Yes, I am writing. Not as much as I was a few weeks ago, but I’m working on something a little different. There’s no daily word count or estimate for completion. It’ll be done when it’s done.

And yes, I am slacking on book reviews as well, but there are two reasons for that.  One, I have been spending most of my time re-reading the Harry Potter Series, and I don’t really want to review a book I’ve already read. I’m reading it for pure enjoyment, and to get ready for the final installment of the movies which come out July 14. Last night I finished The Order of the Phoenix (I read 600 pages of it yesterday) and today I’ll watch the movie.  I’m not quite sure when I’m going to pick up The Half Blood Prince. This isn’t a race, after all. I’d just like to be done the whole series by mid August so I can see the movie in the theatres. These books are completely amazing, and if you haven’t read them, you really should. But if you haven’t read them and are more than fifteen years old, there’s probably nothing I’m going to say to convince you to.  Your loss.

The second reason there have been no reviews is that the next review I post will probably be a double feature, and I’m only a few pages into the second book, which I am reading on my IPhone. We’ll see how that one goes.

It is a little weird not to have a major work in progress hanging over my head, but the last one really took a toll on me. Not just the daily grind of writing, but the fact that I was never really quite satisfied with the manuscript. My wife has read it, and she agrees that it needs a lot of work.  The plot and the characters are there, but it’s like a jigsaw puzzle not put together quite right.  In a few months, I’ll dive back into it, and see if I can fix it. It’s a little depressing that I missed the mark by so much on this first draft, but since my internal editor already knew it before it was done, it wasn’t a shock to me when my wife broke the news.  If I had thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, and then got the bad news, it would have destroyed me.  But instead, it just allowed me to move on to my next project while my subconscious gains a little distance, and hopefully will figure out exactly where the story went wrong.