OK, I know, this post is coming a bit late. But I’ve decided today is the official beginning of 2010 for me. Hooplah!

Why am I getting such a late start on the New Year? Well, book edits. For the past two weeks I have been utterly immersed in book edits, to the exclusion of everything else in my life, including commitments to friends and colleagues. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!

Despite the all-consuming nature of my work over the past two weeks, I have to say that book editing is rewarding. Not fun, heavens no, but deeply rewarding in that, if you do it right, you end up with a book (or books) that are vastly improved from what it (they) started out being. And yea, it (they) is (are) good.

So, here are the particulars … I handed in the edited version of THE NATIVE STAR last Monday, and my wonderful fabulous editor Anne Groell accepted the edits and moved it into production on Wednesday. I handed in the edited version of Book 2 (TTC — we’re still discussing that) on Friday, and my fingers are most powerfully crossed that Anne will be as satisfied with those edits as she was with the edits on Book 1. There was a lot more to do in Book 2, but having done it, I am over the moon with how much better the whole thing works now. I extracted a lot of stupid. It’s very gratifying to extract stupid.

And then, that task completed, I spent most of the weekend either sleeping or watching movies. I rewatched “Barton Fink”, which is the perfect movie to watch after one has assayed literary. I also watched “Watchmen” (thus finally answering the age-old question with the resounding answer, “me!”) and found it quite good overall. Despite the incredibly silly hair and even sillier purple suit he was forced to work, I now have an extremely powerful cougar-crush on Matthew Goode. Upon revealing this crush to pal Karindira, she threw fire on the flames by emailing me (within SECONDS) a topless photo of the young gentleman which made me clutch my pearls. It is good to have friends who have topless photos at their fingertips, if rather disturbing.

Then yesterday I caught up on a few things … took down one of the Xmas trees (one still remains) … went out to lunch … worked on several podcasts which are *horrifically* late … you know, the usual. Also picked up a copy of the December Locus to see what Rich Horton said about my story in Postscripts 19 (he enjoyed it). All in all, a very good weekend.

Now, on to 2010!