Bestselling urban fantasy author Kim Harrison (of the Rachel Morgan series that began with Dead Witch Walking) just wrote a blurb for Blood Engines:

"Pratt is a deft storyteller whose blend of suspense, magic, and dry humor kept me entertained and turning pages. Blood Engines is one of the most absorbing reads I've enjoyed in a long time, gluing me to the couch. I adore Marla, her done-at-all-costs character is someone I can relate to and want to cheer for. Best of all, I didn't figure the ending out until I got there. It's a book widower, and I can't wait for the sequel."

Oh, yes. Very nice. She also asked me to do a little guest-author hanging-out thing at her yahoo group in October when the book comes out. Details will follow. Harrison doesn't do a lot of blurbs, so this means a lot to me.

The weekend was busy! What with finishing a novel Saturday, and attending my boss's 70th birthday party on Sunday. Good party. I drank a lot of champagne, had a nice talk with Ed Bryant, chatted with various other interesting personages, and totally failed to talk to Paul Park, though I'm a huge fan of his work -- I just never made my way over. Liza came up with her adorable week old baby. Baby baby baby!

Monday I got the marked-up manuscript for Poison Sleep, and the changes my editor wants are very doable. I need to write three or four new scenes, cut or repurpose a couple of other scenes, expand here and there, do some tightening, change some character names (because they sound too much like other character names, or just sound stupid), etc. etc. I have a month to make the changes, but I don't think it'll take me that long. It's a lot of work compared to Blood Engines -- where my editor, literally, just wanted line edits -- but it's a cakewalk compared to, say, the revision requests she had for Rangergirl. I think I'm getting better at this (in the aggregate, at least).