For those who have been missing my on-line presence

My writing brain is mostly being used up for working on my sci fi novel.  This is the same book that I wrote in my early 20s, then read over a few years ago and said to myself "GAH! Why didn't anyone tell me this was so bad?"  I've since been re-writing it to fit my standards of perfection.  When I say re-writing, I don't mean editing.  The plot, characters, and settings have all drastically changed.  I'm a better writer now.  I'm loosely using the book First Draft in 30 Days by Karen Wiesner to help me stay on track, but since my novel has been around in some form or another for almost a decade, you could say I'm not following her time frame.  But this is the first time I've created a scene-by-scene outline, and I'm confident the book will be finished by Christmas (hopefully earlier).

After that my plan of action will be:

• Create a nice pitch letter and synopsis (pitching is my least favourite thing, and I'm really bad at it, so I'll probably need help with this).
• Send the pitch to agents until one of them bites
• While that is going on, write an outline for one of my other books.  I have three projects on the back burner.  One is still in the idea stage, the other two have several chapters written (though I don't know right now whether they are up to my standards of perfection).

Next year, William will start kindergarten and the year after that Jadzia will start school.  It would be nice if I could get something in print by then, so I don't have to start making a living working at McDonald's or something.

You guys are all probably dying to know what my book is about.  If you promise not to steal my idea then I'll tell you, okay?  (Keep in mind, that since making a synopsis is a lot like pitching, I'm also not that good at it):

In the future, there's going to be this war between Earth and the outer human colonies which is fought and won by robot soldiers called "wardroids".  My book takes place 50 years after this war, when the wardroids have all been refitted to be workers and sex slaves (I know, fun right?)  The three main characters (who tell the story through alternating, first-person view points)  are: Emily, a mechanic aboard a space-mining vessel who has no memory of her past; Commander Black,  Emily's boss and former lover; and 32-80, a wardroid who works on the same ship and is a key player in the wardroid uprising.  The book is all about how their pasts and destinies are intertwined.  And there will be action and romance and all that.

Yesterday I killed someone (in my book not in real life, duh) and I was kind of feeling bummed about it.  It's a solution to the problem of evil when you think about it: Why does God cause so much suffering?  As a plot device!  The guy was a red shirt from the beginning, but still it's amazing the guilt one can feel from murdering a fictional character.  Anyway, other than that I've not been depressed or anything, just immersed in other forms of creativity (and, I must admit, some less constructive distractions as well).