I Love My Word Baby

So I decided yesterday that I wanted to do a full read-through of Riven before diving back in.  I couldn’t just jump straight into the writing after several days away because it’s a pivotal emotional scene and I needed to get myself back there.  Plus I’m on the verge of hitting the last act, and I wanted a refresher on the various threads that I needed to tie up.

Finished it last night and…

I really love it.

It feels pretty solid, with a handful of small details I still need to fill in, but otherwise in really good shape.  Of course, I felt the same way about DOTH when I finished reading it and we know how that turned out.  But I think the Hammer has sufficiently reset my perceptions that I recognized and already addressed the plot issues my gut flagged.  So hopefully when I pass this on to her in a few weeks’ time, I’ll get a positive response.

I’ve had such fun coming back to this world and exploring a wholly different part of it than we saw in Forsaken By Shadow, Devil’s Eye, and Blindsight.  I’m introducing a cast of entirely new characters, new locations, new conflicts.  There are spinoff possibilities galore.  I’ve fallen back in love with it, and I’m very much looking forward to getting the ball rolling in that series again.

Which is not to say I’m giving up on YA.  I’m not.  I’ve got at least 2 projects in that department vying for my attention.  And others kicking around in my brain (we have already discussed how my plot bunnies apparently got into a stash of Viagra somewhere).  But just taking things one thing at a time.

The new laptop arrives today, which will be both exciting and frustrating.  The frustrating is Windows 8 for which I have much hate.  Hubby tells me it can be made to look like Windows 7.  I sure as hell hope so because they’re taking my 20 years of experience with normal Windows OS and screwing with it in a way that is not in any sense intuitive.  But hey, NEW TOY.

Back to my data entry…