Intonation

Well, Canada Day didn't turn out quite as well as I'd hoped, but it was okay.

( Short version: A really exhausting day. )

So that's why I ended up not going to the Edmonton LJ Canada Day Karaoke Get-Together(capitals mine). My feet and legs are still sore(well, not so much now, with the Tylenol kicking in), and I just did not feel like going out. I'm still very curious to try karaoke again sometime, but on a day when I haven't had other social commitments and outside-the-house time to drain my energy reserves.

Much

Well, at least, having stayed home safe from the blandishments of karaoke, I have managed to finish my novel. Still with no real title. It is very emphatically a first draft, and the draftiest one I've finished to date. Or at least, so it feels to me. Maybe it's the fact that I wrote it over a longer period than the others--I started it in February, did 43000-odd words by the end of March, and another 13,500 in June(and today, which is not in June, but not by much.) That's a lot of time to lose track of plot threads and stuff.

But at least it's done! Tomorrow night I can slack off start something new.

In other news, we watched the "Superstar" episode of Buffy last night, and the commentary tonight. That's a great episode, which may rest beside "The Zeppo" as a favourite. I always liked Jonathan, and I was glad to see him featured so prominently, not to mention hysterically.

I finished The Peshawar Lancers, though unfortunately it took an entire week. It wasn't really that slow, though it did slow down in spots. And it may not make the Aurora lists...but it was an interesting book. In a nutshell, it's an alternate history where a big rain of meteors in the late 19th century drove most of European civilization to the tropical zones, or else to cannibalism. So the British Empire is based in India. The plot involves a group of precognitive seeresses bred by Satanist Russians, so it's a bit harder to swallow...

Now reading Trapped by James Alan Gardner, which I'm already halfway through after two days. It's up to his usual standards--in the same League of Peoples universe, but not part of the Festina Ramos series, as far as I can tell so far. But better than Commitment Hour. Gardner's a hoot, if you haven't tried him, for witty and fast-moving high-concept SF; start with Expendable if you can.