Mmmm... Starbucks Coffee. We got a free pack of their House Blend in the mail yesterday as part of what HAD to be an expensive promotion through Harris Teeter, the local grocery chain, and man, I'm working on mug #3, jamming to Coldplay, and finishing up light revisions to chapter 3 of the Blackbeard novel. I feel good. Wired, but good.

I'm really getting pumped up about this novel again. I have two really strong main characters, and I'm playing with stereotypes a bit in my female and male leads. It's pretty fun to do, and I'm enjoying "getting to know" them again.

I also updated the PDFs of my other three novels, and in the process I started looking at The Last of the Hand again, inspired by Janet's wonderful artwork she did for that novel, and I have to admit, even if I wrote the last half of that in a bit of a rushed haze, what I have there is really, really good. I may not have to revise it as much as I'd feared. Like the Wannoshay novel, it's the ending that needs the most work, but it's not all that bad. I kinda like it. What a concept, eh?

I'm also having fun throwing all sorts of crazy shit Greg's way in our collaboration, making things tough for him, plot-wise, but he keeps coming up with cool cool stuff. He had a kick-ass line in the last section that he wrote that I won't share with you here. Maybe he'll share it with you if you ask him nicely. Or you'll have to wait until it sees print. I added a short scene to that last night (part of it is quoted below), and threw it back to him. Tag. He's It.

And now, it's 7:36 a.m., I've been up since 4:15 or so (don't ask -- I just woke up and decided, what the hell, might as well do some writin'!), and I've got to walk the dog.

Even if I went back to bed and slept the rest of the day, today would have been a success. Later!

Now Playing:
"Parachutes," Coldplay (for the fourth time in a row)

Now Reading:
various short stories, here and there

Stories out to Publishers:
21(!)

Today and Yesterday's Words:
700

Words for '03:
35,300

Today's Quote:
“I need to get back,” the King says, even as he sinks to his knees in this desert of dust and ash. Dead gray matter from the ground puffs onto his green T-shirt with the sleeves lopped off. “Back to Culver City and the old neighborhood.”

“Son, you are back.” The old man reaches for the King, but his hand never touches the King’s unscarred left arm. With a series of hisses like air in a handful of syringes, the old man fades away, and we wonder if he had ever been there in the first place.

“Your kingdom awaits,” the old man’s voice says, drifting over to us from our prescribed safe viewing distance. “But your throne holds another’s weight.”