I never did tell you…

I never did tell you about the LitCrawl reading, did I? To be honest, it wasn't my best reading ever. Not so much because I read badly, but because it was a really bad match of text with audience. I misunderstood Charlie's instructions -- she'd asked me to bring sf/f, and somehow I'd thought that all the readers would be doing that, and the audience would be expecting it. So I brought part of the YA fantasy novel, which I think would've been a nice piece in a mix of sf/f readings. Instead, the others were doing various kinds of literary fiction and nonfiction, and I'm afraid my piece felt rather light and out of place by comparison. Sigh.

Also, I think the opening of a novel is tricky to read, since it takes a little while to get into the action; things didn't really pick up until the third page, and while the audience was kind and patient, I don't think they enjoyed it much until my bit of reading was almost over. Sigh again. It's particularly frustrating because it was a huge audience -- something like 200 avid, somewhat drunk, readers packed into a crowded bar. Would've been great to come in and wow them. Ah well; if I ever get to read at LitQuake again, I'll know better what kind of audience to expect, and what kind of piece to bring. I think they would've liked the nonfiction travel/memoir book a lot. Sigh sigh sigh.

A few people did tell me they liked the reading and look forward to reading the novel when it's done, so that's something...

Other than that -- hmm...not much else to report, really. I got a haircut yesterday, so I don't feel quite so much like a frazzled mom; I may actually go back and have them do a professional color job on it late this afternoon, as my out-of-box coloring attempts are generally a bit lame. Okay to get by, but every six months or so, I like to have the professionals do it right. Dark red highlights, yum. As for real work today, well, this weekend I did do lots of Tamil studying, because I was a bit behind, but I'm mostly caught up now. Jed's here right now, just arrived and taking baby and puppy for a walk, giving me a chance to get a bit of laundry and dishes done. After cramming to get the draft of the first 38K of the YA done for workshop, I'm feeling like I could use a day or two off from writing. I think I'll probably spend the next few hours working on alternately cleaning up the apartment and editing photos; my sisters (mostly Mirna) took hundreds over the weekend they were visiting. So more cute Kavi photos on the way...

Hey, are you guys getting sick of the baby photos? I know my family wants as many as I can get up here, but if they're getting annoying (slow to load and all), I can probably start just putting them up at Kodak and only post a very occasional one here. Let me know in the comments, please -- frequent baby photos, yea or nay? (Frequent is defined as one every few days or so, for the most part.) I promise not to be offended if you vote nay; I do understand that not everyone is as obsessed with my baby as I am. :-)

6 thoughts on “I never did tell you…”

  1. Yes, I love the baby pictures! I am usually hoping for more of them when I check here, although what you have to say is also an important part of your Journal. Still, once you started publishing baby pictures, I came to expect both great insights and great photos of your daughter!

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