First things first. It is SO difficult to do damn near anything with a high-energy kitten who wants to play fetch with glittery balls every second that he's awake. Thank God cats sleep 16 hours a day. Glitter strands adorn my bed, my floor, and my keyboard...I think they even float in the air. Sometimes he drops them into the water dish...other times they find themselves in my bubble bath...he carries them everywhere.
Vash the Stampede--aptly named, even though he's not a humanoid typhoon. The glitter ball brigade would gladly post a 60 billion double dollar reward to stop him. If you don't get any of that, then Google "Trigun" less the glitter ball brigade part. ^_^
Now onto the important stuff! Earlier this year, Aprilish, another high-energy, exuberant "entity" entered my life - which I mean in the nicest way possible. ^_^ I contracted with free-lance editor Ethan Vaughan whose editing page can be found here and whose blog can be found here. If you doubt my description, then by all means check out his blog and find out for yourself. I dare you not to laugh or smile.
I just received a sneak peak of my manuscript and am blown away. I went to bed late with a face that hurt from smiling.
But before he made my face hurt this time, he did it the first time several months ago, after reading my ms and discussing its strengths and weaknesses in depth. It was a fantastic experience. I think I actually jumped up and down, I was so excited and happy. Really.
I am so glad I embarked on this journey. And I'm so glad I met Ethan. Not only is he working wonders on my first manuscript, but this process and his insights are helping me independently edit my second manuscript - the sequel to the first. (The third ms is completely on hold at the moment, although I'm still jotting notes as I think of things. The whole thing flows as one story in my mind, broken into segments by the subplots.)
I have cut over 16000 words and more than 70 pages from ms #2. What?? Yeah!
Oh, Vash just brought me a fuzzy ball and is now chewing on my laptop's cord wrap to protest my neglect. How do you tell a kitten you can't play at the moment?
Now, I know I tend to ramble about random topics, but I can actually tie these two things together. And not in a way anyone familiar with my stories might think (i.e. VaSH?). Nope - we adopted Vash from a very nice woman (I'll call her Gretta - not at all her real name) who lives in the country about 30-minutes away. His pregnant mama (Anastasia) had been abandoned in IN and Gretta's brother brought her to her farm. Anastasia gave birth to three boys - the dominant one - strong orange stripes, the follower - lighter orange strips, and the shy one - black with black stripes (Vash). Vash and the dominant one were both adopted - coincidentally into police dog homes - while the follower and mama stayed on the farm (despite my best efforts to convince my husband that Vash would love to have his brother around - we would have called him Butterscotch, Scotch for short).
Long story short (too late, heh heh), I've kept in contact with Gretta and recently learned that Vash's "bookish" yet high-energy brother has been named...Ethan. There. Tied. To. Gether. And no, that's not correct grammar.
