Now it can be told: "T.A Pratt's four Marla Mason urban fantasy novels (BLOOD ENGINES; POISON SLEEP; DEAD REIGN; and SPELL GAMES) sold to Audible via Ginger Clark of Curtis Brown LTD."

What this means is that, in the near future, you'll be able to purchase downloadable audio versions of the first four Marla novels at Audible.com. I'll let you know once they're available. I'm excited. I'll even get to record brief (2-minute) intros for each book, probably, assuming I can bum time on recording equipment off someone...

This is the cool news I hinted at some time back -- it took a while to get the details hammered out. I like Audible a lot, and am delighted to be part of their program. Whoo audiobooks! (Plus, you know, whoo money! This is the deal that made it possible for us to afford our trip to Hawaii.)

A Certain Magazine went to press Monday, and it was a rough one -- we all worked hard right down to the wire, but now it's done, hurray. Until next month.

Yesterday was my day off, and I had a great time hanging out with the baby. We went to the Lakeshore Cafe, where I had a club sandwich and River had a side of avocado (it was, like, half an avocado, and he ate it all). He charmed all the other diners and threw his spoon a few times and had a staring contest with a little girl. A good time was had by all. After that we did some grocery shopping, then hit the park so he could cruise around the playground equipment and sit in the dirt and coo excitedly. He's a great kid.

He was also an accommodating kid. He took a long morning nap, giving me time to finish my freelance writing, and a short nap in the afternoon, giving me time to pound out a couple thousand more words on my YA novel The Stolen State. (I like that title, as it refers both to the setting, which is called The Stolen State (among other things), and to the state of my protagonist, which is that she's been stolen, but I'm not sure it's the most dynamic or interesting title, so I'll keep pondering possibilities.) It's about 28,000 words long now, pretty close to halfway finished, and I love it. It's definitely drafty and will need some revising and tightening, but the shape of it feels right.