On to the next story!

Well, I sent Symphonians off to my buddy Kat for a critique, and now I'm like, "You know, it's time to move on for a bit." So I've started working on Leavetaking, which is *my raccoon story.*

Ha ha! That always clears the room!

Yeah, it's anthopomorphic animals. You want to take this outside? But I'm an outdoorsy kind of gal, volunteered with the Missouri Department of Conservation for years and years, and worked outdoors for years and years, so I mix in plenty of natural history. Try to stay true to the facts about how raccoons act, except for the teensy fact that they don't live in large communal groups and that they do not talk, generally, or not in the way I have them talking.

But I'm so frustrated by the fact that I hardly ever see raccoons any more. In St. Joseph, they live in the sewers, and sometimes at night I would see them come out of one sewer and cross over into another one. In the small town I live now, we don't have those kinds of sewers, so I haven't seen a single one. The nearest wildlife rehabilitation station is in Kansas City, a long way to drive. But why would I want to drive clear out to KC to observe wildlife when I know I'm surrounded by raccoons here?

There are some at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha -- long way to drive, but a worthwhile trip.

But anyway, my dandy critique group just got finished critiquing the beginning of the book, and so I've started putting their thoughts into action. I'm going to have to tear out big chunks of text and write lots of new stuff. So it goes.

But the other thing I was going to do was use the Writing the Breakout Novel workbook and go through the story and really get it going. I can use all the help I can get.