World On Fire

Look around, leaves are brown (because it hasn't rained in months) and the sky is a hazy shade of smoky (thanks to brush fires). With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel.



One of three fires in the Albuquerque area yesterday.

Slate gray, roiling clouds, lightning, but no rain. In God's big book of disaster recipes, those are the ingredients for brush fire. Summer sucks. It's like living in a shiny bright oven. Heat radiates off every surface. Dry heat...gah.

Yesterday evening, all that smoke settled in a murky, sick-making blanket over the area. The swamp cooler sucked all that stuff into the house, and by morning I felt like I had black, er brown lung. I went to work smelling like a campfire.

Yep, me whiny. Need a nap.

Reading...
Gasa-Gasa Girl by Naomi Hirahara. Hope to get it done before the, sigh, arrival of the boy wizard tomorrow. I'll do the review thing, but at more than half-way through, I'm inclined toward liking it...much.

Apres Potter...eyeing the Hambly books lent to me by Kristin. The Silent Tower, perhaps? I just realized I have read a Hambly, although long ago. Dragonsbane. Yep.

Still have a Charlaine Harris, Greg Keyes and Kim Harrison in library TBR pile. So many books...

Writing...
Got in 1000 new words. Also did the copy/paste thing from scraps file and added another 2500 words to manuscript (Book Two). Coming up on approx the first third on both manuscripts (about 30K). They're sort of racing, neck and neck. Which will I finish first?

Last week I did a detailed critique, the sort I used to do. That pretty much depleted my critiquing reserves. Feeling unenthusiastic about critiquing this week.

Nap time before I get brattier.