Revisions and Other Stuff

I'm in the midst of doing revisions on a couple of books. One of them which I finished recently is fairly tricky, because about fifty pages from the end I realized that what I had planned to do just wasn't going to work, so I had to make some major adjustments to the plot sort of on the fly. So now I'm not just polishing the prose for how it reads, I have to be sure that the ending of the book actually makes sense. Fortunately, Livia will be editing the manuscript after I'm done with it, so if I've fouled up too bad, she'll catch it.

Meanwhile, I've finished my reading for the Spur Awards, although I haven't finalized my nominations list yet. But I can go back to reading what I want to, and first up is TURNBACK CREEK, the second book in Robert J. Randisi's Widowmaker series from Pocket Books. I read the first one, INVITATION TO A HANGING, last year and enjoyed it. So far this one seems even better. The Widowmaker is former lawman John Locke . . . or the Widowmaker is the specially designed revolver that Locke carries. Characters in the books argue about which one the name really belongs to, which is a pretty good gimmick.

During a visit to Wal-Mart today, I found a GREATEST HITS OF JOHNNY RIVERS CD in one of the bargain bins. I like most of Johnny Rivers' songs (although I'm not a big fan of perhaps his most famous song, his cover of Chuck Berry's "Memphis"), but I really bought this CD because it has "Secret Agent Man" on it, and that's one of my all-time favorite songs. I played it today while I was working and felt a twinge of regret that I was born too late to have written spy novels during the big secret agent craze in the Sixties.