Well, sports fans, it will down to the wire for this BAM book! For starters, it's a short month. And I've had a touch of the flu AND a new puppy to cope with. I am LAGGING, do you hear? LAGGING. At only 50K words -- and I'd hoped to be just about finished right now and I am NOT.

Dang. Double Dang.

Well, not to worry -- I think there's a very good chance I will have a first draft in the can by the end of the month and I think there's a good chance it won't be as smooth as I like.

Had some very interesting stuff develop in writing the First Amendment issues. At first I'd thought to center it around a prayer at graduation speech sort of thing. But when I started writing it, it just wasn't flowing. That happens sometimes -- you think you've nailed the conflict and then it simply don't sing none when you get it down. I kept seeing a round sweaty short guy who'd done something criminal -- which became a first amendment issue. I just really love the idea, because it's always a problem when bad facts and distasteful clients have righteous issues. Not difficult when you've got a little blond girl with blue eyes who lisps when she talks about Jesus. An entirely different case when your client wears a "Sex Wax" Tshirt to a court hearing (yes, this happened to me, and Sex Wax is actually a substance used on surf boards and YES, of course we were there for a preliminary hearing on a rape and child molestation case and YES, I immediately sent my law clerk out to buy the guy a Tshirt with sweet little butterflies on it before we had to go into court....but I disgress).

SO anyway -- the client is a good deal less appealing to our heroine than the original one was but a lot more fun for me as Grand Poobah and creator of this universe. I think you'll appreciate the change when you read the book.

The OTHER thing that's turned out to be more difficult is actually keeping up with the podcasts! I had intended to do one every day but it's proved really tough to get to it -- after spending all day on the story, I find myself oddly reluctant to share it with anyone. I think it's just that "lousy first draft" syndrome. I'll try to do better in these last days because I DO think it's cool to share everything with you as it happens.

More later!

Oh, if you're not on my mailing list and want to be -- drop me a line at cyn@cynmobley.com and tell me to add you.

BTW, those of you in the Central Valley of California -- my little brother JACK MOBLEY is running for State Assembly! Check him out at http://jackmobley.com .  I'm going to help him blog (and I did his website last month, too.)