Re-establishing the habit.

It's been a slow fortnight for writing, so I am going to do 1k1h (a thousand words in one hour) starting at 11 AM Central Time.  Blogging about this for accountability's sake, so please, harass me about my wordcount this afternoon.

Success-ish.

I started early.  Roughly an hour later, 943 words on, with only one scene left to finish before Chapter 23 of The Hellion Prince is also ready for a first-round beta (still looking for volunteers, by the way)... my progress was summarily halted by the magical appearance of a cat on my lap.

I'm sure he only did it because he knew I was working.  The moment the clock ran out, he stopped purring, got up, and left me again.

Planning another 1k1h sometime between 1 PM and 3 PM, if anyone is interested.

Ghosts and Jack the Ripper.

Latest read: The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson.  A teenage transfer student gains the ability to see ghosts and investigates a modern-day copycat of Jack the Ripper.  The concept is intriguing and well-executed, and the book combines standard YA tropes with supernatural suspense and murder mystery stuff.  But the ending leaves things hanging, and the pacing and tone are terribly uneven -- the first half of the book is a YA story with subtextual ghosts, almost magic realism.  The second half is a cool crimebusting mystery-suspense action, with most of the characters and plot threads from the first half all but ignored.  While it's still a good book, unless it's the start to a series, it introduces too many extraneous elements, and really needed an editor to chop and restructure.

Still, even if it was a hodgepodge, it was enjoyable throughout, whatever it was trying to be at the moment.