The weekend was better than I'd expected. Last week I talked to my agent about doing some proposals for more projects, and we talked about taking on my YA proposal again. But then I looked at it, and just didn't feel any fire or passion or desire to revisit the book (which was in itself a ground-up revision of a book I wrote nearly ten years ago), so I decided to noodle around with a newer idea for a while, just for fun.

Two days and 12,000 words later, I have the first four chapters of a science fiction (well, maybe science fantasy) novel tentatively titled The Stolen State, with a protagonist who has a voice I love. It's got a teenage protag and it's going to be short, maybe 60K words, so I guess that makes it a YA novel too. It's set in the same world as my story "Dream Engine," and shares a couple of characters, but has a new first-person narrator. I think it rocks.

I wrote a synopsis, too. I'll work on the package with my agent and see if we think it's got any potential... I hope so. I haven't had this much fun writing a book in ages -- that compulsive desire to sit down and type, that obsessive thinking-through of plot and character possibilities. It was a wonderful weekend. (I also read the new Jonathan Carroll novel, The Ghost in Love, and had some great fun with wife and baby, and went to the farmer's market and up to Berkeley, when I wasn't obsessively hitting the keyboard.)

Oh, and I can mention the name of the mystery project I sold my story "A Steadfast Tin Soldier" to: It's Tumbarumba, a project by Benjamin Rosenbaum and artist Ethan Ham. What exactly the project is even I don't know, but based on their past collaborations, it's sure to be interesting!