"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Friday, December 23, 2005

Day Off

It's not that I've blown my wad on Brokeback Mountain. I've had a heavy writing schedule lately and I'm just a little burned out on writing. Besides, I want to focus on The Book, a/k/a/ the Fantasy Novel From Hell. I tend to write very lush descriptive prose, and it's making people crazy, including me, so I saturated myself in Glen Cook for a couple of days to get my head back to a more terse mindset. I've actually started a rewrite of the first chapter, which I really like. (Let's face it, when you have 35,000 words and you're only on Chapter 4, you've got a problem.)

I also just got an advance copy of Charles de Lint's next book, which is wonderful and I can't quite figure out why -- it should be irritating the hell out of me, but it's not. That review will be showing up at GMR in mid-January.

And the CDs are building up to critical mass. I'm listening as fast as I can!

Besides, the news has become such an unremitting litany of nastiness that I can't think of any comments -- it's all right there in the papers (finally -- it's about time they started doing some reporting).

And why did The New York Times wait a year to break the domestic spying story? Until after the election?

So, given the choice between Charles de Lint's particular and very special brand of urban fantasy and any number of accounts of contemporary dystopia, what do you think I'm going to choose?

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