It seems I live by the principle of my eyes being bigger than my stomach.

In online terms that means I either make great plans for getting offline so I can work incessantly, and then check Twitter every 15 minutes

OR

conversely, determine to institute a fabulous program of blogging every day in a manner witty, wise, informative, profound, or edgy. You know. Like people do, who do that. Those people evidently will never include me in their number.

1) I’m still waiting to get my editorial comments on COLD STEEL from my editor, but this should not be construed in any way except that she has a number of manuscripts on her desk and has to tackle them in order of priority of publication schedule. I expect to hear from her soon.

2) Comments from beta readers are coming in, and I’m quite pleased on the whole. There are a couple of scenes I need to expand on, toward the end, but I knew that so this just confirms what I knew, and that is always pleasant. The reason the scenes got scanted is because by the time I was pushing to the finish of the novel I was so exhausted from the 14 months of wrestling with it and the sheer number of false starts and detours and wrong ways I had to correct that I just wanted to get to The End and then worry about revisions later. So that’s what I did.

3) When I mentioned to one of my beta readers that I felt bad that my readers were going to have to wait so long and patiently before it was published, she pointed out that I also have to wait: To talk about it. And since there are some scenes, and lines, and details, and Stuff that I really love, be assured that (for those of you looking forward to Cold Steel) that I am SUFFERING RIGHT ALONG WITH YOU. Kind of.

4) Next week I have a guest post going up on Monday (June 4) at A Dribble of Ink on diversity. I hope you’ll pop over and join the discussion, if one gets going.

AND

I am doing a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) on Thursday June 7 at 8 pm CST (Central Standard Time) which is, uh, omg, like 3 pm my time. You know, I need to figure that out. ANYWAY, if you feel so inclined, please pop over. I’ll announce it again on Twitter and Facebook and here on Wednesday. By the way, Elizabeth Bear is doing an AMA on Tuesday June 5 at 7 pm CST. Also, my sons are concerned that because it is Reddit, no one will ask me any questions, so prove them wrong!

AND

I also answered seven questions about beta readers for Donna Hanson’s blog series on beta readers/reading. I don’t have a date for that going up yet, however.