Brrrrrr

Tomorrow will be winter in southeast Texas.

The day before yesterday it was 75°. Yesterday it was in the sixties. Tonight it will plummet to the low thirties and upper twenties. It has been raining pretty much nonstop since last night—so much that our ditch is full to the brim this morning. The rain is expected to continue for the next couple of days, turning into sleet. We could get ¼ to ½ inch of ice coating everything if that happens. Should make for interesting days ahead. I’m hoping the ditch freezes so we can go ice skating. Þ

I finished my read-through of Ghost Inn last night. I sent an electronic copy to my agent this morning and submitted it to the local print shop to generate a hardcopy to send him as well. After revision, it came in at just under 90,000 words on 358 pages. My editing round trimmed about 4000 words from the manuscript. I deleted over 100 instances of the word “that” alone yesterday.

We watched An Inconvenient Truth on Saturday night and were impressed with Gore’s newfound comfort as a speaker. He’s much less stiff and formal than he was a decade ago. The movie was thought provoking, though it would have been a bit of a bust without the suggestions that were offered during the credit roll. It’s one thing to point out a problem and say that we have the solution, but it’s another to actually tell people what the solutions may be. I wonder if he’s not getting his message out as much as he’d like simply because he isn’t presenting solutions during his lectures.

Watched 24 last night, the first time I’ve ever watched that program. It was pretty good. I’ll tune in again tonight for the next couple of hours, at least. I don’t have any history with the characters, so I don’t know the significance of the guy who’s now the president, or why Jack’s been in prison in China for the last 20 months, or why that CTU agent is so overwrought about Jack’s fate, and all the rest of it, but I don’t mind.

I finally finished Joseph Wambaugh’s Hollywood Station and will post a review on Onyx Reviews sometime this week. I started Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino, author of Out, which I enjoyed last year. She’s a gritty Japanese author and I’m looking forward to seeing where she goes with this book.

I’m supposed to go to court tomorrow morning to witness jury selection as story research, but the ice storm may put that off for a couple of weeks. I’m also going to hear a jury consultant talk at the MWA SW luncheon this weekend. John Grisham, look out! I also have to write my Storytellers Unplugged essay—it will be posted on Wednesday.