Books read in 2012

The Great Steel Pier: An Illustrated History of the Old Orchard Ocean Pier, Peter Dow Bachelder
What Angels Fear, C.S. Harris (e)
River Marked, Patricia Briggs (e)
Althea, Madeleine Robins (e)
Heartless, Gail Carriger (e)
Powers, James A. Burton (e)
A Geisha's Journey, Komomo, photographs by Naoyuki Ogino
Geisha, Liza Dalby
The Kimono of the Geisha-Diva Ichimaru, Barry Till, Michiko Warkentyne, Judith Patt
Partials, Dan Wells
Starters, Lissa Price
A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs (read aloud w/Steve)
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin
From Whence You Came, Laura Anne Gilman (e)
Frederica, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
No Dominion, C.E. Murphy (e)
The Prestige, Christopher Priest
Cuttlefish, Dave Freer
Intruder, C.J. Cherryh (read aloud w/Steve)
Blameless, Gail Carriger (e)
Changeless, Gail Carriger (e)
The Quiet Gentleman, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Unbroken, Rachel Caine
The Talisman Ring, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Sylvester / OR, The Wicked Uncle, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Death and Resurrection, R. A. MacAvoy
The Unknown Ajax, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Black Sheep, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses, Diane Duane (e)
The Reluctant Widow, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Friday’s Child, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Dragon Ship manuscript, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (e)
Kim, Rudyard Kipling (e)
Regency Buck, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Pollyanna, Eleanor H. Porter (e)
Chimera, Rob Thurman (e)

And so the month is over. . .

Tomorrow, there will be packing, and a farewell walk through town, and another down the beach.  Thursday, will be driving, my Triumphant Return™ to the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory -- and unpacking.

So, tonight's writing represents the last that will be done, on location, for Carousel Sun.

My goal for this small writing adventure was to return home with 60,000 words of Carousel Sun in hand, and I will be taking home 60,852; 40,576 written here, for a smoot over 1800 words a day for 28 writing days.

I was just chatting with Steve, and I said that I'd been writing this one based on the "what happens next" school of plotting.  Since the Carousel books are first-person, they lend themselves far more readily to that sort of approach than, say, a Liaden book.

On the other hand, I can head-hop to my heart's content in a Liaden book, and for the Carousels, I'm stuck inside Kate's head.

Each form has its good and its bad...

So, anyway, I'm sad to be going back up-country. . .for a number of reasons -- sidewalks, the ocean, a train station right downtown, less than two miles to the ultramodern grocery story, a half-mile walk to the in-town IGA.

On the other hand, I'll be glad to be back at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory; I missed Steve and the cats, and the sound of semi-automatic rifles, firing in the gravel pit down the road.

OK, the last one, maybe not so much.

I sort of wonder what individual things I'll be glad to return to, that get lost in the gestalt of "home."  I wonder what unexpected things I'll miss from this apartment, which was arranged for the convenience of someone else.  I suspect I'll miss the ceiling fans.  A lot.  The upstairs neighbors or the washing machine from hell?  Maybe not.

But mostly, what I'm going to be when I get home?  Is busy.  Really busy.  So I'm glad I had some down-time, too, along with the general productivity.

For those keeping score:

Progress on Carousel Sun
60,852/100,000  OR 60.85% Complete

"Then I won't cross him," he said, and turned to go just as the first group of five -- four kids and one harassed-looking woman with several ticket books in her hand -- walked under the carousel's cheery roof.