One down

[ksmith]

Just sent off the Incident e-file to Eric. Hope he likes it.

Many thanks to daveamongus, dancinghorse, mcurry, hoosier_red, and arcaedia for beta reading above and beyond the call.

Final count according to MacWord: 27,871 words, 133 pages.

I have committed novelette.

I sleep now. Tomorrow, it's back to the elephant...

Comments

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Go Team! I'm sure he'll love it.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

From your mouth to the usual ears!

I was making changes right up until the point at which I hit the Send button. I could have picked over it forever, and still have changed things. It didn't help that one of the points you made didn't hit me until that final read-through. Then I'm like, oh f&*%#@. But I saw your point, and I tweaked, and while it isn't perfect, it's better, I think, and I just needed to get it out of my computer and into someone else's.

[mindyklasky.livejournal.com]

Many congrats! (I've never had the courage to *attempt* a novelette!)

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I didn't have it either until Sarah Zettel dragged me over to meet Eric Flint at last year's WFC. He was talking up Baen's Universe and looking for stories in established universes. I said, sure. Then I sat on the idea forever because I had Plenty of Time (tm). Then I started working on it in the spring, and figured it would run 60-80 manuscript pages, tops. I should've learned by now that I need to increase my estimated word estimates.

It was a learning experience, both in pacing and in story approach. I am a Novelist--I love background detail and character excavation and subplots and multiple POVs and that long sloow build to the big Ba-bing! Novelettes require more focus on the immediate plot, if not the entire focus. Things need to be streamlined that much more. This may seem obvious to folks who write long and short, and I did know it myself on an intellectual level. But the thinking and the doing proved to be two very different things.

Now I hope I get the chance to write more Jani short works. I have an idea for one that would feature a character in Incident about 20 years later. Then there's another one from Jani's Lost Years that is bugging me. All I have are impressions. The only Beth Orton song that I really like is Stolen Car. I want to write about the guy--ok, I see the character as a guy--in that song. "...fingers like fuses...eyes are cinnamon..." There's treachery and lust involved. Maybe a triangle.

[pmrabble.livejournal.com]

Neat!! And about when is Eric going to drop this little gem onto my handheld???

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Assuming All Goes Well--yes, I am a worrywart--Incident on a Small Colony will appear in the October issue.

Which is like, in a month.

Wow.