Heard the song on the radio. According to Gabriel, the monkey is a metaphor for a person’s feelings of jealousy and the song itself is a love song. Huh.
This morning I reached the part of the novel in progress where I was able to write “THE END.” And it was the end—of a nearly three-month journey that took me from page 1 to page 225, and used up 72,000 words. I’m not quite ready to call it a first draft because there is one section of continuity that needs to be reworked because I changed my mind about the sequence of an incident but didn’t go back to fix up the older material because I was busy plowing forward. I have a list of about six things I want to do with the manuscript before I’m ready to call it a first draft, and accomplishing them will probably occupy most of April, if not longer. Then I’ll print it out and call it a first draft. Thus far, I haven’t printed a single page of the manuscript. (Don’t worry, it’s backed up.)
I posted my review of Fireworks by Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop on Onyx last night. I blogged about it a couple of days ago. A very nicely handled character study and promising first novel. I received an ARC of the translation of a Swedish crime novel called Mind’s Eye, an Inspector Van Veeteren mystery by Håkan Nesser. Since I liked the last Swedish crime novel I read, and this one is nice and short, I decided to put down the Peter Carey novel for a few days and try this one out. So far, so good. A man wakes up from a drunken binge to find his wife of three months murdered in their locked bathroom. To the police it’s an obvious case. He even ran a load of laundry while waiting for the police to arrive. When the man also becomes a murder victim, the situation changes, though.
I had a short story rejected on Saturday, so I found a new market for it and sent it out again right away. It was accepted by Wrong World three days later. This is an interesting market. They produce the stories on DVDs with an opening and closing narration presented by host Dr. Lyle Merrick. They pay very well for short fiction (10 ¢/word) though they are also acquiring non-exclusive audio/visual rights at the same time. Remains to be seen whether they will exploit those rights or not, but I’m willing to give them a shot with it. Best paycheck for a 3000-word short story ever—for me, at least. I will be very curious to see what the finished product looks and sounds like.
No Survivor this week. I guess there are people who care a lot about basketball, but I’m not one of them. I’ve attended one NBA game in my life, and it didn’t change my opinion that it’s a wretchedly repetitive sport without much real drama. I’d rather watch cricket, and I don’t understand 1/10th of the rules.
Lots of drama on Big Brother these past two nights. Evel Dick’s return was a little more low-key than I expected, though I liked his mutterings about the fact that the producers were so cheap that the house was stocked with the same pots and pans as for the previous seasons. It’s amazing what a little motivation will do for a person’s gumption. I fully expected Adam to get all ten drinks down, but only James succeeded at that task. Then Chelsia wigged out, and for no good reason. For most of the season to date, I thought she was a decent player and person, but her behavior at the end was inexplicable. Even James voted against her rather than offer a symbolic vote in her favor. Ouch.
The series finale of Jericho wrapped things up as well as could be expected. Some excellent drama, a very nice character reversal on Beck’s part, closure for most of the other characters, and Jake and Hawkins had a nice closing scene before the fade-to-black. The show had promise—too bad it didn’t have the viewership.
2 Responses to Shock the monkey