One battering of my current account later, and I am now the proud owner of a little white Macbook.

Next weekend I need to buy an external hard drive to grab my music of the old one on one of its co-operative days (a.k.a. one of the days it deigns to boot, which it still does sometimes). Next paycheque I need to buy a second monitor because 13" slightly takes the piss and people with two monitors are hot and it's something I've wanted for a while.

In the meantime: Learning different shortcuts. *woe*

This weekend I also went to a restaurant called Quaglino's with a small number of friends to belatedly celebrate my 21st birthday. It was amazing. I had smoked salmon to start, which was simple but delicious; whole sea bass with fennel and mushroom sauce for main, plus various veggies; and the dessert, OH MY GOD, a passion fruit soufflé with a chocolate sauce that was so good it must have been melted chocolate. I don't think I've ever had such an incredible dessert. We also had wine, dessert wine, then cocktails afterwards, all of which were very good also. Fortunately this dinner was subsidised by my parents, otherwise, haha, it would have been £60 a head. All in all, a fantastic night.

(Going to London is, of course, not a true visit without a stop at Forbidden Planet, where I came away with:
Dust by Elizabeth Bear
Shadowbridge by Gregory Frost
Fire Logic and Earth Logic by Laurie J Marks - normally I wouldn't buy book 2 of a series without first finishing book 1, but I've heard good things about these books and the first two seem not so easy to get hold of online, so I thought I might as well get both.
I do love Forbidden Planet for its ample stock of US books. Looking at my bookshelves, I note that I am increasingly buying US books. There's just so much more range and so much more that I want to read.

My to-read list is, um. Growing. At a fair pace. But I try to make sure I have an hour, or at least half an hour, of reading time before I go to bed, in order to relax a bit more to help me sleep, so I am slowly but surely working through the stack.)

In the territory of Cool Things I Have, I belatedly received a few presents from my friends. The best? OH YES. You might think I am melting them. Oh no. *eats straight from tub*

*listens to Andrew Bird, eats chocolate bits, internets on shiny new Macbook, occasionally fondles new books*

*is content*

Current Music: Andrew Bird - Fake Palindromes

Well, I have reached the point where I think that Draft 1 of The Bone Queen really sucks (once I'm past the opening 10,000 words, which were pretty clean).

This is a useful stage in the editing process.

I can now tear it up, kick it, add new things, and hopefully end with a Draft 2 that Does Not Suck. I can make it novel-length and hopefully sellable.

Today at work I managed to write out an outline for Draft 2! This is a pretty big deal because I wrote Draft 1 without an outline (the way I roll with first drafts) and there was a nasty chunk in the middle that needed complete re-plotting. Plus the pacing needed serious work; the first 10,000 words are utterly out of balance with the rest of Draft 1. Plus I needed to incorporate two extra viewpoints, plus, plus. But the outline is done! Draft 2 can be bigger and better, stronger and shinier.

It will also include sex between a monster and a woman, which the man in the monster's stomach will experience too. This alone will make it a better book, yes? (And did I mention the story-based magic? I'm not sure I did. Story-based magic.) (I love the ideas in this book. I also love the characters for being flawed and having not-entirely-solid and mostly-selfish motivations, but occasionally doing good stuff too. I hope some readers will like them too.)

In order to get Draft 2 done in decent time, every day I must either:
- scribble notes on 5 pages of Draft 1 (or incorporate notes onto my computer + do a little additional stuff)
or
- write 500 words of original material for Draft 2

My goal is to start trying to sell this thing by the end of the year. And so

MUSH MUSH MUSH

Tags: the bone queen