and then, in that silence, music!

Catching up:
Playlist updated, more or less.
I've moved to North Carolina, more or less.
Got a job, more or less.
Started taking a kickboxing class.
Need to buy a new car.
Tuned up my cello for the first time in a year.

Finished drafts of Eat the Comet and another as-yet-untitled piece. I have high hopes for Comet and plan to knuckle down on it this week and crank out another draft now that I've gotten tons of great feedback for it.
That story really is my red-headed stepchild. Some days I love it and some days it just pisses me off. It really is outside my comfort zone and isn't really my genre, but I think as long as I'm patient with it and not too hard on myself for not being a better parent to it as I neglect it or tear it apart, it could grow up and find a home someplace like Asimov's. That's the shoot-for-the-stars dream, anyway. As it is, I'm happy just knowing that something I created has already made my friends laugh out loud in such places as Economy Class transatlantic flights, Nursing school classrooms, coffee houses, and desks in various offices.

My current writing space is Caffe Driade, which has excellent coffee and this great middle-of-nowhere feel to it. I go there and feel like I've stepped into a vast wilderness that just happens to have a little coffee house there. I actually see foxes and other critters hanging out around me and there are trees and plants everywhere, including a giant potted tree on the roof. It is the best possible environment for me to be productive. It was there that I completed the handwritten first draft of a Once Upon A Time type story. I haven't typed it up yet, as I'd planned to do today, because I needed to let it settle so I could figure out which of the 3 endings I'd come up with to use.

Lastly, as usual, I find out about these things late, but though the story's a couple of years old now, you may find the same inspiration I did in learning about Owen and Mzee, a baby hippo and an ancient tortoise, respectively, who bonded and became best buddies after Owen washed up in Africa after the tsunami.