I heard back from Molly Brimer and Ellen Heavner today. Molly and I are going to meet and see where we are on Metrognomes on the 11th of December, and we are also discussing cover art for the second Metrognomes short story that is scheduled to go Online on January 3. Ellen and I are going to try to find a way to get together next week for her to interview me about The Great Debate for the Web site. Speaking of The Great Debate, the paperback is back up to #21 under gay anthologies at Amazon.co.uk. More groovy announcement are just around the corner. 2005 is going to rock!

I got an e-mail from the folks putting that ad together for The Gay & Lesbian Review. They found my blurb to be..."great." So there you go. I am a tremendous writer...of...blurbs....for myself. I also did a lot of work on the new chapter 9 of Metrognomes. I had to stop and do tons of research on the Internet in order to name the rest of the clans in the main tribe. I also tried to find a better name for an artifact that is going to be a big part of the second book. I am having difficulties there. All the names I come up with are too weird, or too hard to say. Something will come to me though. I am tired. Think I'll go to bed.

I wrote the blurb for my part of the iUniverse ad that's going on the back of The Gay & Lesbian Review in March today and sent it in. I've reworked my schedule over the past few days to allow me time for a third draft of Metrognomes, which the changes in draft 2 demand, and some extra time for historical research before getting back in to Nightfire. The print edition of "Music of the Metrognomes" was supposed to be published today, but there has been a setback because of technical problems with Lulu.com. Hopefully it'll be worked out soon.

I did some tweaking on that new scene in Metrognomes that I wrote on November 3.

Did some work with my writing schedule, set some publication dates, and did some formatting for the print edition of "Music of the Metrognomes" which is scheduled for publication on November 22.

Got a LOT done today. I sent The Great Debate off to Jacksonville, Florida to be judged in the JADA Press Book Awards. I redrafted Metrognomes chapters 30-35, which took me to the end of the manuscript. I added an extension to one scene that totally changes the way it works out. I also went back and added some to chapter 21. Then I made a space for a new chapter between chapters 8 and 9 and renumbered all the existing chapters accordingly. I am almost finished! Finally got "The Ghost in the Olive Grove" print edition up. It's not ridiculously expensive, considering it came out to 22 pages. Still, it's just there for anyone who really wants it. At any rate, I consider the experiment successful so far. Though "Project P" may take a new turn, if ever I get back to it. "Dr. Coffee's Pill" should be posted on the web site on December 6.

Worked on updating my notes for Metrognomes and Nightfire stuff.

Got a lot done today, but didn't do any writing. I mostly messed with merchandising stuff. (Tedious!) And I went by the Book Stop on Lovers and Inwood to buy a copy of The Great Debate to enter in the JADA Press Book Awards contest.

I finally heard back from iUniverse about the advertisement, and it looks like The Great Debate will definitely be included. The add will be placed in full color on the back cover of the March/April 2005 issue of The Gay & Lesbian Review and will feature twelve iUniverse books wih blurbs about them out to the side. I have to send them the blurb before December 1, so that they can edit it however they want to. :) That's the deal. I also did some work on the Metrognomes redraft. I did chapter 22, then I changed the spelling of a character's name that first appears in that chapter and had it automatically done throughout the document. I then went on to redraft chapters 23-29. I also went back to Kinko's and had a great battle with the infernal machinery. Finally got some stuff that's more or less useful to me. So that means "The Ghost in the Olive Grove" print edition and "Dr. Coffee's Pill" aren't too far away from publication. I would still like to see them both available before the end of the month.

I redrafted chapter 22 of Metrognomes. I'm sort of stuck on that scene I was going to rearrange for chapter 7 now. I don't think it will work there either. So now I have to think very hard about which characters to do this scene with and where in the story it should happen. I have a few ideas, I just don't know which is best. It might even end up happening with characters that don't play a major role in this volume of the story. That might be the best way to go at it. It's a back story that has to be told, but it just seems not to work at all if it is revealed by or to the logical central characters of this book. Hm. Conundrum. For now, I'll just keep redrafting through the end of the book with the notes I already have. Actually, I think I'll go get a Slurpy!

Worked on the same things I worked on yesterday. I had issues with the vile machines at Kinkos, got frustrated and called it a day. It was Sunday, after all. I'll try again tomorrow.

Worked on formatting "The Ghost in the Olive Grove" for the possible print edition. Worked on formatting "Dr. Coffee's Pill" for the web site.

Today I approved the cover art for "Dr. Coffee's Pill."

The Great Debate hardback was up to #22 today in gay anthologies at Amazon.co.uk. I also had my signed advertising agreement faxed to iUniverse. Had to spend the rest of the day doing school work.

I wrote a new scene in chapter 14 of Metrognomes today that better fleshes out one of the characters. I just needed to reveal a motivation for what happens with this character later in the series, so that it doesn't appear to have come out of nowhere in the second book. It's nice. I borrowed heavily from Plato's "Lysis, or Friendship" for this scene. I did it deliberately to make it clear what this character is feeling. I also signed an advertising agreement with iUniverse. We still have to wait and see what happens with that. I should know something by tomorrow.

I got in touch with Molly Brimer and we are going to try to get back to work planning the illustrations for Metrognomes sometime this month. I also got a copy of "Dr. Coffee's Pill" to Val, and she has already started research for the cover art. Got an interesting e-mail from my publisher about a possible advertisement. We'll have to see what happens.