Business first. I have sent an e-mail to the six non-Entangled Publishing commenters who were kind enough to leave feedback on my “Conversation with Sue Winegardner” post. It was originally supposed to be five selected at random, but when I told her I had six people interested in the “query+first five” critique offer, she generously offered to expand her scope so as not to leave anyone out.
In other news – my writing cave took a hit. Class started last week, and I’m deep in lesson planning for “Legal Aspects of Policing.” I have a pretty engaged class, which is good, because there is plenty of opportunity for engagement, even if I have to stop every once in a while and explain the three branches of government.
I have been working on studying Russian more intensely and thus have dictionaries, grammar books, workbooks, and index cards scattered in close proximity. The Defense Language Proficiency Test is coming up on the 27th of June, and I need to put some words back in my head that I have forgotten, as well as expand my listening and reading capabilities. Good times. I pretty much have Голос России playing at home and at work almost on a constant basis. It is quite interesting, by the way, to hear the former Soviet Union cover the NSA/wireless communication story quite so gleefully/disparagingly.
In other news, remember that stack of unread books I brought with me from home in hopes of finally getting through my “to-read” stack?
I think they’re breeding…
Yeah … not even close …
Although, in the spirit of update-y post, I did finish the following books this week:
The Woman Lit by Fireflies, by Jim Harrison (Left me speechless and humbled and amazed and happy and the thousand other emotions Harrison evokes in the clarity of his writing.)
Death of Kings, by Bernard Cornwell (On the first page I realized I had already read it, but since Cornwell is hands-down one of my favorite authors in the world, I greatly enjoyed reading the heck out of it a second time.)
The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography, by Simon Singh (Informative, well-written narrative. Many ideas springing forth for several different projects…)
Northern Lights and Learning the Hard Way, by Connie Monique Wilson (Read my Conversation with Connie!)
And currently halfway through Werwolf: The History of the National Socialist Guerilla Movement 1944-1946, by Perry Biddiscombe (Extremely informative, lots of good information regarding the proto-guerrilla/insurgency of the fallen Nazi regime. Generated some important character-background ideas for the book I’m editing.)
As well as Echoes of Winter, by Dominique Goodall. (Check back on Friday to read my Conversation with Dominique!)
I was wondering why I was feeling so tired…
