The Friday Report

This has been just a sucky week, folks, not gonna lie. But the good news is we have the day off school today and I get to hang with two of my favourite people in the world- my kids! We'll be going out for a barn day. I haven't been on a horse at all this week and don't think I will today either. Not up to my usual strength. My girl will ride, but first we need to shovel a lot of snow out of the riding ring. Oh, and it looks like we're only getting one snowstorm this weekend, which is actually an improvement over the last four months...

Jethro will be busy all weekend at Canadian Music Week. He's been setting up gear and doing sound checks and having a few "Hello Cleveland" moments in the underground of a big old building in Toronto. He'll be recording about six bands each day for two days and rubbing shoulders with all kinds of music biz people. Considering the physical effort of setting up and tearing down, the lack of sleep, and nasty weather, he'll likely sleep in the city both nights. Check him out with his glamourous life, eh? I won't be joining him. As much as I love seeing new bands, I've had enough city for awhile. I can wait til we go to Calgary a month from now.

I miss Jethro when he's got to stay the night for work, but that's life. I'd rather have him that way, busy all the time, than not have him at all.

The critters and I have been sort of lolling around the house all week. I've done a lot of editing this week and the Cat was in my lap for most of it. I have black cat hair in the keyboard. The Pug looks really disappointed that he's not getting as much lap time. I told him he's getting too big and he just looked at me with That Look and you know what look I'm talking about.

He did offer to clean my computer screen for me though. Wanna see? It looked like this!

So about those edits?

Well... I'M DONE.

I went through the whole thing, made every change in the Pages document that I'd scribbled in pencil in the hard copy. I had some moments of Oh my gosh that is so good and some moments of That's awkward and I can make it better and some of Ha! He'd never say it like that! He'd say it like THIS! and yes a few moments of OH MAN THIS IS WAY TOO SLOW AND I HAVE TO TOTALLY REWRITE THE FIRST 50 PAGES AND THE ENTIRE ENDING!!!

But y'know... for the first time, in over a year, I can open it to any page and go, Hmm... this is a pretty good story.

I love my characters and have promised one that he'll get his own book some day. There's conflict, there's struggle, lots of pain, a few chuckles, some sex drugs Jesus rock n roll and dusty dirt roads. Lots of stuff I love except for drugs. It's dark, people, and I was so scared to let the dark scary stuff in there... but without it it's just a bunch of kids doing stupid stuff out in the sticks. It's just an endless bush party. I had a story to tell and I couldn't avoid it anymore. I let the dark nasty stuff in and that's what makes it worth reading. Without the dark there's no hope to balance it out, or some other kind of Zen reasoning. It'll all make sense later. Trust me.

And in case you're wondering, yes, I am going to look over the first few chapters. I still think they can be tightened up. I will be shipping the first 50 pages off to an agent very soon, and those pages are like my audition. They have to grab her. If they don't, my chance there is gone. Yes there are other agents but she's a big fish in a Canadian pond -- without mentioning any names, she's good at getting books out there and on a few big lists-- and I'm giving her first shot this time around. I didn't send to her before because I didn't have the guts. Well I'm all guts now, folks.

Oh boy. Heavy.

Heavy like snow.

And because it's Friday, and you've been patient with a long rambling blog post, and because in my neck of the woods we're all really sick of snow....here's your warm weather Depp...








think happy thoughts think happy thoughts think happy thoughts