Friday,
January 31, 2003
Payday!
Well, most of it is eaten up by the rent check, but it's still nice to see the positive income. And Lyndon got his W-2 today, so sometime next week I have to go buy TurboTax and do our taxes. At least I don't think we owe Uncle Sam anything this year, so that's something.
Do as I say, not as I do
Okay,
I know I'm being an idiot, but I'm an awfully happy idiot.
A couple of days ago, you may remember that I got email from someone who wanted to know if I was the Melanie Miller who posted chapters of a novel called DEUS EX on alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo way back in 1991.
Yes, that's me, I replied. Gee, nice to know people still remember my work (this, by the way, is why I maintain my maiden name on my website -- you never know who's going to remember you from way back when).
Oh, yeah, he replied, I always hoped you'd finished it so that I could read it. By the way, do you remember me asking if I could reference elements of MY novel to some of the tech in yours? And are you ever going to finish it, so that these references make sense?
Um. . .I hedged. And I pulled out DEUS EX (the edited version, which is significantly different from the one currently cached on the web), and started reading through it again. I didn't shelve it because I thought it stunk -- I shelved it because I'd lost my job, had to move in with my father and my life fell apart. It's hard to write when you're shellshocked from two years of unmitigated disaster. Thing is. . .even 12 years down the road, it still reads okay. Yeah, I seriously need to upgrade the tech, but the story was never centered around the tech -- it was centered around the relationship between a computer designer and an AI, and is based on how life hands you second chances when you least expect it. And I have 75K of it written already.
Um. . .
Um. . .
Oh, hell. I started editing it last night (at least this time I have my own tech support in the office next door who can answer questions like, "What would the screen look like if a monitor suddenly crapped out," and "If you were a research director with an obscene equipment budget, what kind of workstations would you like to have?" (Silicon Graphics, as it turns out)), and I seriously think I can have this puppy in submittable shape by the middle of March. Oh, my. Well, Elizabeth Moon will be pleased -- I did promise her a complete novel by then.
Insane as this sounds, since I have two other books I'm supposed to be finishing right now, I have to say that I'm happy working on this story. It feels like I've come back to a fork in the road that I missed the first time around, and I'm finally taking it. And it's good.
Now I just have
to see if David Hartwell is still interested. . .