ROWers, the end of Round 3 is almost upon us! Here’s my short recap for the past few days:

• The Grand Name Change happens at midnight! If you see “Lena Corazon” pop up on your Twitter feed, don’t be alarmed — it’s just me. In order to ease the transition as much as possible, I’ll be using WordPress’s site redirect service. This means that anyone who heads to jamilajamison.wordpress.com will automatically be sent to the new site (which should be lenacorazon.wordpress.com, unless someone steals it from me before midnight). So hopefully people don’t get too confused, but I’ll have a sticky announcement up on my front page with an explanation, just in case. For my Writers’ Campaign folks, I’ll send an announcement to Rach so she can put it on Friday’s announcement board.

• I’ve returned to edits for TELL ME NO LIES in earnest. I plan to dig into the suspense and thriller aspects of the novel, tweaking the murder plot and adding in the details of the police investigation (this involves research into 19th century forensic techniques — fun!). I’m also putting on my sociologist’s cap, trying to consider the larger political and social ramifications presented by the novel’s main conflict: a serial killer is preying upon “ladies of the stage” in San Francisco’s Barbary Coast. While these ramifications will play out in the background of the tale, they will, of course, have a major impact on my protagonists and their attempts to hunt down the killer.

• I continue to make time for reading. I’m about halfway through Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, a book that seems to defy genre. I’ve heard it described variously as “post-cyberpunk,” “futuristic steampunk,” and “math fiction.” I’ll just say that it is speculative fiction at its best, and presents a futuristic world where nanotechnology is the norm, nation-states have been replaced by a proliferation of tiny city-states/semi-sovereign communities, and “Anglo-Americans” have returned to elements of Victorian culture in the form of dress, aesthetics, and etiquette. Stephenson is one of the most amazing masters of world-building, so I am simultaneously taking notes, marveling at his skill, and, of course, enjoying the story.

• Finally, I’m obsessed with The Civil Wars, an awesome folksy music duo that’s making some gorgeous music. Adele apparently went to one of their concerts and declared that it was the greatest live show she had ever attended. I’ll have a chance to test this claim, as they’re coming to Santa Barbara in November. They’re offering one of their live albums for free download, along with their first single, “Barton Hollow,” is available for free download, but I’m going to share “To Whom It May Concern” with you. It’s my favorite song off the album (the lyrics resonate with my inner hopeless romantic), and I’ve been listening to it non-stop.

I’m also considering the slate of fall writing courses that have surfaced online, including Tiffany Lawson Inman’s The Triple Threat Behind Staging a Scene, and Kristen Lamb’s class on Blogging To Build Your Brand. I’d like to do them both, but I’m trying to be careful with what I add to my plate, since this is going to be a busy fall quarter. But we’ll see! It’s hard to pass up two incredibly amazing opportunities like these. 😀

That’s about it for me. Check in with the rest of the intrepid ROW80 cohort here, and cheer them on as we enter the final stretch of this round.