Book review: John Zakour and Lawrence Ganem, Zach Johnson books one and two.

The Plutonium Blonde and The Doomsday Brunette, by by John Zakour and Lawrence Ganem.
DAW Books, paperback
352 pages and 368 pages, respectively, science fiction comedy detective spoof noir weirdness with monkeys
Currently in print

( So what happens when a dame walks into the office of the last private detective on Earth -- a dame with gams that go all the way up, hair the color of neon bar lights reflecting through fine whiskey, and a smile that spells 'trouble' with a capital 'T,' and that rhymes with 'P,' and that stands for 'private detective?' Lots of things, most of them awesome. Click for details. )

Word count -- Lycanthropy.

Here go:

Words: 4,440
Total words: 56,700
Reason for stopping: finished chapter twenty-two.
Music: my 'dead stuff' playlist, and The Last Five Years.
Lilly: doubtless plotting to conquer the world.

According to my outline, I'm rapidly approaching the minimum length for this book. Also according to my outline, I have roughly five chapters left. Now, that's going to leave me with a book that's somewhat shorter than I want it to be...but that's okay, because it means that draft 1.5 will consist, not of editing, but of finding all the juicy bits that I rushed past in my urge to find out what was going to happen next. That's pretty awesome, actually. I love knowing that I get to back-track and add more of the good stuff.

(If I can find a way for 'the good stuff' to include Jason taking off his shirt, I think I'll reward myself with pumpkin cake and a bubble bath. Because the world always needs more of Jason-sans-shirt.)

I'm actually starting to see the light at the end of the seemingly endless tunnel that this book has been. Given that my previous YA book, Upon a Star, took me less than a month to write, I'm really relieved that this one is wrapping up, and more, that I'm still utterly in love with these characters. I can fall out of love with a book -- I usually do, by the time the editing process is done, although I'm fickle enough that I always take them back in the end -- but as long as I don't fall out of love with the characters, I'm fine.

Yay, Clady.