry, Mike has given this blog the nifty award shown at right. As with most of these things, the recipient is expected to share the wealth and honor other good blogs. Rather than rush that part of the proceedings, or simply point to the usual suspects, I'm going to incorporate my recommendations into one of tomorrow night entries. Thanks, Mike!

Karen