You may or may not have noticed, but I snuck in the cover and ‘blurb’ for the third Siobhan Dunmoore adventure over the weekend – you’ll find it under ‘Books by Eric Thomson’.  Progress on the novel is decent, but not stellar.  I spent most of yesterday relaxing with another of my hobbies that I’d sadly neglected over the last year.  It gave me the occasion to troubleshoot some electronics, something that’s always satisfying – at least when I do find the problem and am able to fix it, which isn’t always the case.  I think stepping away from writing for a full day did me some good.  Lately (to be honest, for the last few months) I’ve been writing daily and on weekends, often for up to six or seven hours at a stretch.  As much as I enjoy spinning my tales, it can still be just as demanding and tiring as my regular job, something I’d do well to remember, lest I court burn-out.  Pursuing a goal with too much singlemindedness isn’t necessarily healthy, especially for someone like me who’s fundamentally the antithesis to a workaholic.  That being said, I should be getting my editor’s comments for C0ld Comfort in about a week or so, which means I’ll be singlemindedly back at rewriting instead of writing fresh prose.  Along the way, I’ll be re-thinking the opening of both Cold Comfort and Like Stars in Heaven (Siobhan Dunmoore – Book 3) after reading an amusing article first published by the Daily Telegraph called “Literary First Impressions” by James Walton.  I couldn’t find an online version of it to link, but if you’re like me, struggling to improve your writing game, it’s worth tracking down.

Next weekend is the Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend, so if I don’t blog between now and then, Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers in the Great White North.  I’ll likely do the usual and gorge on turkey, stuffing and all the trimmings until I’m semi-comatose, but other than that, I’m sure I’ll be spending a lot of quality time with my keyboard.