Thus begins day three of my solo parenting sojourn, the Saturday edition: not with a bang but with a hollering toddler. I don't recall ordering the 6:30 a.m. scream wake-up call, but there it is.

My lovely wife is off in New York visiting friends (and having lunch with my agent, something I haven't done in years!). It's only fair. I'll be abandoning her to visit friends in San Diego next weekend. I have a fun-filled day of running errands, playing in parks, and visiting the library planned. River had to go with me to the office on Thursday and Friday, so giving him lots of fun today seems merited.

My novelette "Troublesolving" is up at Subterranean, and everyone should go read it -- it's science fiction! By me! A rarity! I think it's one of my best stories. Certainly it was one of the most fun to write. (After writing about 350,000 words of Marla Mason stories, I wanted to write a heroine who didn't use violence to resolve her problems. Thus, Cameron Cassavetes was born. I may write other stories about her.) This is the story I read from at World Fantasy, so if you heard that, you can see how it ends. (World Fantasy was fun. That constitutes my con report.)

This qualifies as one of the most interesting honors I've ever had: a yarn pattern named Poison Sleep in honor of my novel! The yarn was for sale, but I don't see it in their shop now, which I can only hope means people bought it up to knit their own cloaks...

Speaking of Marla, I put Bone Shop online as a single HTML page, so you can read it without all that tedious pointing-and-clicking. Print edition, kindle edition, etc. are forthcoming. Watch this space.

Most of my mental processing cycles are being devoted to a work-for-hire project I'm doing, which will be out next year sometime under a pseudonym. It's basically me executing someone else's vision, but within certain broad parameters I have a lot of freedom, and I'm enjoying it immensely. I have a March deadline which means I have a lot of writing to do, but it's humming along nicely so far.

I did manage to break my hermitlike existence long enough to join Jason and Jeremy of Night Shade Books and my former editor/current friend Juliet at a hookah bar in San Francisco last week, which was nice. I don't require much in the way of a social life, being basically a cranky recluse, but it does me good to be exposed to adult conversation beyond my family and co-workers occasionally.

All right. Time to venture into the great wide world. You guys have fun while I'm gone.