Bah. I am strangely fretful, for no clear reason. I keep standing up, wandering around, checking to make sure the stove is off, that the back door is locked, that the cats haven't knocked the screen out of a window and escaped. Something deep in the back of my mind is telling me to worry. I keep going over things that could be wrong, trying to recall what I'm forgetting, to figure out what's wrong, if anything. Things are good with Heather; it's not that. We don't have any overdue videos to return. I hit all my writing/editorial deadlines last week, and there are no more deadlines for weeks. We have enough money to pay Flytrap contributors at the end of the month. There's gas in the car, and it's running fine. There's food in the house. The cats have flea medication. The plants are watered (the one I feel it's my responsibility to water, anyway). We've made all our plane/hotel reservations for traveling for the rest of the year. I've asked for, and received, time off from work for all that traveling. Convention memberships have been purchased. There's ink for the printer, and paper. I have deodorant and toothpaste and razors and shampoo. My bills are paid for the month. I don't have any impending appointments.

Maybe I'm just feeling anxious because I've been anxious for the past month, worrying that I'd forget something important (including many of the things mentioned above). Maybe I'm still in residual anxious-mode, though there's no cause for anxiety anymore.

I hope that's it. I hope I haven't forgotten anything.

Clearly, I need to sit on the couch and drink some wine.

Strange fretfulness aside, things are going well, I think. I revised a story today, the one I wrote in Lake Tahoe last month, and I'll send it out this week. I plan to revise another story tomorrow. It's nice to be doing fiction-related-stuff again.

I just read The Briar King. Good high fantasy! So rare! The plot genuinely surprised me several times, and it has an uncompromising quality that I appreciate -- Keyes kept killing off characters I expected to live! Lots of weirdness, interesting magical system(s), not an elf in sight (though there are rumors of aelphs), moral ambiguity, people suffering psychotic fugues. While the book does have the obligatory fantasy-standard gypsy-like characters, they are at least far weirder than most gypsy-analogues in high fantasy. I recommend it, though it's the first part of a trilogy (or series?), and ends with much unresolved, so don't expect closure.

Oh, and happy Beltane, and May Day.