I guess that ends the debate regarding whether this is Taco Tuesday or Tolkein Tuesday…

Its Taco Tuesday!

It’s also the end of this Round of Words in Eighty Days. More about that later…

I distinctly remember my first visit to Taco Bell back in the early 80’s. For my family, that was wildly exotic ethnic food, in spite of the fact that we lived in Colorado with a large Hispanic population. Honestly, there were only two things that stuck out in my mind that classified certain friends as Hispanic. One, they spoke Spanish better than I did, and I was at the top of my class. Two, if I happened to go to their house, I might smell ‘exotic’ food. Looking back at my graduating class, I’m realizing that many of my classmates to whom I assigned any number of adjectives such as ‘popular’ or ‘quiet’ or ‘stuck up’ were also ‘Hispanic.’ At the time, I didn’t notice.

But I digress. Yes, Mexican food existed in Colorado in the eighties. The opening of Taco Bell, though, was exciting, at least for me. My family’s typical dinner consisted of boiled potatoes, a can of veggies heated in the microwave, and some kind of meat with heat applied until it was safe to eat. Yes, we also had interesting things like pineapple chicken, in which case rice was served, and there was the occasional spaghetti night, but meat/potato/veggie was the norm.

The restaurant looked like most other fast food places. I vaguely knew the difference between a taco and a burrito, but when the concept of soft-shell tacos came into the picture, my definition fell apart. Hard shell tacos also fell apart, even though we carefully followed the instructions on the wrapper about ‘how to eat a taco.’

I’m making tacos for the family tonight. OK, technically I’m making my teenager cook tacos, since she needs the practice. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.

Rambling on about tacos has allowed me to postpone talking about just how bad a week this has been, writing-wise. It’s not a total loss…in fact, it had a few great moments.

I’m getting frustrated with my Incorporeum story because it is too complicated. I had hoped to be finished with the rough draft by now because I planned to return to Kingdom Come in late March. Since I haven’t heard back from the beta readers yet, I put down the Incorporeum story and looked at my list of Kingdom Come stories. I wanted to set in my mind some kind of order for them to come out.

The duology that’s currently with beta readers should be the first out. They are a good introduction to the series. I have several other stories that, for various reasons, I wanted to come later. Then I had a revelation, my 2010 NaNoWriMo story was the perfect one to come after the duology! After that, others fell into place. I have four sets of novels planned, ranging from two to five novels per set. Some are already in rough draft form and sitting on the shelf. Others are outlined. In sorting these out, I could also see where there was an empty slot in a set that needed a particular kind of story.

I dusted off my 2010 NaNoWriMo story and was quite happy. It’s written in three parts. The first two stories stand alone, but the third story brings together characters from the first two. (Polyamorous romance lets me do this.)

Then disaster struck. I wrote this story five years ago, when my writing wasn’t quite as professional as it is today. It was no big deal to correct the two-spaces-after-every-sentence, but the head-hopping was terrible. Sometimes I’d pop into another character’s brain for just a sentence or two before popping right back again. It’s going to be a major rewrite, not just an edit.

The three parts were originally three novellas. Reading through them again, I realize that I did too much telling vs. showing, and some characters aren’t fully fleshed out. In rewriting, each of these stories will probably be a full-length novel. That’s a good thing…it means a trilogy would follow the duology. And the next set would have four books, and the one after that five…

Anyway, this revelation was a major breakthrough, which is a good thing since I’d been writing less and less on my WIP and eventually shelved it. The new WIP, although originally looking like a piece of cake to dust off, is going to be substantially more work, but it will be worth it to have something else to follow up after the duology.

Next week, I’ll post my plan for the next round, which includes sending THE query, a family vacation, and who knows what else.