What’s Up Wednesday

After a break last week, I’m back to a Wednesday blog, and this week it’s a What’s Up Wednesday contribution. WuW is a meme created by Jaime Morrow and Erin Funk. Check out their blogs to find out how to participate, and to see a list of other participants.

What I’m Reading

I just finished THE DAUGHTER OF TIME by Josephine Tey, and posted a review on Goodreads, so I won’t go into a lot of detail here. It’s a detective novel but with a couple of differences. First, the detective never leaves his room. In fact, he’s in hospital recovering from a broken leg, so he never leaves his bed! Second, the case is a genuine historical mystery: King Richard III and the mysterious death or disappearance of the princes in the Tower, for which Richard is traditionally blamed. Was Richard really guilty? Or was the story of wicked Uncle Richard a creation of the Tudors to soil his name and enhance the reputation of Henry VII, the king who succeeded him? While the historical mystery still remains, there are many good points brought out in the novel. The recent discovery of Richard’s remains in a car park doesn’t really impact the evidence presented in this story, since the modern investigation addressed more Richard’s physical appearance, not his character. However, one thing upon which Tey and the modern researchers agree is that the so-called contemporary accounts of Richard are not entirely trustworthy. Anyway, it’s a good book, and definitely worth reading if you’re interested in English history.

What I’m Writing

After a break for the WriteOnCon writing conference last week, I’m back to revising my novel. I re-wrote the query (even though it’s not ready to query) for WOC, and now I need to finish getting the novel ready for beta reading. I would like to get it to beta readers within the next few months, but I’m not going to rush revisions. Thankfully, I got some positive feedback last week that encourages me to get on with it, which leads nicely into…

What Inspires Me Right Now?

I’m feeling quite inspired by the nice comments, and constructive criticism I received for the pages I posted of my novel in the WOC forums last week. As regular readers know, I’ve been concerned about getting my female teenage alien’s voice just right, and from what people said, it sounds like I’m on the right track. Very encouraging.

What Else I’ve Been Up To

I noticed on the news yesterday that author Elmore Leonard died. I’m not going to pretend that I’m his number one fan, but I knew who he was, and recognize some of the books he’d written. One of the things he’s famous for is his Top Ten Rules of Writing. While there are a number of good things he says in these “rules,” I particularly like his summation of the rules: “If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.” When I think of all the books I’ve read and loved, and think about what it was about them that made them stand out, it was the fact that the writing was so good, it was almost invisible. I was so absorbed in the text, I wasn’t thinking about the writing, I was just reading the story. That’s hard to achieve, but worth aiming for.

So, what’s been happening in your life this week?