End-of-the-Month Update

Writing

This month got off to a slow start, but after a couple of weeks I was able to pick up the pace and the last two weeks have been pretty productive. I had to backtrack some in the current novel because I realized I had fouled a few things up and gotten off the track stylistically. Fixing the stuff that had gone wrong didn’t take too long, and I expect the rest of the book to roll along at a normal rate of speed. I was also able to figure out the plots for a couple of upcoming books and get short outlines done for them. That’s always a good feeling.

Reading

I read the following books in July (as usual, they’re listed in the order in which I read them):

EASY COMPANY AND THE MEDICINE GUN , John Wesley Howard (Stephen Winston)
EMPIRE, Orson Scott Card
THE NEW AVENGERS: SENTRY, Brian Michael Bendis
THE VENGEFUL VIRGIN, Gil Brewer
THE SONG IS YOU, Megan Abbott
NOTHING PERSONAL, Jason Starr
THE NEW AVENGERS: SECRETS & LIES, Brian Michael Bendis
ROBBIE’S WIFE, Russell Hill
THE NEW AVENGERS: THE COLLECTIVE, Brian Michael Bendis
THE CASE OF THE SUN BATHER’S DIARY, Erle Stanley Gardner
EASY COMPANY AND THE BLOOD FEUD, John Wesley Howard (Paul Lederer)
DATE WITH DARKNESS, Donald Hamilton
WARHAMMER: SWORDS OF THE EMPIRE, Marc Gascoigne and Christian Dunn, eds.
RAINTREE: INFERNO, Linda Howard
THE FARMERS HOTEL, John O’Hara

Movies

These are the movies we watched in July:

BANDIDAS
HALF PAST DEAD
THE LAST MIMZY
THE PRIZE WINNER OF DEFIANCE, OHIO
THE QUIET AMERICAN
MAN OF THE HOUSE
THE CORE
THE PRESTIGE
FACING THE GIANTS
BLACK SNAKE MOAN

A mixed bag, to be sure. By the way, we’ve pretty much given up on being able to understand all the dialogue in modern movies and now turn the captions on just as a matter of habit. It’s amazing how much more sense some movies make when you know what they’re saying. Of course, in some it still doesn’t help all that much.