Jonathan Strahan is kindly podcasting my story "The Third-Quarter King" as part of The Coode Street Podcast. Go, listen, and be gentle; it's my first time recording my own voice. The story will be in the forthcoming Eidolon anthology, co-edited by Jonathan.

It's been a good couple of days.

Wednesday the guys from Night Shade, Jeremy and Jason, came up to the office for the afternoon, so I got to hang out, drink wine, and chat with them for a while. It's always a pleasure to see them, and now that Jason is relocating to San Francisco, that should happen more often.

Thursday was my day off. I did some work on Greg's chapbook, Show and Tell and Other Stories, and it's basically done now, except for proofreading. (You can see his doodles, some of which will appear as spot illustrations in the chapbook, at his website here.) So, whoo! Progress was made. I also washed our filthy kitchen rug (inadvertently turning two white towels purple in the process... oops), cleaned the kitchen, filed a couple of months' worth of accumulated papers, etc. All that writing-avoidance behavior was for naught, though -- I did finally start working on Ferocious Dreamers (though the more I think of it the more I hate that title). I did about 1300 words, and found the right beginning, I think. I also wrote a short prologue. I am uncomfortable with prologues, but it's from a different character's POV than everything else in the novel, it's only a page long, and it sets up some important things, so it seems like prologue material.

I also started reading the 180 pages of the novel that I'd already written, and it looks like great hunks of it may be salvageable -- there are several scenes I still need, and the writing isn't bad, once I cut out the random expository paragraphs and all the adverbs. I have to cut a whole subplot and drop a villain and change a lot of details about another minor villain, so not much of that first attempt is keepable, but there's enough to make my life a little easier.

Also, I have a marvelous idea for a new subplot involving Marla's personal assistant. I suspect Marla's personal assistant(s) will become something of a running gag in the series, actually.

We saw the pilot for The Amazing Screw-On Head last night. Lovely stuff, and I actually like all the changes they made from the one-shot comic, providing more backstory for the evil characters, etc. I hope it gets picked up as a series.

Off to work, now, to write an obituary for David Gemmell. Very sad. He passed far too young.