I haven’t been reading much for the past month. I picked up Chelsea Cain’s second novel, Sweetheart, on Saturday and finished it this morning. It’s a sequel to Heartsick, which introduces Gretchen Lowell, a female version of Hannibal Lecter. The protagonist, Archie Sheridan, was at her mercy for ten days before she was arrested and sent to prison, convicted of only a small fraction of the murders she has committed. If you thought the relationship between Clarice and Lecter was twisted, you ain’t seen nothing like this before. Sheridan is in chronic pain because of the surgical and torture procedures Gretchen performed on him. The way he pops vicodin makes Gregory House look like a recreational user, and he’s also addicted to Gretchen. The novel is amazingly well crafted, with seemingly unrelated plots dovetailing together at the end. Highly recommended.
I took my car into the dealership on Saturday morning for routine service. I have a tire that has an extremely slow leak. This is the second place I’ve taken it where they can’t find a problem with the tire, even after over-inflating it and immersing it in water. It takes about three weeks under normal use for the low-profile tire to get to the point where the warning light comes on. This weekend they replaced the valve stem just for something to do. Then they rotated the tires, so I have to figure out where the bad one went.
I set up shop in the waiting lounge at the dealership and prepared notes for Chapter 4 of the book in progress, which I completed yesterday afternoon. I spent last evening preparing for Chapter 8 and wrote 2/3 of it this morning. All I have left is the rest of 8, all of 9 and then whatever sidebars I decide to do and I’ll be done with the book. My editor was ecstatic at the amount of material that I delivered to her on Friday. I might get another project out of this, too, which would be pretty cool.
Anyone watch part one of that Templar movie on NBC last night? I taped it but haven’t committed to watching it yet.
