I just sent the manuscript of "The Seduction of Timu Maarinen" off to a magazine. We shall see.

I'm still working on revisions to True Minds -- I hate it and love it, by turns. I'm hoping that if I can publish something in a magazine, it'll help me find an agent for my novels. So getting the revisions done is more important than ever.

I'm starting to want to get back to the new stories -- when I do, I know I'll enjoy myself.

I'm reading more for pleasure right now too -- just read Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian. Fabulous -- I'm afraid already I'm addicted, and I've ordered a used copy of the second book in the Aubrey-Maturin series from amazon. There's 20-some books, so following that series should keep me in reading material for awhile.

Also reading some of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody Egyptology mysteries. The family of characters in that series is really congenial, and the era and setting (turn-of-the-century Egypt -- the beginning of the end of the British Empire) interesting to me. The one I'm reading now is set in WWI, and as I've read a lot about the Allied campaigns against the Ottoman Turks it's esepcially entertaining for me.

Reading all this period fiction reminds me that there's a series of picaresque historical novels I love, which I should catch up on -- the Flashman books. Flashman was a minor character in the old British classic Tom Brown's Schooldays, whom the author of the Flashman series developed into a hilarious grown-up protagonist -- a Regency rake who carries on his habits and attitudes into the Victorian era, with racy and amusing results. Flashman is one of my guilty pleasures.