My husband and I are a little past the halfway mark on a Gilmore Girls First Season marathon. (If you can really call a couple of shows a night a marathon). The DVD’s are due back to the library on Wednesday–I can’t renew, already checked–so we’re trying to power through them. And despite the complaints early on, my husband is sooo totally hooked. He actually cues it up now and insists we watch ‘just one more’, even though that means he’s going to bed at midnight (which he NEVER does). Last night I teased him for literally ‘giggling like a school girl’. He’s a total convert and a closet romantic–I think his favorites are the shows where either Lorelai or Rory has a date. I’m going to have to pace him through the summer as we try to work through the remaining seasons. Then he’ll probably be crushed the show’s be cancelled.

The second marathon I have going on is more personal one. I’m reading Stephenie Meyer’s New Moon and am HOOKED! I’ve had this book since before Christmas, having read and loved Twilight last year. But I didn’t want to pull it out because I knew I’d be obsessed. As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I’m not one of those people who can’t put a good book–even a great book–down. No problem with that. But not these. There’s just something hypnotic almost about these books. I don’t like scary books, but these books are thrilling, spine-tingling, enthralling. They’re also 500+ pages long! So you can’t just whip through one–well I can’t. You really have to dedicate some time. Let me just say that I was on page 13 on Friday night, and I’m on 450 now. And while I could be reading now, I have to get some things done sometime! I’m hooked, I’ve gotten my niece and sister hooked, and even my brother couldn’t put the book down over the Christmas holidays. Literally–he wouldn’t socialize with any of us, just sat reading. If you’re not aware of these books–get them, read them, be amazed. Book #3, Eclipse (the third in a series of five) comes out in August. I’m psyched.

First of all, I can’t believe I missed the fact that it was Thursday! No Thursday 13, no visits from Thursday 13’ers. No racking my brain to come up with a topic and then further racking it for an itemized list of 13. Darn it. Next week is gonna be my week. This week, I think, threw me because I was just back from NY and Monday was a holiday. Excuses, excuses.

In other news, nothing of any interest is going on here. The first week of summer is over, and we’ve all survived. There’s been a lot of selective hearing, a lot of rowdiness, an excited beginning to the summer reading programs, and mish-mash of other activities. My little one keeps finding reasons to say ‘refreshment’ and is giddy at the possibility of any kind of snack, and my older one just wants video game time all the time and breakfast the minute he wakes up. Next week we start swimming lessons, so we’ve got to get an early start. This was a week of late starts.

I checked the first season of Gilmore Girls out of the library and have persuaded my husband to watch the first CD with me so far. Each night after sitting through a couple of episodes, he moans and informs me he thinks he’s overdosed on estrogen. He wants a man in the show, offsetting all that femininity. But I liked it–it’s fast paced and funny. Sarcastic and smart-alecky–I can relate.

In reading news, I finished A Dangerous Dress on the flight to NY–very interesting and different, and I bought Suspense and Sensibility for the flight home–I’m three-quarters through. Virtually no reading has occurred since I got back home, but otherwise, I’ve been very efficient. The boys are sort of doing their own thing with occasional refereeing from me, so I’m plugging away with laundry, dishes, cleaning, writing, and general odd jobs. Bravo!

No plans yet for the weekend, so we shall see…

Last night I read a very interesting article in the June issue of the Romance Writers Report. It was entitled ‘Do It Yourself (Book) Surgery’ and was written by Jean Marie Ward. Basically she and a coauthor had written a 165,000 word book that garnered some considerable interest from Samhain Publishing, and they were asked if they could trim it down to 120,000 words. They did, and the article is about how they did it, which I found fascinating.

At the end of the article, the author mentions as ‘editors’ bible’, used in the first edit of all manuscripts. I would LOVE to see this bible or a version of it. Think of the advantage one would have as a writer if her manuscript had already jumped through the first set of ‘hoops’. The work would be cleaner, tighter, shorter, and likely a better read. For instance, she mentioned one of the biggies on the list: cutting ‘garbage’ words like so, that, than, just, and really. Hmmmm…very interesting–although at times, I think those words happen to make a sentence.

Has anyone ever seen a copy of this ‘bible’? Is it readily available? Is it ‘not so readily but still possibly’ available? Do tell.