Peeking into the rock

Gay Boys of Abundance
(not really) honestly, I think it's a coincidence. And only one of the protagonists is clearly gay. Really I should call this "Misfit Boys of Abundance."

Esperanza Highway, written, too long, but I've learned to write shorter so maybe I'll cut it one day if it looks like I have a place for a shorter version. Rural collectivist boy gets in intellectual-property trouble and is temporarily transplanted to a company town.
Hope Street, "treatment"* written: not actually a gay boy, but a rural working-caste boy walks into the middle of religious "pioneer"-caste power struggle and refuses to be a pawn, risking his life in the process.
Zip-Zap-Zero, "treatment"* written: urban boy in political movement winds up in jail and discovers a plot to frame a rent boy for the murder of the charismatic leader of the movement.
Prospect Road, which I'm working on now and may be closer to finishing than Afterwar because I think it will need a hell of a lot less rewriting. Ambitious boy from the same working-caste situation as the one in Hope Street, but he gets into the program for training for the terraforming authority after he's been traumatized by abuse.

What the big deal is, is that I finally figured out the name "Prospect Road" yesterday, after having no title for it for the longest time and wanting it to fit right in with "Esperanza Highway" and "Hope Street."

for locals who care what I think: I have abandoned the John Boutelle strategy. He's gone off entirely and says nothing that is of use in pushing Chris Krohn and Neal Coonerty leftwards. Coonerty, the most conservative real candidate (I am not counting the poisonous loony nutter, I mean the other one besides Boutelle), is to the left of Boutelle, and not insane. And I'm not really mad at him anymore. But: I'm voting for Chris Krohn, because his policies are better.

I have decided for County Superintendent of Schools to vote for Michael Watkins. Of tyhe candidates, I know his work the best, and it's good enough. He comes out of alternative ed., which includes stuff like the court and community schools as well as the charter schools -- in our county we don't have the Edison plague (profit-making corporations sucking the life out of the school system by taking over charters and delivering bad schooling): our charters are real alternative schools, locally run, though there's something a bit weird with White Oak in Scotts Valley. Anyway, the Superintendent is not as political as some elected positions -- less policy-oriented than County Supervisors, more administrative, and experience counts for a lot.

On another front, the guy at the farmer's market said two weeks till apricot jam time.

On the writing front: I'm scatterbrained and exhausted these days so I'm doing this thing where I write what I can, on whatever project I can get traction with. The last couple-few days it's been this probable novella in the Esperanza Highway universe, which I think I can get away with because it's sort of a romance and there's several romance ebook markets which are happy with novellas and maybe happier with novellas than novels. It's another fish out of water thing, which appears to be one of my return-to situations, this time with schoolboys and the Biomes Authority. And jail lurking in the background.