Happy Monday, Aledan Merfolk! I’m back from my week-long trip home to see my parents and sister, and wow – so much has happened!
As you may have guessed from my last post, I submitted StO to #PitchWars and am impatiently awaiting the mentee announcement. Luckily, my time in Michigan kept me from wringing my hands too much last week, but this week I have plenty of time to stalk the mentors hang out on the hashtag. Before the submission window opened, I traded my first chapter with several other hopefuls, and after several years of CPs trying to beat my “is/was” issue into my brain, someone finally made it click. I’m not sure why this one comment made me suddenly understand, but now that I finally do it’s time to go back through StO to fix it. I was also told that publishers don’t like debut novels in present tense, so I’ll be changing the tense to past, which I feel more comfortable writing in anyways (Erie’s half of the book was in past tense in the first draft, but I changed it to present tense to match Finn’s).
That should keep me busy for the next few weeks.
The new shiny idea, which I’m going to call Enfields for now, is sort of shaping up into an actual book. I have a beginning, and an ending, and a general idea of some parts in the middle. I have some really cool creatures, like the enfields, and a little bit of nifty magic. I have an MC with a backstory, a love interest, a few side characters, and a bad guy. Most of all: I have a LOT of research to do. Which is awesome, because I love research. What can I say, I’m a scientist.
On the chicken front, a lot has happened. Max the rooster went to a local free-range farm to become a daddy. They lost a bunch of chickens this year, so they need Max to help fertilize eggs and build their numbers back up. Which should have left us with quiet mornings, but Fury decided to start crowing in his place. And, of course, as soon as we didn’t have a rooster to protect the flock, a hawk caught one of the babies 🙁 Fury got Ripley and Mononoke behind the coop and protected them, but Six is no longer with us.
So yeah, lots going on in the world of Becka right now.
I’m still posting sporadically for a while, so I’m not sure when you’ll next hear from me, but I’ll be around Twitter and G+ like usual. Have a good week, Aledans!
Oh no, poor Six! We haven’t lost any of ours to hawks yet, but we’ve had a few close calls over the years. It’s why ours are now pretty much permanently inside a completely fenced and roofed enclosure. We may have free-range chickens again eventually when I have the backyard landscaped with lots of shrubs for them to hide under in case hawks do appear. Speaking of hawks, I walked out in the backyard a couple weeks ago to find a hawk sitting on my clothesline right next to the coop. It was disconcerting to say the least, though it couldn’t get in. The dog also never even saw it, which was less than heartening since he was outside the entire time before *I* went out.
Fury might be a roo? *Sometimes*, though rarely, a hen will ACT like a roo, but Fury is starting to develop some rooster-like feathers. The hackle and saddle feathers on roosters of most breeds will be long, narrow, and pointy, and of course they’ll have a more elaborate tail as well, but that DEFINITELY varies by breed. The hackle and saddle feathers on hens are short and rounded.
Here’s a good pic for an example of both feather names, and how they look on roosters: https://www.extension.org/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/CockerelLabeledSmall.jpg
The worst part was that the hawk caught Six *right* before she could get under the giant azalea in our backyard. We have two giant azaleas, and lots of tree cover, so that spot was the last area I would have guessed a hawk would catch one of the babies 🙁 And of course it was the first day they were out of the coop, because Max wasn’t around to attack them.
I’m really worried Fury’s a rooster, too. As soon as Max left (like, that afternoon), her comb became redder and larger. And now she’s crowing (and she sounds like a damn rooster, too. Max has such a weird crow the neighbors probably wouldn’t have realized we had a rooster). If she doesn’t stop this week, she’s joining Max at the farm. Then we’ll find another baby :/
How on earth did your dog miss the hawk? Yikes!
Ha, he was asleep, that’s how. And then he was SO EXCITED that I was outside (he presumed that we were going to play ball, and we WERE until I saw the hawk) that all his attention was on me.
Awwww, he was probably so confused 😛
Aww, Poor Six. RIP little buddy.
Pingback: September is Already Busy | Rebecca Enzor