The Week in Review

First of all, I lied in my post yesterday when I said I was going to take it easy last night. I went home and did more writing after dinner, got a couple of more pages done.

Now that that's out of the way, let's take a look at what happened this week:

The disappearance of Stacy Peterson, initially a local story that has now gone national, has eerie parallels to the Laci Peterson murder a few years back. The women's names are only different by one syllable. One was proven to have been murdered by her husband, the other's husband is suspected. The case of Stacy is especially creepy because she is the 30-years-younger fourth wife of a police officer whose third wife was found dead in her bathtub after her divorce from Drew Peterson - a death initially ruled as an accidental drowning, but which may well be re-opened before this is over. I hope they find Stacy soon, but, as a member of her family said, "No one really thinks she's going to show up anywhere alive."

Ann Curry of the Today show made it to Antarctica and the South Pole, and as she broadcasted from the extreme end of the earth she demonstrated speech that was clearer and more coherent than the frequent stumbling she does while reading the news. (Sometimes she trips over her tongue so often that I think I could come in off the street and do a better job of reading the news that she does.) Live, on-the-spot reporting seems to be her strength.

Most of this week was spent buried in a five-pound manuscript, going over copyedits in what was my last chance to make revisions to Once Upon A Project. This is the longest book I've written to date, and I decided that if I'm going to take on four main characters with lives of their own, I'd better make a more detailed character background sheet. (Usually I just include the names, physical appearances of, ages, birthdays, and vehicle type of each household, a practice that served me well when writing If These Walls Could Talk but was not sufficient here. Some of the inconsistencies in my manuscript included the anniversary month of one couple, the timing of a secondary character's divorce, and the type of vehicle driven by another secondary character. I feel almost guilty for putting the copyeditor through so much. (Incidentally, I learned that who I initially thought was a man is actually a she when she e-mailed to thank me for the praise I gave her through my editor. The editor referred to her with the universal pronoun 'he,' and as I read the points she made I kept thinking to myself, "This guy certainly has a woman's instincts." She did the finest, most extensive editing job I've seen in nine years of novel writing.

This weekend will find me working on the laptop with the TV tuned to Turner Classics for the airing of Mr. Skeffington, a classic from 1944 with Bette Davis as a vain, spoiled woman who goes from a young, sought-after woman in the years before World War I to . . . well, I don't want to give the plot away, so suffice to say it's a good film. It airs tomorrow (Saturday) morning on TCM at 7:30AM Eastern, 6:30 Central (I usually get up before dawn on weekends.) Mr. Skeffington is preceded at 6AM Eastern, 5AM Central by Four Daughters from 1938, a sweet but sad story that introduced John Garfield to cinema and was re-made in 1954 as Young at Heart with a different ending and actors too old for the parts they were playing. Yes, I'll be up for that one, too, but Mr. Skeffington is by far the superior picture. After all, it's got Bette Davis. find that I tend to get quite a bit of writing done while watching these old stories and love it when they run good ones on Saturday mornings, even if I've seen them before.

It's been a good week for me. I had some good news on two consecutive days related to my writing. I don't mean to be mysterious, but the fact is that one item wouldn't be of interest to anyone other than me, and as for the other, it would be silly to say anything about it at this point.

I wish all you a good weekend, and I envy those of you who get Monday off in observance of Veteran's Day.