We took Dylan to his first concert last night, Michelle Branch at Detroit’s River Days festival. He was so adorable! He clapped after every song, and in the middle of them, and he sang along, improvising with his own two-year-old lyrics.

I didn’t even know she was playing around here until I saw it on the news earlier in the day. How fateful that just hours after I had posted about my undying devotion to this guitar, and there we were, standing in a small rained-out crowd, watching Michelle Branch play a Gibson Hummingbird. The universe wants me to have one, I can feel it!

Of course, the universe also probably wants us to buy a house and second car first. Oh, priorities…

Two random things. First, is it some kind of biological hardwiring that at not even two years old, my boy child likes to crash his toy trucks into each other?

And second, there is a Google ad at the top of my Gmail page to Meet Vampire Guys: www .GothScene.com Meet Local Vampire Guys Near You. View Profiles 100% Free. Join Now! I just thought I would share that, because you know how hard it is to find a good vampire guy these days.

not a writer:

Novel stats:
32,550 words (~30%)
101 pages
3 chapters down (of 13), and working on ch. 4

Only about 2000 words added to the story this week, but I also worked on the notes for future chapters quite a bit.

Chapter three is drafted! Very shitty first draft, but it’s all there! And I’ve plopped down the intro scene for chapter four! Chapter four is going to be a lot of fun to write, I think. It’s the POV of Samantha, who is one of my favorite characters so far, bold and spunky, but surprisingly sad. It’s the summer after high school graduation and they get into all kinds of trouble

Some fun discoveries this week. On the problem of writing brilliant characters, which I mentioned a while ago. The one I thought was brilliant, the one everyone thinks is brilliant, is actually kind of a fraud! He really isn’t very brilliant at all, which is why I think he’s so determined to make something of himself. What a fun discovery!

That, and I know how the novel ends. At this point, I have pretty much the whole book noted out, and as long as there aren’t any earth-shattering changes to the story, then I think I just wrote what could be the last scene and ending, and I really like it. It’s beautiful and funny and sweet and just a little bit tragic, and pulls everything together in a subtle way, which is just the kind of ending I want.

Still no title though. I thought I had one for a minute, but it’s not quite right.

not a musician:

Playing this week (very badly, if I might add): Babe I’m Gonna Leave You by Led Zeppelin

My child can strum a guitar really well. I promise I wont turn into a stage mom, but it’s really cute. And since he won’t leave mine alone, I think we’re going to buy him a cute little baby guitar for his birthday. The toy-looking ones are cute, but I think he would know it’s not real when I have mine out. But I think he would be disappointed if it didn’t have real strings to strum, so maybe this one? And look, it’s a baby Gibson!

Speaking of, I gave one of the characters in my novel a Gibson Hummingbird and I am desperately jealous of him! Is that weird?