The inside of the cookie

...is way better than the outside of the cookie. This is the profound thought I had today while eating a snickerdoodle. Just thought I'd share.

So, the biggest news in my life is that, after one year, one week, and one day, they FINALLY fixed the water main leak in front of my house! (I forgot what color my driveway was when dry) Now we'll be able to get the foundation fixed and the driveway repaved (once warmer weather gets here, I assume. I wouldn't wanna be pouring asphalt in the freakin' cold)

Hubby and I got new pillows this weekend, and new chairs for our computer desks. These actually roll! Which of course means that one of them is going to move and drop me on my butt someday as I try to plant myself in it. Don't worry, I'm sure Hubby will be there to get it on film.

We also got new phones! Now, these aren't the uber pimp pilot-the-space-shuttle phones, but they're leaps and bounds ahead of our old ones. You can even listen to the radio on them! For some reason, I find this novelty extremly exciting.

I've been working on plotting the Son of Project 2 these past couple of weeks. Happily, I think I've managed to get a pretty solid plot worked up. I'm rather pleased with it. (my outlines are getting steadily better, with every new project. I deem this a good thing) I also have the first chapter written, but it's anyone's guess if this first chapter will actually wind up as the first chapter, or end up on the cutting room floor. Who knows, maybe someday I can do a "deleted scenes" thing on my web page (when I get a web page) ((And a book deal))

My only concern so far with SoP2 is that my current outline is 16 chapters. Project 2 comes in at 23 chapters. Now, I'm a firm believer that chapters are as long as they need to be, so putting 80K words into 16 chapters instead of 23 doesn't bother me. What concerns me is that for two books in a series to have such drastically different lengths to their chapters might be off-putting. I'm combing through the outline to see where additional chapter splits might be made, but I have a feeling that I won't know for sure until I start writing it.

And as a part of this discussion with the Purgatorians on AW, I found out that not everyone even writes in chapters! Who knew? Some folks just write, and when it's all done, they figure out where nice breaks would be. Just goes to show how different the process can be for people.

I'm still waiting to hear back from a few beta readers on Project 3 (which is fine, 'cause I told them to take a month, and we're way under that). I think I've identified a few consistent problem areas, and I'm anxious to see if they agree. If I'm right, then I think I already know how to fix said areas, and I'm kind of excited about it.

Ok, does me babbling like a loon make up for not posting more than once a week?