My poetry collection If There Were Wolves is available for sale! Buy early and often!

Hmm, I don't think I ever said what I ultimately thought of Blood & Iron by Elizabeth Bear, which I finished reading last week. So let me pay that novel the highest compliment I can give: It made me want to write fantasy novels. By which I mean, it reminded me of everything I love about fantasy, and made me want to create some of my own. Not many books do that for me these days. I enjoy lots of books, sure, but this one inspired me. (It's not perfect, but I'm not going to quibble. It pushed my buttons and made me grin and got my toes tappin', and I was never bored, and that's what matters.)

One of the things that happens when I go to conventions is that occasionally an editor will say "Hey, send me a story!" And, being an accomodating sort of dude, I say "Okay!" So this week I'm trying to write a short one. Since I'm currently immersed in the Marlaverse (the universe of stories about my recurring character Marla Mason), it's going to be a Marla story. I wrote a few pages of it yesterday. I'm not sure exactly what it's about, but it features invading otherworldly beings and a guy named Tom O' Bedbug (so called for the madness, and the lice). There are mushrooms and time lags. It's going to be from her sidekick Rondeau's point of view, so it's got some of that Watson-narrating-about-Holmes quality. It's a little challenging, because I'm trying to keep it under 4,000 words, but part of Rondeau's character is that he digresses and his attention wanders. It could be cool.

I've been in a sort of bleary haze for the past few days, and I expect this feeling will persist, alas. It comes from not having a proper weekend to clean and sleep in and drink beer and relax and so forth. Our house is messy, there are ants in the sink, and I'm still behind on sleep. As if my external world reflects my mental disarray (or vice versa). Fortunately there's a long weekend, which should help me reset myself. We'll clean up, barbecue if the weather's nice, laze in the sun, knock back some beers... I can't wait. Is it really only Wednesday? Oof.

School started. This morning there are way too many cars ripping through our neighborhood at ludicrous speeds. That's one of the burdens of living behind the high school. Ah, well. Feels like summer is over. It was a good one.