Yes, I’ve come out of my reading bubble. As usual, I scooped up the latest Sara Paretsky novel and read straight through.

Break Down is the 15th installment in the V.I. Warshawski series (not counting the short stories) and marks the 30th anniversary of the series. It’s also the first time I remember V.I. referring to herself as 50, though she must have passed that milestone a few books ago. Vic remains an inspiration — she can still fight several men at once, take on the rich and powerful and fill out a scarlet evening dress. She can also spill food on her good clothes, get dirty and sweaty and skip many meals, despite her family motto. The main draw of the series remains the main draw, after all these years — I don’t know anyone like Vic but I wish I did. (Even if that would, of course, put me in danger.)

Break Down is the strongest offering by Paretsky since Blacklist. Like Body Work, Break Down weaves together a number of different storylines, but the resulting tapestry holds together much better. In Body Work, I felt like there wasn’t enough space to give the various threads — and more importantly, their promising characters — their due. Break Down doesn’t quite reach the level of characterization of some early V.I. novels, but Paretsky does a great job of balancing the storylines — none of them feel rushed or left undone. I kept reading not simply out of loyalty to V.I. and Paretsky, but because I couldn’t wait to see how it would all come together.

The political aspects common to the series reflect our changing society without sounding overly preachy — in fact, Paretsky introduces a rich, liberal family, showing that even the more enlightened of the 1% can have their sense of entitlement. We feel bad for Murray, even while sharing V.I.’s frustration and disappointment with her old friend and colleague. Lawlor and Kendrick, a “news” show host and politician respectively, demonstrate the depressing exaltation of political extremism at the cost of real debate over real issues, ones affecting our daily lives.

Not everything is depressing, however. The scenes with Mr. Contreras, the dogs and two little girls are priceless. It’s also nice to see Petra gaining a little maturity.

I did have a few quibbles, mainly with the ending. I won’t include any spoilers here, so I can’t get specific. My problem is that it closely resembled the ending to a previous book, in a way that seemed especially unrealistic because you probably can’t go to that well more than once. It also included some actions that I considered out of character for some of the regulars. In general, the series’s endings have become somewhat predictable, with the rich and powerful getting off with little consequence and V.I. joining with friends to remind herself of the good in life. I like that Paretsky doesn’t shy away from giving us the unsatisfying yet realistic version of justice, but it’s beginning to feel formulaic in its depiction.

A couple of other quibbles:

V.I.’s bipolar friend seems to be stuck in one pole — manic. There’s no discussion of her depressive phases, little or no discussion of her stable phases, nor is there any question of how her medications might have affected her. The friend seems to be limited to the “bipolar genius” cliche.

Some actions come off more as being necessary for tying up the plot than as a natural progression of the situation. One character uses a “middleman” for communication that is not illegal, and then the middleman holds the meeting at his workplace? Why would he do that? Because it’s necessary for the plot? Another example came closer to the end. (Again, I’m not providing context as to avoid spoilers.) Why not photograph evidence and text or email it to as many people as possible immediately? So that the evidence has the chance to be lost?

Paretsky stays true to V.I.’s avoidance of police involvement, but I’d like to have seen Vic second-guess herself at least a little with respect to the opening scene. It’s a great set-up, but then she sends a bunch of tween girls out alone into Chicago with a murderer possibly still nearby — one that might fear he’s been seen? I understand she was protecting the girls whose families may have been illegals, but for once I actually felt sympathetic for the police. At a murder scene, she hid witnesses and potentially put off the discovery of evidence. Reacting as a parent to that scene, I was fairly upset — I would want to know right away that my 12-year-old was wandering about Chicago, not hours later after her book club’s cousin/investigator searched for them. I also wouldn’t appreciate my kid getting the message from a responsible adult that she should avoid the police at all costs, even when possibly in danger.

Jake Thibaut again seems like an afterthought. Granted, Morrell was a tough act to follow, but Jake’s role is so limited that he still doesn’t feel quite real to me.

All in all, a worthy addition to the Warshawski series. I’m looking forward to year 31.

I love reading, and yet, somehow I don’t seem to do as much of it as I used to. Trying to balance writing and reading doesn’t come naturally, unfortunately. I can do one or the other but not both, not easily. Of course, that seems to be true of so much in my life — I can exercise and eat more healthfully, but not if I want to write and read. I write chapter after chapter if I don”t mind the house looking like crap.

So, starting small, I’m going through Best of 2011 reading lists from various sources. My first try is 1Q84, which is looong, but I’ve never read any Japanese writers outside of short story collections.

And yes, I am going to the gym. And I will finish that chapter draft today. Mwa ha ha.

I’m working on making some New Year’s Resolutions and want to come up with a couple for writing. Anybody else out there have some writing resolutions?

As part of the Nanowrimo experience, I decided to try out the software for novelists, Scrivener. I’m happy to say it was both easy to use and inspiring. The bad news is that I probably won’t be buying it soon.

First, the positives. You can see all your “chapters” listed on the left for easy access. They don’t have to be chapters, either. You can just write scenes, if you haven’t quite decided where to put them yet. To help with that, each item comes with an “index card,” on which you can either compose a short description or have one automatically created. Then you can move the index cards around on a virtual bulletin board to try out ideas. Another view lists all the chapters and scenes, complete with stats — number of words, writing goals, etc. (especially helpful to Nanowrimoers).

Even better, you can keep all your research in Scrivener and that appears in a box just below the chapter list. There’s also a section for character and location cards, so that you can keep all your info about a given character or place in one tidy spot for reference.

Another feature, which I haven’t tested yet, is the compilation feature. The program will turn your finished draft into a Kindle or ePub book for you. I wasn’t as interested in this feature, since my husband does this for me with a greater level of customization, but it could be a key feature for many.

While I found it inspiring to have the whole book right there in the window, without having to worry about flipping back and forth between documents (yes, it can save as Word and several other types of files), I probably won’t be buying the program just yet. The cost is currently $45, which is a lot for someone without steady income. I never did move my research over to Scrivener, because I’m addicted to Evernote, which is officially Fabulous. (If you’re a writer and you’re unfamiliar with Evernote, check it out immediately. It’s free.) I can use any number of word processors and have access to them everywhere through either Dropbox or Google Docs or iCloud or even Evernote again. (Scrivener has cloud access as well.)

If I were well enough off, I would buy Scrivener at full price just because it makes my working draft feel a little more like a connected whole. I’d buy it to just to support the product, which is well thought-out and bug-free, at least during my trial. If I’d finished Nanowrimo, I probably would have bought it with the 50% discount for finishers. But at $45 and limited income, I can’t ignore the fact that it really does things that I already have free tools to do.

Other pros: Templates, help with query/submission letters (maybe they could add a submissions tracker in the future?), name generator (creates only very common American names), support for short stories.

Cons: User not supposed to include Chapter headings in text, as program inserts those upon compilation. That’s good, since a change in chapter order would otherwise result in edits to all chapter numbering. But then I still had to add them back in later for submitting individual chapters to my writers group. Also, I used the version for Mac, which is their original and most developed version. Scriveners for Windows may be more bumpy.

Pro or con, depending on view: This program doesn’t teach you how to write a novel — no sample outlines or story ideas. I wasn’t looking for anything like that, but some people are.

Big Pro: Free trial lasts for real 30 days of use, not 30 calendar days. This means it only counts the days that you use the software.Try it and let me know what you think. http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php

UPDATE: With my husband’s encouragement, I went ahead and bought Scrivener for Mac. Although I had other tools to accomplish what Scrivener can do in terms of content, I missed the inspiration I got from seeing my novel as a growing whole every day. Plus, Scrivener does make it quite easy to check details from other chapters quickly.

Starbucks is playing the Nutcracker, one of my all time favorite pieces of music. I can’t say I know much about classical music, but the emotional ride of the Nutcracker inspires me no end.

I’ve heard people complaining lately of the early onset of Christsmas marketing, and it does lessen the specialness of the time when I see holiday decorations going on sale before Halloween. But last night we realized that Christmas less than two weeks away. I’m all for Christmas music and decorating trees and wrapping presents. After I finish this chapter.

I’m beginning to wonder if writing is more the tool of the lazy thinker. Why, you ask? My new phone is giving me an identity crisis. I’ve always thought of writing as one of my strengths, but using the new speech recognition software has me questioning my assumptions. I wanted to test out the speech recognition software by speaking my blog entry instead of writing it. However, I’ve found that composing by speaking is not one of my strong suits. I’ve become very accustomed to the idea of being able to move comments around through cut-and-paste. And now I find it hard to organize my thoughts in a manner that allows me to speak them. In fact I find this torturous. There’s something about having my fingers closet hanging over the keyboard that gives my brain time to think. I don’t even know when to start a new paragraph (had to add this back in — software thought I was telling it to make new paragraph) if I’m talking. This is terrible I’m never speaking another blog again.

Maybe, though, I’m thinking I should do this as an exercise every now and again. The forced nature of having to think out my sentences ahead of time can only improve my writing ability.

If you’re a writer and you have access to voice recognition software, give it a try. I’d love to know if you found it as difficult as I did to compose something by speaking instead of writing.

Some disappointing news today. Rejections are a part of any writer’s life, but sometimes it’s just harder to take than others. Those are the days when you wonder why exactly you keep at it, a tough question to face in the middle of a NaNoWriMo quest. Even tougher when staring down a future full of student loans.

So I guess I’ll just try not to question for now.

My poor little brain will start emitting steam at any moment. First I got a poor night’s sleep and then I needed to drop off the car for service this morning, wrecking my newly established writing schedule. So here I was, late afternoon, with zero words so far on the day and my brain in neutral.

Why neutral? I knew what I wanted to write about, but I couldn’t picture it. I couldn’t decide on an activity that fit the characters, and until I picked the activity, the characters just weren’t coming into focus. I tried napping, hoping that some rest would make me more alert, but I couldn’t sleep knowing how many words I was getting behind in my NaNoWriMo quest. So I took out the laptop and just started writing notes, anything to have words on the page. Then came the silly Google searches. “Rich people hobbies” actually came up as a search term. Who knew?

After much wandering down Internet paths, I found what I was looking for. I researched, took notes and jotted down some specific things for the chapter. Now I’m shutting down the laptop and letting the tired brain do what it does best. Daydream it’s way through.

Less than three hours until our writers’ group meeting — and 300 words to go. All I want to do is nap, but such is life. Today was much harder, as I’m accustomed to doing quite a bit of daydreaming before committing to paper (well, keyboard). No such luxury this month. I’ve been confining my cringing to the shower, where I think of all the revisions I’ll need to do on these lifeless drafts. Did I really just write a chapter with no sense of smell or touch? Did I really develop my new characters so little?

Not my problem. That will be Editor-JoAnn’s task, in December. Mwahaha. Time to get back to my 300 devils.

Of course, I mean “mission accomplished” in the George Bush sense of the phrase. This is only day one of NaNoWriMo, and I was adding on to a draft of a chapter I’d already started (though I didn’t count the already existing text in my word count). Yes, George, this is just the tip of my iceberg of a novel. But if I can’t go grin like a chimp on the deck of a war ship, I can at least brag on my blog. Why? Because it just ups the expectations for me tomorrow. Ha!

And I’ve learned so much already. Eventually I will automatically block out the blaring music at Starbucks, despite having to sit directly under a speaker. Why, oh why, can’t they just have a speaker-free area? I learned that my ability to focus on writing has a shorter life span than my battery, so no need to drag along the power cord if fully charged. The Kitten is learning to curl up behind me rather than on my lap — or on my laptop.

Plus, I nearly had a nervous breakdown when Evernote mysteriously hid all my notebooks. The beat goes on.