Chapterhouse

How's the writing going? Well, I'm glad you asked. :) I was going to write the "arraignment" scene I'd planned since the beginning of the Work (ahem), so first I pulled out my fat Legal Research folder and found my notes and printouts about arraignments under the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure. Then I realized that I had done that research before I had decided (thanks to Pooks' suggestion) to have my protagonist go on the run. Okay, no problem, I thought - I'll just add that crime to the murder charge. Back online I went only to discover that the term "fugitive from justice" only applies to interstate travel, whereas my guy runs intrastate. What's it called when you run from the law without crossing state lines? I tried searching all kinds of terms, to no avail. Something like that can really screw up a whole day. Fortunately, I do have a friend of a friend who's a criminal lawyer (yes, I know, another lawyer joke; sorry) but I wanted to get all of my "legal" scenes written first so that he could review everything at one time instead of bugging him every few days. Eh. For now, I'm just going with the murder rap.

In other news, west Texas blew in over the weekend. I hadn't seen an old-fashioned dust storm in years, and this was a beaut. The wind removed a huge metal awning for us on the balcony - well, almost - it was hanging by three very tired screws when Tomcat got up there to rescue it before it landed on the neighbor's car.

My first tulips are blooming, and the daffodils and other bulbs I planted are coming up. The next freeze can't be too far away!

Happy Monday everyone.