It's Wednesday Night...

...and I'm reading some fascinating fanfic*. It's Firefly fic, and very well done. Jayne takes River under his wing (with great reluctance at first), and turns out to be surprisingly good at handling her, better in many ways than anyone else--especially her brother. She finds his presence soothing because he's "uncomplicated" ("that's a charitable way of putting it," says Zoe at one point), and he does well with her because he doesn't coddle her. He takes her seriously even when she's having "a crazy fit", teaches her about (and helps her acquire weapons), and just ignores some of her harmless eccentricities--what does it really harm if she wants to hide in a smuggling compartment all day? She'll come out when she's ready, and badgering her to do so before then doesn't help anybody.

It's a charming series of (five) connected stories, and the characterizations are very good, despite the unlikely relationship that develops between them. Nor is theirs the only relationship that advances over the course of this series. The dialogue sounds exactly like I'd expect to hear on the show, too. It's really very good.

I'm also reading Threshold by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Just finished Mission of Honor by David Weber, in which (as usual) lots of starships got blown to scrap in great big space battles, and politics, intrigue and games of death and deceit make everyone's lives harder than they need to be, and everyone--good guys and bad--suffer major setbacks. I have a collection of short stories edited by Charlaine Harris, and two young adult novels (from the library) on my "to read" pile just now.

In writing news...I'm spinning my wheels again. I feel like a centipede trying to watch himself walk, which is what comes of a) trying to master the "plot first, then write" approach**, b) struggling with conflicting story demands***, c) getting too caught up in "what can I hope to sell" lately instead of "what do I want to write?" All of which is curable. I just need to settle down again.

*The stories in question are Two Gorram Days, Kinship, The Bank Job, Miranda, and Prodigal.
**Which is antithetical to my normal approach, but I think it would be useful be able to do that sometimes, so I'm trying.
***There's a particular story I've been fooling around with. It could be a romance, but if I write it the way I originally envisioned it, the hero and heroine wouldn't meet for the first time until well into the story (generally a no-no in romances). I could write it as straightforward urban fantasy, I suppose. But I'm not sure which way to run with it yet.

Ah well, I'll figure it out. Meanwhile, I got submission packages for Strange Attractors (the first novel) back out to three more publishers, bringing the total back up to five in all. Repossessor is still out at the first five publishers; I don't really expect to hear anything on that one for quite some time.

Stories in Circulation: 12
Rejections: 46
Stories Accepted: SEVEN
Stories to Resubmit: 0

Novel Queries: 2 Novels in circulation, 10 queries out (5 each)
Novel Rejections: 8 (all on the first one so far)