Long Overdue...Again

Ok, so I got rather busy between the reading and now, and here, 2 weeks later, I am finally making the massive catch up post.

First off, the reading.

It went very well. I ended up reading only two stories, Just Jazz, which was received very well, and is now being cooled before going through rewrites before an eventual submission somewhere. And I also read an excerpt of The Rider (I think that is going to be the official title now). The Rider was received well, but because it was a middle of the story excerpt they didn't know entirely how to take it.

I've decided from this reading that I need to brush up on my public speaking skills. I also need to stop drinking coffee before a reading, and start drinking something more quenching. Like a Gatorade. I was up there and my mouth got really dry. The caffeine made me really nervous, and one eye teared up. And I was sweating like a madman. Most people said that it was a decent reading but I felt like crap while I was up there.

And congrats to the other readers. Martel Sardina read her story about Zombies and Chicago's notorious "vote early and often" saying. It was a very clever tale. The other was Joshua Doetsch who read excerpts from his upcoming novel "Strangeness in the Proportion" which won a publishing contest through White Wolf and will be available (according to his myspace page) "sometime in the near future." He has an amazing mastery over words and the ability to turn a phrase.

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I went up to my cottage for the 4th. It was a weekend of running, geocaching, drinking, and fireworks with the family. We accidentally had two fireworks (very LARGE fireworks) go off on the ground, which was a rather disturbing experience.

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I also got a job at Mcalister's deli. It's funny, I never thought that I would be working in food service. It was always one of those menial jobs I'd managed to avoid through high school and most of college. It helps being able to tell myself that it is just a summer job that will pass.

Really I miss working in libraries this summer. It was nice being in that field of public service and not in a private industry that is more concerned with resource conservation and anything in the name of a buck. I felt like I was doing actual good, and now I'm just working.

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I'm still apartment hunting in Ann Arbor, but I have my hands on a few interesting places. Now I need to get the time off of work to head down to Ann Arbor for a few hours to check it out and do some job hunting and generally try to make like a progressive college student.

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Other than that life has been fairly quiet. I've not done nearly the writing that I wanted to. I've only written one short story this summer. Goals are made to be broken and I am a pro at doing it.

On the good side I did go to the coffee shops around the area the last few days and have managed to more or less hammer out a cohesive outline for the Rider. It's raising some interesting questions and taking the story in a few different directions than I'd initially intended, but so far it isn't anything I'm too worried about, and the outline isn't set in stone. Maybe I'll go finish it tomorrow at the Starbucks in the mall.

And with that I'm going to go curl up with a beer and a book and fall asleep.