First, for the people who've sent me nice long e-mails that I haven't answered yet, I will soon. It's just been a busy weekend.

I spent most of Saturday working on Blood Engines and, lo, I finished revising it. I'm so so so so very happy with this book now. Things are nicely foreshadowed, the screwy timeline issues are fixed, and the characters have some added depth.

It had been so long since I'd read the novel that I'd forgotten how I handled various plot complications, and was pleased when I read on and discovered the solutions, so that's a good sign. I want to do a quick read-through over the new scenes before I send it to my agent, but I should get it off to her in a day or two. We'll see what she thinks. I'm very excited about this novel. I think it does exactly what I wanted it to do. (Whether editors or readers will be in sympathy with those goals is an open question, of course...)

After I was done working, Heather and I went out and grabbed some dinner, and then saw the Wallace and Gromit movie, which was great fun. It was nice to get out of the house after spending so many hours at my desk.

Today, I'm cooking chili. That's another great thing about the onset of autumn -- it seems seasonally appropriate to cook chili again. I'm writing this entry while I wait for the two batches (one meaty, for me, and one veggie, for Heather) to boil down a bit so I can add more stuff (still need to put in some coffee and beer). Heather won't let me use kona coffee in the chili. I can understand that. But the idea really appeals to me. Ah, well. It's essentially the same chili I described in this entry from last year, with some minor variations, of course. I generally refer to it as my Green Chili -- so called because it includes green chiles (naturally), and wasabi, and Guinness. Along with lots of other things which aren't green or Irish.

I sort of wish I was at World Fantasy -- it sounds fun, and there are people there I've never met that I'd like to, such as Hal Duncan -- but it's also nice to hang out at home, cooking a monster batch of chili and listening to all the episodes of This American Life that I missed while on my honeymoon. Life is sweet. And also spicy.