I'm not dead--not really...

...but that would explain my blank, vacant stare, lurching step, and incoherent speech.

Still working. Still trying to write. Not getting much traction in either terrain. I discovered that I have no sick time or vacation time until my one year probation is over--which meant working a swap day with myself in order to attend my brother's wedding. Losing a day of in my 4-and-2 cycle is really exhausting. God help me if I get sick again.

I'm halfway through Sin and Syntax: A Guide to Crafting Wickedly Effective Prose by Constance Hale, and, I have to admit, I've really forgotten a lot of English grammar since high school. I vaguely remember what a "dangling participle" is, but I had no recollection of "dangling prepositional phrase", or what the differences were between a restrictive and non-restrictive clauses, essential and non-essential clauses, and defining and non-defining clauses. I had to go back and re-read that chapter several times (and I'll have to do it again, I'm sure) to get a clue as to what those clauses are, but I do understand the overall point Ms. Hale is trying to make. More importantly, I'm glad Ms. Hale added the common sense rules in with the complex explanations--"Clarity trumps grammar", and so on. Ms. Hale uses a lot of dry humor throughout the book, making it a lot more readable than Strunk & White (although, in the latter's defense, it is meant as a pocket reference). It will be interesting to compare this book with Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

I read two of Cormac McCarthy's books over the past month. The Road and All the Pretty Horses are decent reads, but McCarthy has the same aversion to quotation marks that made my attempt at reading Ulysses so painful. Punctuation exists for a reason folks--I kept losing track of who said what in All the Pretty Horses, and it made the encounter with the Thief and the Old Man in The Road a bit disorienting. Both have unresolved endings, although The Road has a glimmer of hope in the ending paragraph. I don't normally read Westerns, so I doubt I'll be chasing down any more of McCarthy's previous books. I am interested in seeing if McCarthy will pursue any more work in the Horror or SF genre, because most "literary fiction" authors tend only to dabble (and as this review shows, they sometimes find themselves out of their depth). Hopefully McCarthy won't develop the same "I-don't-write-SF" affliction that plagues so many "lit" authors(*coughcough*Margret Atwood*coughcough*).