Two days in a row

Hey, it’s practically a drought. Two days in a row without rain. Start the sprinklers! Call out the fire department. Panic, mayhem, disaster.

Oh, wait—it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. Alert cancelled.

The Closer was really good last night. Very smart writing. There was a moment when the writers had me believing the guy in custody might have been innocent after all—and wouldn’t that have been a nice twist. Then another moment when the characters orchestrated things so a misstep by one of the regulars might have been swept under the rug…and the ensuing payoff for that part of the story. It was intense. And smart. I think I said that already, but it was. Smart.

This weekend I went over the editorial queries for my story “Rule Number One,” which will appear this fall in The Blue Religion, edited by Michael Connelly. This is the first time I’ve read the story in about a year. I almost didn’t recognize the opening sentence as my own because…because…geez, it was a good sentence. I was impressed. The closing sentence isn’t too shabby, either. Most of the editorial queries were for house style (compound words vs. hyphenates vs. two distinct words), punctuation, clarity. Only one paragraph required a rewrite to cover a loose plot element. I found three or four minor changes to suggest of my own, but otherwise I was quite happy with the story. Which was a relief, because it would suck if I hated it.

Eureka starts its second season tonight on the Sci Fi network. I got to see a few episodes of this quirky show last year, but not the entire season. Matt Frewer helped suck me into it, as did seeing Debrah Farentino play a heavy.