@ChrEugLee
The rest of the revisions for My Share of Sand have been published. I happened to stumble on the only trailer park in Calabasas (actually called Calabasas Village Mobile Estates) on my trip there and knew I had to work it into the novel somehow, because of the sheer out-of-placeness of it. I finally decided to make it where Gen lives. I got a really good line out of it: “It’s got the only decent swimming pool in town that isn’t in someone’s backyard or in a gated community.”
My Share of Sand chapters 12-17 revisions are up. This is the section where I did the most revising, mainly adding in some more local color. All libraries should have fireplaces, whether they need them or not.
My Share of Sand chapters 8-11 revisions are up. Yes, I changed Dorri's name to Lily simply so I could rename a chapter to "Lily of the Valley"...priorities!
My Share of Sand revisions for chapters 4-7 are up.
So I finished my revision of My Share of Sand and I'll be posting it over the next week or two, starting with the first three chapters today. Most of it is unchanged, some typos have been fixed, other editing errors have been corrected, but also some new insights about Calabasas have worked their way into the story, based on my April trip to SoCal. One character's name has been changed (mainly so I could make an extremely clever joke in my "chapter titles taken from Queen songs" theme). I also have some photos I took on the trip added as illustrations. And on the subject of Southern California, if you're ever in Ojai, stop by Bart's Books, a cool used book store without a roof (seriously!). For best results, pretend you're strolling around a private library you built in your backyard.
As I mentioned before, I unpublished Diamond Cluster Charm so I can rework it a bit. However, I'm also going to be doing a little updating on My Share of Sand in the coming weeks too, inspired by the vacation to SoCal I just got back from, where I stayed at a hotel in Calabasas (I was amazed at how well I captured that town given that I'd only driven through it once before, but I was able to make some more notes and observations that I plan to add; the Lamborghini I found myself behind in a left turn lane was the tip of the iceberg)
Just wanted to announce that on May 1 I'll be temporarily taking Diamond Cluster Charm offsite, so I can do some rewriting on it (spit and polish, and some added material).
Just Googled myself and learned that I once had a tweet quoted in an Australian newspaper (https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/lifestyle/food/mayochup-new-heinz-product-divides-the-people/news-story/5b8783c5623fbea151a59ffbc6f5b356) and that a pic I took of a California courthouse is on its Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_County_Superior_Court ) (the "after 1937 remodel" one)...weird
Thanks for adding Queen of Shattered Dreams to your list! I hope you enjoy it!
Crazy to think that I wrote Ought To & Can in 2017-18, put it on here in 2019, and by 2023 two of the institutions mentioned in the story--El Molino High School in Sonoma County, CA, where Neil and Sabrina attend a debate tourney, and the huge San Francisco flagship Nordstrom store by Union Square where Sabrina works in the second half--are now closed. Hope I didn't jinx them...
