I wrote 10,120 words on the Frog novel today. That's by the word processor's count, so it's more like 13,000 by manual count. That's probably over a tenth of the novel, written just today. If I did that much every day this week, I'd be finished with the book by Thursday.

Of course, I didn't do anything but write today. I took Heather to the BART station at 9, then went to the grocery store to pick up a few things, then came home and worked. Apart from a break for lunch (and addressing Flytraps), and another break to do some reading and take a nap, I was at the computer all day, probably about 5 hours of actual putting-words-on-the-page. I got to write some of the coolest scenes in the book today, and now I'm into the last third of the novel, where all the stuff I've set up comes to fruition. It's going to be awesome.

I am, however, going to drag myself away from my desk tomorrow, and go to Berkeley to check the PO box, hang out in a café, etc. I need to write a poem or two for an editor, and about 300 words of flash-y fiction that I've promised another editor, and I should turn my notes on Ramsey Campbell's Told by the Dead into an actual review (I should've done that today, but I got too deeply into the Frog novel to do anything else). I have some things I want to get done around the house, too, and some Xmas shopping. So while I won't do 10,000 words on the novel again tomorrow, I'll try to get some done, in addition to finishing up those other things. And I'll continue plugging away at it for the rest of the week. I feel like I've got a lot of good momentum.

So, yeah, it's a working vacation, but with work like this, who needs play?

We did meet Charles de Lint on Saturday. Sharyn November couldn't make it, so it was just Charles. He arrived late, so he just did a chatty Q&A rather than a reading. Heather and I got to talk to him briefly while he signed a book for us, and he remembered us from Floodwater, which he reviewed a while back. He seems like a very cool guy, and had a lot of interesting things to say about art and writing. It was fun. We got to talk to Jude at Borderlands a bit, which is always nice, and I lusted after various books. We bought Argosy, and Dear Abbey by Terry Bisson (which I read that night -- good stuff!), but otherwise restrained ourselves. And I got to see a copy of Little Gods on a shelf in an actual bookstore, which was cool. After the reading Heather and I went for dinner at Kelly's, which is a to-die-for burger joint. Great shakes, amazing burgers, good fries. Such a great night! We came home, and Heather started working on our Xmas collaboration -- continuing to work even when a fuse blew and all our electrical outlets lost power! She wrote on her laptop by candlelight! We had quite an ordeal finding the fusebox (it's hidden in a closet, at the back of an upper shelf, and was behind many boxes). Then we had to go get fuses. We were actually pretty cheerful throughout the whole thing.

Sunday we cleaned the house. I did a mountain's worth of dishes, and Heather made the living room beautiful. We went to Jack London theater for the day's last matinee of Elf. It's a nice theater, though not as charmingly funky as most of the ones we attend (it's your basic corporate multiplex). Very nice seats, though, and a great sound system, and big screens. The only drawback was the endless, monotonous repetitive loop about how talking is not allowed and all cell phones should be shut off, which played again and again for the ten minutes that we sat waiting for the movie, to the point that people around us were groaning and covering their ears and speaking along with the recording. I can still hear it in my nightmares... but, anyway, Elf was funny and charming, and Zooey Deschanel's rendition of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is good enough that we're going to buy the soundtrack album.

We went home afterward, and after some video-game playing I wrote a thousand words on the collab and sent it back to Heather. I think it's going to be one of our better stories, and it'll only be available in our Xmas chapbook, which is yet to be named. Details about that to follow once we know them.

It looks to be a good, productive week. And at the end of the week, I get to eat turkey! These are all good reasons to rejoice.