I’m very, very happy to report that I’ve finished editing stories for two new anthologies! Hooray!

There are a few more steps before each one will get out the door, and everything is temporarily on hold while I wrap up a short story that’s due this week. But still!!!

I’ve been a bit slow on the writing front, partly because I seem to have allergies or something. I think maybe to dust, since I’m pretty sure I feel like this at the same time every year, and now that it’s colder we’re keeping the windows closed. Whatever it is, it apparently means that I have evenings where I don’t get as much as I’d like done, which is a little frustrating since I have a day job and therefore kind of need to work on writing tasks in the evening. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving weekend, where I’ll have big chunks of time for a few days in a row.

Learnings

I learned that diamond dust mirrors are actually made using silver, not diamond dust. Melted silver alone won’t evenly coat the back of a piece of glass, but if you mix in mercury, the liquid mixture will. The mercury evaporates, leaving an iridescence that looks like tiny diamonds in the glass. I’ve seen mirrors like this many times, but never knew why they looked like they do.

Experiencings

For the first time in my entire life, I’m giving away a LOT of books!

I grew up thinking someday I’d keep acquiring book after book, and would eventually have a house with a library. I even had a library for about two years! Then my husband moved in with me, and I had to give him my library so he too could have an office. It seemed a bit selfish for me to have two rooms of my own. In retrospect, perhaps I should have kept them both…alas. 😉

I ran out of shelf space in my office years ago, and have done all the usual things: stack books on top of other books…stack books on the shelves in front of other books…stack books on the floor in front of the shelves… Last weekend my husband came in my office and said he was concerned that some of the books might fall and hurt a dog. I thought about his comment, and realized this was actually a legitimate possibility. 🙂

I made a small stack of books to donate (in another room, since obviously there is no room left in my office), and to my surprise, I found it was not nearly as hard as I’d expected to pick out books to give away. I have been thinking about doing something like this for at least five years, probably more, so I think my subconscious must have finally gotten to the point where it was okay with the concept.

That said, I have yet to actually donate these books, so we’ll see how things go when I get to that step…

Readings

Most of what I’ve read in the past week has been snippets from history books and websites that I’ve looked at while doing historical research for a story I’m working on. This has been really fun, and has been very helpful for the story, but I’d really like to actually read a whole book for a change! 🙂