I'm in the middle of a new short story, one that's a bit different for me in lots of ways. I won't get into it in too much detail (for one thing, it's destined to be a Christmas present, so I don't want to give too much away!) but I will say that, after spending my teenage years enthralled and obsessed by King Richard III (I read Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time and Elizabeth Peters's The Murders of Richard III in dangerously close succession, at an impressionable age), I am turning the tables on myself. Not too much, of course - even as a supposedly cynical adult, I still can't resist a Richard III novel or story, and I can't even count the number of times I've been to the tiny and very silly Richard III museum in the medieval city walls of York. Come to think of it, I may just have to get back to that museum one more time as research for this story. If only I can talk Patrick into it... ("It's necessary for story research. No, really! This time it's true!")

Meanwhile, the mouse hasn't reappeared since Wednesday, thank God, and the stone blocking its hole hasn't been moved. We're going to buy steel wool this weekend to block it up more thoroughly. In the meantime, knock on wood that it'll stay gone and not decide to chew itself a new hole into the living room... The trap is staying out and baited. As the mouse takes longer and longer to take the bait, I will feel sadder and sadder about the waste of good dark chocolate!

But in really good news, Patrick's dark, strange, and beautiful World War I story, The Western Front, has just been re-published in Pseudopod as a podcast. You can listen to it here!