don't panic, don't panic

I finally read Julia Quinn's latest book, "Mr. Cavendish, I Presume." While it was better than the book she released earlier this year, I was still not a huge fan; the premise of these two books was that she wrote them together, but they were two sides of the same general storyline (the first being about a man who turned out to be the long-lost heir to a dukedom, and the second being about the man who grew up thinking he was the duke). While the premise was interesting, I thought the first book was ridiculous, particularly because she threw in that the lost duke was dyslexic in like the last chapter of the book, which was v. strange. I liked this book better because I thought the characters were more likable. But, if any of you read it, did you believe that Thomas Cavendish (the original earl) would have inherited nothing? His mother was an heiress in her own right to one of the largest fortunes in England, which theoretically would have been left directly to him rather than tied up with the dukedom?

However, the part that annoyed me the most was that of the six females I name in my book, this book contains three of those names -- and in somewhat the same general usage as mine. My heroine is also named Amelia, her mother is named Augusta (although in this book, Augusta is the duke's evil grandmother), and the duke has a mistress named Celeste (which is the name my earl makes up for his fake mistress). WTF? I'm keeping Amelia because that's indelibly her name, and likely Augusta as well, but I should probably change Celeste. Sigh.

The rest of the day was good. I woke up a little after seven, took care of various tasks, took a bubble bath, blow-dried my hair, and was utterly ready for the day by ten a.m. This is a strange switch from the past twenty-seven years of my experience, but I seem to be shifting earlier in the day. Around noon, Adit picked me up and we went to a cafe to work; when Katrina joined us after one, there was no room for her to sit down because the group that took over the place seemed in no rush to leave, so we vacated and went to the tea place near my apartment, where we worked for the rest of the afternoon. Adit brought me home around six, we played some Wii Golf, I made him some soup (and by 'made' I mean I reheated the potato soup from my freezer), and we watched an episode of "The Cosby Show" before he took off. I decided to read a book, and you know the rest.

Mostly my writing today was an exercise in frustration; it's very hard to just write a new scene to drop in the middle of a manuscript you've had sitting in its current general form for several months, and I'm really struggling with it. I have a feeling I'll cut just about everything that I wrote today, but that's an issue for tomorrow. So on that note, I suppose I should go to bed so that I can get to work in the morning!