I wrote lots on my day off yesterday. 1600 words of freelance work in the morning, then generalized mumbling to myself and housework until midafternoon, then a nice marathon of over 6,000 words on Dead Reign in late afternoon. The novel progresses! There's some infodumping and wool-gathering I'll have to weed out, but once I got some momentum, I wrote good scenes, too. The whole shape of the book is starting to lurch out of the darkness and reveal itself to me. Marla's journey to the underworld is going to be awesome, perhaps the most fun thing I've ever written.

I'm really embracing the fun with this series. I want a wild journey to a mythologically syncretic afterlife? Sure, I'll write it. Asshole personifications of death, scorpions in mason jars, weaponized aphasia, shotguns loaded with magical crystals, agoraphobic omnicompetent valets, the Cotard delusion, the mummy of John Wilkes Booth, sure, use it all! (As long as it all fits together. Which, so far, it does.)

And for book four, I want to write a novel about a con artist. Why not? So what if I don't know how to write that kind of novel? I'll learn!

My editor sent me the cover copy for Poison Sleep today. It makes the book sound very exciting! Which is good. She also says she'll send me an editorial letter with revision requests for Poison Sleep soon, possibly as early as next week, which would be good. Then I could work on it while Heather's off at the Blue Heaven workshop, and be distracted from my crushing loneliness. (The alternative is to go watch some matinees of summer action movies and drink a lot, and revising a novel is more productive.)

Got my contributor copies of the new Realms of Fantasy today, which includes my story "Restless in My Hand," AKA "the giant motherf***ing magical axe story," AKA "that story about an axe that doesn't have any fight scenes." And, as I'd hoped, the illustration depicts a giant magical axe. What's not to love?

We're working on our mailing for the new issue of Flytrap and for Heather's chapbook (and anything else that's been ordered in the past few weeks). We'll address everything this weekend and ship it all next week, and get stomped on by the insanely high postage costs. Sigh. I think Flytrap will have to go up to $5 a copy starting with issue #8. Oh well. Subscribe now at the cheaper rate and dodge the monetary bullet. While you're at it, order When We Were Six, Heather Shaw's fabulous chapbook. Order soon and we'll send 'em out next week with all the others.