It's currently bucketing rain here in Northern California, and I'm taking advantage of my weather-enforced house-boundness to take care of some of the things that I've been putting off—including, naturally enough, another review roundup. They're coming more slowly now that Rosemary and Rue has been out for a little while, but they're still coming, and this is actually really well-timed; I'm working on a fairly long post about reviews, so having some, y'know, reviews is a good thing.

Over at Just Finished, Rosemary and Rue has just been finished (or, well, was finished a few weeks ago; I'm behind). Quoth the reviewer, "McGuire, a local author who is also a must see feature on the local SF convention scene due to her off the cuff witty remarks, does a good job with the first book of this planned series." See? I'm witty! It's a short review, but a pleasing one.

Tiffers has posted a nicely detailed review, and says, "I haven't been this pleased with a random pick off the shelf in forever. There is excitement, magic, mystery, humor, and fairies fairies fairies. This type of fantasy hidden so well within the real world of San Francisco makes it feel real and so much easier to follow. So many urban fantasies are falling short of the mark now because they're the in thing, but this book doesn't disappoint and leaves you waiting for more." Yay!

And...that's it for today! I have some non-review links that need to be posted, but those are for another entry, thus allowing those of you who are tired of my seemingly endless review posts to skip this one without shame.

Whee!

It's time to vote for the winner in our second-ever "write a poem, win an ARC" contest. Please, read, vote, and help somebody win a copy of A Local Habitation!



Voting will be open through the end of the week. I'll do the random number drawing for a signed cover flat later today.

Thanks, all!

Words: 8,232.
Total words: 100,239.
Estimated to go: 24,761.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter eighteen; hit 100,000 words.
Music: the Midnight Blue-Light Special playlist, oddly enough.
Lilly and Alice: cat tree and bed, respectively.

In case you ever wondered, jumping around punching the air and whooping is a much better idea when you're not recovering from a nasty head cold which has turned into a chest cold (complete with horrifyingly unpleasant-sounding cough). I sound like death under normal circumstances right now, and the circumstances following sudden calisthenics were...unusual. On the plus side, I didn't die, and the cats have calmed down, although things were a little touchy here for a few minutes, on account of my choking and their freaking out.

So I am now 100,000 words into Deadline, and have hit the point where it's about to become all boom, all the time. I have some plans in the next week (movies on Friday, the Burns Supper on Saturday), but I expect that by this time in two weeks, I'll be done with the first draft. I'm on-target for my end-of-January goal. That gives me five months, maximum, to go through revisions and redrafts before my editor would really, really like to see proof that I actually wrote a book, rather than, I don't know, going to Disneyworld for the year. And then, Deadline, the book where I put paid to everything. Everything.

This has been exhilarating and terrifying and amazing and a whole bunch of other things. This is my first trilogy, for all that we sold three Toby books in the first contract; it's the first set of stories that are really just all steps along the road to the same story, pieces of a greater whole, and I couldn't be more excited.

Alive or dead, the truth won't rest. When will you rise?