Thirty Two Days Has August

Those of us in the northeast think it's very kind of January to sacrifice one of its less necessary days to August, which on the whole is a month that can use a bit of expanding.

At least I feel that way as I come up against the infamous September 1 deadline for The Shade Of The Moon.

The first draft is actually completed and on Sunday, I edited/polished/rewrote the first 62 pages (the length of the book keeps shifting but it was at 293 pages when last I looked). Perhaps because of my current Hurricane Irene obsession, I've decided to add a weather element.

It gives away no spoiler information to say The Shade is written in two parts, Part One and (you'll never guess it) Part Two. Even I thought those parts would look nicer if they had names, so one of the first jobs I'm going to do today (after I play Free Cell a few more times and eat some more) is going to be naming them. Part One will be named something like The Faint Glow Of Sun, but Part Two's name I know: West Winds.

Alas, after I name Part Two, I'll have to put some west winds into the book itself. Le creative sigh.

Speaking of names, and speaking of reasons I'd actually like it to be September 1, Google was kind enough to tell me (no one else has bothered) that the French version of The Dead And The Gone is scheduled for a Sept. 1, 2011 publication, which the last I looked is a little over a week from now, whether I want it to be or not. I'd love to know what the cover design is, but since the design they gave Au Commencement was the Harcourt cover for Life As We Knew It only with a lot of classy French words,



probably the cover for d&g will follow suit.

I do admit to finding the Google translation of the information a bit disconcerting.

Here's what it says in French: L’exil, le second tome de Chronique de la fin du monde de Susan Beth Pfeffer, le 1er septembre

And here's what Google translation claims it says: Exile, the second volume of Chronicle of the late Susan Beth Pfeffer World, September 1

I really like the L'exil/Exile part of it, but the not quite late yet Susan Beth Pfeffer would prefer to stay that way, at least until August 33!

ETA: I felt the earthquake. I was sort of hard at work on the rewrites and the computer monitor shook a tiny bit and my chair shook a tiny bit, enough that I looked beind me to see if Scooter was using the chair as a scratching post. I had a Cleveland Indian baseball game on TV and they felt it and were wondering what happened, and then they said it was an earthquake. So now I'm watching CNN and not getting any work done.