The new Terry Pratchett is out. THUD. That’s the name of it. It’s sitting next to my couch right now and I CAN’T READ IT. And it’s a WATCH book, too. The agony. If I read it, I’ll start writing in snarky omniscient and my already tentative grasp on Christmas romance will go all to hell. But it’s a NEW PRATCHETT. I’m suffering here.

But Sept. 30, when this first draft is done, I’m reading it. With a liter of Diet Coke and the junk food of my choice, I am going to have a wonderful time with Vimes. And Sybil. I suppose Susan is too much to hope for, but certainly Carrot and Angua. Oh, just hell. I hate delayed gratification.

In other news I have 647 unanswered e-mails to go before I’m caught up. So I ignored them and spent two hours today painting my mailbox which happens to be on a very busy highway (“Novelist Killed in Tragic Mailbox Incident; Friends Say, “She Always Was A Moron”) only to go back to the house and hear thunder. I’ll have to go and look at it tomorrow to see if any of the paint stayed on during the following deluge. The good part is that it gave me time away from the computer to think, which was good.

Because then I came inside and wrote. I’m at 5, 527 words, and some of them are good. This might be working. I mean, technically, that’s a quarter of the novella. It’s going to turn out a lot longer than that, and then I’ll have to cut it, but I made some progress here. The characters are shaping up. I got me some motifs.

This could work.