What I Got My Wife For Christmas

I had to order from ebay and I gave it to her the day it arrived. I was too excited to keep it under wraps for two weeks. It wasn't what she asked for but it was probably the best gift I could have given her. What was it? The UK version of the Harry Potter books, all in hardcover, with the adult covers.

So, no more Sorcerer's Stone, it's Philosopher's Stone, the way it was meant to be. The books are a bit shorter and thinner than the US versions, but that's to be expected. The illustrations have been removed (I've never been a fan of Mary Grandpre's artwork anyway) and the text is smaller. I told my wife that when she reads them, she has to take the jackets off to keep them safe, and that these books won't be leaned out. I've had too many books given out that I never got back.

Emily was very pleased, she couldn't believe I had gotten these for her. I wasn't expecting to either. I had a little extra money and had thought about getting her an iPod, which is pretty cool too, but this was the ultimate.

Writing Update:

My novel is done, finished, over. I'm done. I'm tired of looking at it. I'm tired of editing it. I'm tired of looking at the same words and phrases over and over again. That's not to say I don't like it, I like it a lot. But like Harry Potter, if I had read it five or six times over the course of two years, nitpicking over every detail, I'd be sick of it too.

I've written a new query letter and will start sending those out to publishers and I will most likely be promptly rejected, which is fine. The exciting thing is that I'm totally ready to start work again on my ghost novel. Now that I've perfected my editing process (or at least made it a little faster) I think I'll be able to get it ready for submission within a few editing passes, which should be quicker now.

This year I'll have New Year's resolutions that I'll be blogging about eventually. They're some good ones that I'm excited about. I'm not usually into resolutions because they're usually about something that you have no intention of doing. People want to lose weight, they want to stop smoking, they want to spend more time with their families when they really have to intention to commit to such a thing for more than a week or two. But these resolutions make sense, they're practical, and their along the lines of what I'm doing anyway, just maybe at a more accelerated pace now that I'm getting into a better routine.

Comments:

A few posts ago, Kathryn said this in my comments:

"I had some of the same problems with Magyk but the other books in the series get better and better. I also recently read a good one called The Tapestry. Its Harry Potter esque but with no borrowing and a different take on magic. Its pretty cool."

I decided to check out Tapestry on Amazon, and it looks pretty good. I added it to my wish list and maybe I'll actually read it at some point.