Five for Fighting in the CD player again, since I'm determined to get a certain scene done today. Spent most of yesterday with another scene on the operating table, fine-tuning and inserting emotion, since I am really quite sure they did not have Vulcans in the 17th century.

Hopefully the books I've finally chosen to replace my just-finished bath and purse books (note to self: do not finish both bath and purse books at the same time, as you will be impossible to live with and family members may take out hits on you just to get the whining over.) Claudia Dain's The Temptation for the bath, and May McGoldrick's Borrowed Dreams for the purse (though I still quibble over a heroine named Millicent; the name doesn't work for me, so I've decided while I'm reading her, she's Melissa. Plus it's autographed, squee!) So far, so good. Good history, emotional intensity, and all that delightful stuff.

That emotional stuff is the clincher for me -- if I don't cry, if I don't feel like the author has put my heart through a pasta machine, then something is missing. I want to think of these characters while I'm not with them, like they're real people. Shoot, there are still characters from books I've read twenty years ago who I still sigh over, or will rant about how they got a raw deal and what I would have done differently. I want to cheer with them, and get angry at their dumb mistakes, because the best characters are so real that they do make them.

Found an old fanzine of mine this morning (when the contents of a bookshelf above the couch fell on me, but that's another story) and of course had to go look at my story in that issue. Loved writing that one, even though there wasn't romance in it. Though I did have a tortured hero dealing with ghosts of the past, choices he hadn't made, making peace with what he did and didn't do, so he could move on with life. Heh. Though readers of an alternate universe E. Catherine and I created will catch a couple of throwaway lines. Plus Tim Harrison illustrated; I remember the phone conversation talking about how an alien character would have crystal eyes, and darned if he and I didn't have exactly the same vision for the illo. We've been in sych for the concepts on the ebook cover, too, so this can only be a good thing.

Nattering again, saying not much, but I've got the pump primed and must now go write.