The lack of a novel to write -- the lack of movement on the various novels and proposals I have out to editors, really -- is driving me slowly insane. I cope pretty well with bad news, and am a great fan of good news, but uncertainty just eats at me, spoils my concentration, and generally makes me grumpy. Working on my anthologies distracts me to some extent, but I need to be making stuff up -- yet two attempts to start new spec novels have stalled out, and I've written all the short stories that feel ripe to be written already this year.

Fortunately, I do have a creative project at the moment, for a possible freelance gig, and it's nice to have something for the gear-teeth of my mind to engage with again. I suspect I've been slightly easier to live with these past couple of days, though I'm pacing and muttering to myself as I always do when I'm working out plot/character/etc. stuff. It's fun. I hope it works out. I hope something works out.

The first few chapters of Greg van Eekhout's first novel Norse Code are online to be read for free -- that link will take you to the first chapter, and a link at the bottom of that will take you to the second. It's an awesome fun book, one of my favorites in recent years.

The not-writing-much does leave a lot of time for reading. I've read more books already this year than I read in the whole of last year. Lately I'm reading a lot of Parker's Spenser novels, and the occasional Jennifer Crusie. Love and crime, love and crime.