Missing Link

First, I just wanted to say that I am not suddenly becoming a Star Wars blogging freak. The last two posts have dealt with Star Wars, however, a non-SW related post is supposed to have followed the "Twin Cinema" post. Somehow, though, it got deleted. Oh well.

In that mysteriously deleted post, I mentioned that I am spending part of this summer putting the finishing touches on a novel that I've had laying around for several years. The very first draft of the novel was written back in 1992, when I was still in high school. I revised it, with an eye towards publication, sometime around 1996 or 1997, after my first book was released. But soon, my graduate studies took over my life and my plans for this second book were shelved--until last month when I decided to finish it off and send it out. It will be very interesting to see if it gets any interest from publishers (and if it's soundly rejected, what will they say about it?).

One thing that I've noticed as I've been working on it, is just how much American civilization and pop culture have changed in the 12 or so years since the first draft. For example, in the earlier drafts, some of the characters spend their time listening to Walkmans. I've had to change those scenes to include portable mp3 players now. I've also included more cell phone usage among the characters. I could probably introduce some instant messaging and internet reference as well (even blogging!) but I think that might interfere too much with the dynamics among the characters.

We tend to take the cultural advances that technology as offered us for granted, but a lot sure has changed since 1992.