After spending last week frustrated with my New Near Future story, I abandoned it. Today I started New New Near Future. New characters, new situations, but the same world I've conceived. It's set in my NanoCorporte universe but maybe a hundred years earlier. With the conquest of age and disease, the world is a different place. Those in the first generation live on and on--and own everything. I got 7 pages written. Not 10, which would have been good. Still, I've got a story going, which is better than I've been doing.

I finished edits on The Frog Prince's Daughters and sent it back to Wendy Palmer for her approval or changes. I've been nagging Karen for the cover so things should come together for publication in a week or so. I'm excited about this book (then again, I never publish anything I'm not excited about. It's too much work if I don't care).

I'm reading LAST RESORT: MARRIAGE by Pamela Stone.

I got word that my short contemporary, THE BILLIONAIRE'S PURCHASED PRINCESS is a finalist in the Golden Acorn writers contest. Yea me. It's nice to get some validation.

Karen and I went to Chilis for date night. We normally go there when we need to go to Lowes...in this case, for suet for the birds. Some birds like seed. Some (like woodpeckers and Carolina Chickadees) like suet. Sparows will eat anything, which probably explains why they do so well. Afterwards, we went to the Dollar Tree and I bought a couple of magic tricks. I've always loved magic tricks...I used one on my first date with Karen and she thought I was a nerd and almost never went out with me. I think it's my poorly sublimated wish to be a powerful wizard like Gandalf.

Speaking of wizards, I'm going to make THE DREAD KNIGHT'S REDEMPTION by Joshua Calkins-Treworgy the www.BooksForABuck.com book of the day. The evil wizard Richard Vandross is on his mission of conquest and only Byron... a renegade dread knight...stands in his way. Exciting fantasy action, only $3.99. (Available in HTML, Adobe Acrobat PDF, eReader, Mobipocket and Microsoft Reader formats). Here's the link: http://www.booksforabuck.com/sfpages/sf_08/dread_knight_redemption.html. Here's the cover (cover design by Karen Leabo):

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