A lot has happened since I posted last, especially regarding draft 3 of book #3.
Book 3 Draft 3
Shortly after the first of the year I began the process of getting ready to write draft 3 of my third book, working title Guardians. The first step was to read draft 2 from beginning to end to get a sense of the state of the story. And the results were what? Twelve-plus pages of hand-written notes, that’s what.
Step 2 is to go through all of the feedback I’ve gotten from my critique group and consolidate their comments onto one document. How much is that? This much.
It’s hard to see the markings on the ruler but the stack is over six inches high. And since I’m looking at feedback from eight different people, I need to spread out. A lot. My main desk in the office is too filled with computer gear and other stuff, and the library table, which I’d always thought of as being so big, isn’t, so off to the dining room I go.
I sent the manuscript out to the group in four sets of five chapters and then two sets of four (28 chapters total) and it took over a full work week to get through the first five chapters. Yeah, this is going to take a while. It’ll go faster as I get to the later chapters, when fewer reviewers provided feedback for a variety of reasons, but it’ll be well into February before I’m done.
There’ll be one more mechanical task after that and then I’ll be ready to actually start editing.
New House News
Besides working on the novel, I’ve been plugging away at getting the new house in order. The first task was to get all of my books sorted and organized. They had just been thrown onto shelves in the office in no particular order. Now for the first time in pretty close to ever I have all of my books, notebooks, photo albums, and all that out of boxes and on shelves, like they should be. And I still have free space left! (Wonder how long that will last. 
)
I’ve also been getting all of the pictures, plaques, and the like out of boxes and up on walls. There isn’t much space for an “I love me” wall in the office but a space in the hall to the master bedroom that I hadn’t figured out a use for turned out to be a great place for it, including the shadowbox I got when I retired from the Air Force, which has never been put up anywhere.
Later this week I’ll finish (for now) putting up stuff in the “oriental” guest bedroom. Once the display cabinet I’m having made is delivered, that room will be almost done. (It still needs something like a storage chest at the foot of the bed and a chair, but they’ll come later.) Then it’s on to the “German” bedroom.
There’s lots more yet to go after that but slowly, slowly, the stacks of stuff to be put up are getting smaller. And there’s PLENTY of wall space.
Cookies!
A few weeks ago a member of my writers’ group submitted a poem for our review and it mentioned “peanut butter blossom” cookies. Well, I’d never heard of them, but they sounded scrumptious, so I asked Tina for the recipe. She sent me this link for it: http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/peanut-butter-blossoms-cookie-exchange-quantity/78806839-e0bd-4710-8b10-82abbece7ce5. Sunday afternoon, I made a batch.
Look good, don’t they? And not a Calorie in sight. 
I promised the group I’d bring them some… if there are any left by then!
You hang things on walls AND bake cookies???? Will you marry me?????
Remember, I didn’t say I did either of them WELL! And I’d ask you to move to Arizona, where there’s no snow to shovel or use a snow-blower on, and you’d have to find a new personal trainer, and I don’t know if there’s a Miata club any closer than Tucson…. In other words, you might be bored and food-poisoned! Be careful what you wish for. 😀