My essay "Not Now, Sweetie, Daddy's Worldbuilding" is online at Clarkesworld (along with great fiction by Jeff Ford and Jeremiah Sturgill). My latest collaboration with Nick "Don't Call Me Nicky the Greek" Mamatas, titled "The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft," is online at Chizine. Go read -- it's in the spirit of Robert Bloch's "The Man Who Collected Poe" and Kim Newman's "The Man Who Collected Barker," but it stands alone, assuming you have at least some vague notion of who Lovecraft was.

Thanks to the kindness of Amelia Beamer, who came over on Saturday to watch River so Heather and I could get some work done, I've made awesome progress on the fourth Marla book -- did about 8,000 words that day, two and a half chapters, and got my momentum back. (Sunday was less good -- I wrote, like, two pages. But River was having a fussy day. I did manage to bake muffins, so it wasn't a total loss!) The book is really ramping up now, with only 20,000 words or so to go. I have a single-spaced sheet of paper outlining the events, in sequence, that are still to come, and it doesn't even fill an entire page. I should be able to finish this book by May after all.

Last night we took River to Baby Brigade at the Parkway and saw Juno (finally), which was really cute. Also: good pizza and quesadillas, and a baby who was cheerful through the whole film, practically! Though he didn't sleep. He mostly just babbled. Almost no screaming, though, so it's a win.