The latest news on Infectionwatch: Yep, I have an infection in my gums, as a result of my cranky wisdom teeth acting up. But it's not a particularly bad one, and yesterday I got a dose of Arrestin, the crazy magical powdered antibiotic what gets shoved under your gums. That should clear it up. I'm going to schedule an appointment with an oral surgeon to see about getting my wisdom teeth taken out so this doesn't happen again. I also got a couple of cavities filled while I was at the dentist, just shallow pits of decay; I didn't even need novocaine. Could've been worse...

In still better news, my editor Juliet wrote to tell me she's very happy with my revisions to Poison Sleep. The words "awesome" and "seamless" came up, if I recall. (He said modestly.) The novel is off to copyediting. Whee! (And the delivery portion of the advance will be along shortly, in time to pay for my dental work, sigh. Oh well. One of these days maybe I'll have an advance that's not earmarked for some necessary expense, that I can instead throw away on hookers and blow [note: "hookers and blow" is my shorthand for anything frivolous, decadent, and possibly bad for me; it is not necessarily meant to refer literally to hookers and blow].)

After the dentist (and with a brief break in the middle to go up to work for half an hour so I could do some fiddly bits on the issue that needed doing), I spent the rest of my day off cranking through Dead Reign revisions, and, lo, I am done typing in my millions of corrections. (Well, probably literally only a thousand or so corrections. 1500, tops.) I'm going to go through the manuscript one last time this weekend to add some sensory details, flesh out a few scenes that still feel a tad threadbare, and basically do final polishing and ornamentation. The structure underneath is sound now, I think.

I finished Elizabeth Bear's Whiskey and Water, and loved it. I'm not entirely sure I understood what was going on at all times -- there are a lot of factions and a lot of plotting and I occasionally found myself lost -- but I utterly enjoyed the ride, every single page of it. Bear and I could not be more different in the way we structure novels, but we seem to have some of the same fascinations, and her approach to myth and magic (very syncretic, very all-encompassing, very aware of how narrative can shape consensual reality) is quite similar to my own. She had one little throwaway cool detail that I was going to have as a little throwaway cool detail in my fourth Marla Mason book -- used so similarly that I held the book out to Heather, pointed at the relevant line, and sighed meaningfully. Heather replied, "Holy crap, you had the same idea!" (I might still use it. I'm using it in a slightly different way, at least.) Anyway, I highly recommend it if you like dense cool complex contemporary fantasy. I liked this one better than Blood and Iron in a lot of ways -- I mean, it has the characters I loved from that book, plus assorted devils, more monsters, and Christopher Marlowe! Now how long do I have to wait for the next Promethean Age book?