This morning I dropped Andrew off while Recess was in session, so when I went back through the mostly empty classroom back to my car, his teacher had a chance to stop me and tell me

A. that his behavior was improving a lot, and
B. that a few days back they were doing something with wrapping paper, and Andrew wound himself up in tape and lay down on it so that the paper stuck to him. By the time she noticed what he was doing, he was up and running, with the paper unfurling off the roll behind him as he ran around the room. His teacher ripped it off to stop it unfurling, but a section stayed attached and flapped behind him like a cape. She said could barely keep herself from laughing when it happened (and she looked like she might lose it as she told me).

I missed the 9:00 bus by less than a minute (saw it passing the other direction as I drove back), but it was worth it.

Shiny new Web toy for writers: Wordle. Takes your words and arranges them randomly, sizing them according to how much you use them.

Here's my gallery: http://www.wordle.net/gallery?username=David%20Sklar

No, I didn't do NaNoWriMo this year. I swear. Actually, I haven't done it ever. But I happened to hit 50,000 words last night.

A little background on The Skin We Wear:

After the fifth or sixth agent to tell me that Antlered Bird was too short for adult readers and too sophisticated for YA, I decided that my next book would be a "novel in stories"--that is, a book composed of a series of stories that can stand alone but, when taken together, comprise a single, continuous work. Recognizable examples include Love Medicine, The Joy Luck Club, and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. If you haven't read Now You See It by Cornelia Nixon, give it a try.

So I figured, if I wrote a novel in stories, then, first off, I could write short fiction and send it to publishers even while I built that fiction into a full-length novel (so far, Drollerie has published one of the stories in Straying from the Path, and two poems that will appear in the book are on The Ghazal Page); and second, I could start by laying out the bones of the story, and once I did that I could fill in the other stories around the cracks, until I hit the 80,000 word mark. I still want to keep it close to 80,000, because people have short attention spans, and even if no one will publish a 44,000-word novel (except for Drollerie Press--thaks Deena!), I think an 80,000-word novel will reach more readers than 120,000 words will. And be more like the sort of thing I would like to read, because I also have a short attention span.

Anyway, over the last couple weeks, I had a burst of creativity, and I finally wrote the key stories that make the skeleton of the book complete. That is, while there are unfinished stories here and there, and some stories that are ideas I have yet to write, I have, at last, a continuous swath of prose from the beginning of the book to the end, completing the structure of the story around which the rest will echo and resonate.

During down-time at work and after the kids were in bed, I finished typing the new stories. And last night, finally, I strung together into a single document all that I had--the finished stories, the stories with gaping holes, the poems, the stories that were just a paragraph or two of opening scene--and my word count was 50,086.

Considering how many of these stories had more to write, how many were just a paragraph or two, and a few that are just ideas in my head with nothing on the page, I think I will have little problem finishing 80,000 to 90,000 words.

So here's my goal:
Not an ambitious goal, especially by NaNoWriMo standards, or the Three-Day Novel Contest (episodes 1-3 of which I linked to in earlier posts--episode 4 is here). But with 2 small kids and an anthology to edit, I'm happy to have a goal at all. I do plan to get more ambitious once they're both in school.

it is good to be sitting someplace
in a world at 2:30 in the afternoon
without having the flesh ripped from
your bones. even
being addled, we know this.
-Charles Bukowski

• My wonderful, beautiful children
• The surprising reserves of patience that my wife finds in herself when I least expect it
• Good friends and a loving family beyond just those
• Enough work this year that I could almost pay the bills
• A little help from my parents when the work was not enough
• All the wonderful submissions that have come so far for the Trafficking in Magic/Magicking in Traffic anthology
• The opportunity to edit this anthology in the first place
• Good reviews for my book
• Having a book to review in the first place
• And again, for good friends, loving family, and a chance to breathe air in the world.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

In the ongoing saga of my child's preschool classes, his teacher has taken a few days off to attend a teachers' convention. So she was out Thursday and Friday of last week, and I thought she was going to be back today, but apparently it's tomorrow. In her absence, the class is run by the teacher who had Andrew's class over the summer.

Now, in case anyone is reading who missed the earlier part of this saga, Andrew started school midway through the summer and hated it. He complained that some of the other kids hit him, and when we talked to his teachers about it, the answer was that he hit them back. There was some discussion about switching him to another school, but we never had our act together to check out the other options, so when the new school year started we had him back in the same school. Only, when I took him up to his first morning of the new school year, they told him he had to go through to the next classroom. He said, "I don't want to go to the other room." When I took him through to the other room, they said his friends were outside on the playground, and he said, "I don't want to go to the other playground." Then I took him outside to the other playground, and he took one look around and excitedly said, "My same friends!" and ran out to play.

And that seemed to be that--Andrew was finally happy about going to school.

Well, a few weeks in, he mentioned to me that certain kids in his class still hit him, and I kept meaning to bring it up to his teacher, but I kept arriving just in time to let him go to morning meeting, and there was no chance to talk. A few weeks later I got a call telling me that he'd tried to throw a couple of kids off of the play structure in the playground, and then hit one of his teachers, so they were sending him home for the day.

I worried, I gave him love and encouragement, it seemed to get better, then he relapsed. His new teacher told me that many behavioral problems in children can be solved by making sure they get enough sleep. So we put more focus on getting him to bed earlier, and things largely got better.

So we're happy with his new teacher, and if anyone asks, we say she's undoing the damage that the other one did. An exaggeration, perhaps, but . . . well, not entirely.

And the one largely responsible for doing the damage was also largely responsible for his care for the last two weeks of last week, and the first day of this week. So this morning, when Andrew told me that he didn't want to go to school, I tried to push for him to go anyway, but when he told me this teacher was the reason he didn't want to go. . . well, I really couldn't blame him.

Top that off with him running at me and generally acting up. I had to catch him in a full-body hug and ask why he was acting like that. "I don't know," he said. And he meant it. I mean, he had to think about it, and I could tell he was telling the truth.

So I woke Rachel up to ask how she felt about letting Andrew have a mental health day. Which was a term that Rachel's mother made up, for a day when parents let the kid stay home for the sake of sanity. I didn't think it would work out; I thought she'd be way too tired. But she was OK with it. So I let Andrew stay home, and my overworked spouse took care of him.

Some days I feel like I don't appreciate Rachel near enough.

Episode 3 of the 3-Day Novel Contest is now available. I found it to be a great cure for writer's block, and have been spending the last few days writing a heart-wrenching chapter of The Skin We Wear.

If you're trying unsuccessfully to watch it with Windows Media Player, try using VLC instead.

Some observations from the first 3 episodes:

In the first five minutes of episode 1 (before I've familiarized myself with any of the other contestants), Gayleen is shown (1) triumphantly grabbinga page from the printer, and (2) washing up in the ladies' room. That seems to pretty much sum up reality TV everywhere.

It may be me personally, but I find myself a lot more interested in the writers who lose the challenges than the ones who win.

The first challenge with a penalty associated with it, the contestant who lost had to spend 2 hours working on an antique manual typewriter in the front of the store, instead of on a computer with the other writers. After a little while of typing on the antique, she comments something along the lines of "I thought this was supposed to be a penalty." I kinda get where she's coming from. I once stayed with a writer in Wichita who spent some time doing interviews on a reservation. He had a manual typewriter that he took when he went there, and he let me try it out. It was a pretty cool experiment.

Personally, the idea of having to write 25,000 words in 3 days isn't as daunting to me as the idea of having to do it on a computer without writing longhand first. I have a pretty good typing speed (63 wpm), but trying to compose while staring at the screen--that wrecks me. I think if I were going to go on a show like that, then my prep work would be training myself to compose onscreen.

OK, there's more I wanted to write about this, but Rachel just reminded me that I need to have some clothes ironed for the upcoming work week. So I've got to go take care of that.

Today's mail contained, among other things, two complimentary copies of issue #109 of Space and Time, which contained, among other things, stories by 3 people I know (including one I got to critique some years ago), an ad for 3 Drollerie Press books (including annathepiper 's Faerie Blood), and a review of Shadow of the Antlered Bird (which includes, among other things, the description quoted in the subject line).

Of course, you can also find glowing reviews online from Fantasy Book Critic and Poddy Book Reviews. For the Space and Time review, I'm afraid you may have to buy the issue.

I don't watch a lot of "reality TV." I enjoyed Who Wants to Be a Superhero, and I had a soft spot for Amish in the City. Occasionally I hear people rant about how reality TV is a blight on the airwaves, and I wonder what they watched to get their baseline.

If I do have a beef with reality TV, it's that they keep their writers hidden. Um, if I were an actor, it would probably be that they don't employ enough actors. But then, people did use Survivor and American Idol to launch acting careers (um, well, they tried, anyway), and then of course there was The Starlet.

Well, now there's a reality show for writers. The Canadian network Book TV is running the second season of their reality show 3-Day Novel Contest. Apparently for people who think NaNoWriMo doesn't rush you enough. They put bunkbeds in the back of a bookstore and a row of desks with computers in the main thoroughfare, and they threw together a group of writers who would live in the bookstore and try to each write a novel over the course of a 3-day weekend. And somebody's been posting it to the Internet. If you're Canadian, or somehow receive Canadian TV, then you should watch them the legal way. But if you don't have access to Canadian digital cable, you can view the first episode here, and the second here.

Of course, they have their archetypes: The contestant who did every job imaginable before getting her life straight. The incomplete paraplegic who can walk a little with a cane. The guy whose pitch began "It doesn't have much of a plot, but..." And the Only Chinese Guy in Canada.

But, if you don't want to watch unless you have a horse in this race, hold on...apparently you missed the subject line. The reason I knew to look for this show is because my friend Gayleen Froese (last name pronounced "phrase") is a contestant.

I met Gayleen via e-mail in the late '90s, when she was trying to sell CDs through an ad in Knights of the Dinner Table. She had recorded two CDs of haunting, ethereal songs that were largely based on the exploits of her gaming characters and those on her favorite TV shows and comic books. Like filk, but with an intensity that one would never expect. I swapped a chapbook for her 2nd CD and paid with money for the first (since I only had one chapbook to trade), and we began a geeky, snarky correspondence. In 2002, I got her invited to Arisia as a guest, and she charmed the socks off of my friends and the greater Boston area.

Gayleen's stunningly good debut novel, Touch is a supernatural thriller about a woman with a gift for psychometry who doesn't really want to be a detective or a psychic, but seems to have little choice in the matter when she gets drawn into the search for a killer with a gift for controlling other people's minds. Personally, I'm not a big fan of mystery novels, but the strength of the characterizations and the intensity of the choices the characters make turn this book into so much more.

Was in a minor collision today on my way home from work. I'm OK, the other driver is OK, both cars are fine. Meanwhile, the idiot who caused it drove off without even a bump.

I was on the service road that connects the NJ Turnpike to Routes 3 and 120, about to go over the overpass over Route 3. Meanwhile a black SUV a little ahead on my left realized he was in the wrong lane and wanted to be on that overpass too. He came to a full stop, pointing into my lane. Which ought to have been the end of it, but instead of waiting for traffic to clear, he then drove right in front of me at the last possible minute.

I slammed on the brakes, not sure if I would be able to stop in time. The other driver slammed on the brakes too, stopping right in front of me, about half a car length ahead.So when I saw the other car in my rear-view mirror, coming up too fast to stop, there was absolutely nowhere I could go. She bumped my tailgate, I skidded forward. I looked around for a good place to pull over. It was then that the black SUV in front of me started to pull away. I grabbed a pen and some paper to write down the license plate before he sped away.

I pulled over into a construction area off the edge of the road. The driver behind me pulled over, and ran to check on me while I was still getting the insurance info from my glove box. I gotta say, when I was single I would've loved to have a girl that cute running up to my window to ask if I was all right.

Anyway, she gave me her contact info, I gave her my card, and she gave me her account, which was pretty much what I just wrote down here. We checked her front bumper and my rear bumper, and while we were trying to figure out the police non-emergency number, a police car rolled up. He was on his way to another call, but he offered to send another officer to take our statements, if we wanted to report the accident. We discussed it briefly, and decided to wait for the other officer so that I could give him the license plate number of the driver who left the scene. And I admit, I did also want to have a little more time to chat with the pretty girl who'd rear-ended me. Once the first officer was gone, I excused myself to call my wife, and then we stood outside and waited for the police, talked about the various pre-existing dents and scratches in both of our bumpers, and how crazy some people in NJ are about their cars. She had noticed the child seats as soon as she hit my car, and was glad to know the kids were safe at home. Since she had my card, I thought about suggesting she check out my Web site and my books, but I didn't know if that would come off as in appropriate.

Anyway, the other officer arrived, and we told him the sequence of events, but when he ran the license plate number I gave him, nothing came up. I told him I might have transposed the 7 and the 9, but nothing came up that time either. So the reckless driver got away scot-free, and since there was no way to ticket him, and no visible damage to either car or driver (and the police officer checked under both cars with a flashlight to be sure there was no structural damage), we decided not to bother with an accident report. The other driver invited me to call her if any damage did turn up, and she reiterated her trustworthiness.

It was one of those weird situations, where you feel a certain closeness to a stranger, because of having gone through something together. I thought about saying something inane about it being a pleasure to meet her despite the circumstances, but I thought better of it. I hope I managed some pleasantry, but I honestly don't recall.

Anyway, I had to wait for her before I could pull out, unless I wanted to drive over the curb. The police officer came over to let me know he'd stop traffic so that we could get back out, just as WFUV decided to play a song on my radio about smoking pot. Luckily, I had the presence of mind to turn down the volume before rolling down the window.

On the way home, I thought about whether it would be appropriate to send the other driver a thank you note for doing the right thing, unlike that other schmuck. Then I realized I'd written her contact info down on the same scrap of paper I'd used for the SUV's license plate, which I then gave to the police officer, before not filing a report.

If I wrote that sort of thing, this would make a great opening for a romantic comedy.

I suppose it might also make a good "Magicking in Traffic" prompt, if anyone reading this is still looking for one.

Shadow of the Antlered Bird has been reviewed in the latest Space & Time.  I haven't seen it yet, but the publisher e-mailed to tell me, and said a copy is on its way and she thinks I'll be pleased.

I awoke at 4:30 this morning to a crying baby.  I went to check on her in the crib, and she was sitting up. She already sits up if you put her in that position, but this may be the first time she's gotten there from lying on her back. I wonder if that's what she was crying about--like she got up on her own and now she didn't know how to get safely down.

Straying from the Path is now available from Drollerie Press.  Straying is a collection of Little Red Riding Hood retellings, and it includes my story "Behind the Tower"--an exploration of identity, and gender, and the nature of change and magic.  At a reading I once introduced "Tower" as "the most twisted thing I've ever written."  Which was true, at the time. I think I've gotten more twisted since, but it's still a story I'm proud of.  When I saw the call for submissions for Scheherazade's Facade, this was the story I thought of right away, but it was already spoken for. 

By Friday, I was utterly exhausted.  And Andrew was sick.  On Saturday I went grocery shopping in the rain.  On Sunday I woke with a sore throat and canceled plans.

On Saturday, Rachel cleaned Andrew's room, and we moved some furniture. I did only the furniture-moving part, and some child wrangling.  As I said, I was wiped out.  But I am stunned with how good the room looks, now that there's no table in the middle.  Then today, Andrew put up a folding table in the middle of the room.  We folded it back up by bedtime.

Yesterday, I mentioned to Rachel that we'd received 24 stories for the anthology, and there were 6 that I thought we were very likely to publish.  Rachel said "Really?" and it took me a moment to realize from the tone of her voice that it was how few we were accepting, rather than how many, that surprised her. To me, a 25% acceptance rate sounds like setting the bar pretty low, but we've gotten some pretty amazing stories already.  .  . um, don't get me wrong--gotten some pretty amazing stories, but really needing quite a few more.  Unless the number of submissions goes up, we may have to extend the deadline just to make 50,000 words, let alone the 100,000 to 150,000 that the publisher suggested as a target length.

Mango juice and coconut rum is really good when one has a cold.  So is sleep, which I should be getting now.

So we've been telling Andrew knock-knock jokes--not a lot, but enough to help him understand the concept--or at least we hope so.  But he's not there yet. Which isn't surprising.  Years ago, Rachel and I drove a friend and her then 6-year-old son to see the rerelease of Star Wars, and on the way he told a long series of knock-knock nonsequiturs, finally culminating in a surreal extemporized prose poem about a window floating out of its windowframe and hovering in the air.

This evening, not long before bedtime, Andrew brought me his mother's tape measure and announced: "I want to play a knock-knock game about tape measures."

The following exchange ensued:

Me: Knock-knock.
Andrew: Spider.
Me: Spider who?
Andrew: Spider tape measure.
Me: Um, knock-knock.
Andrew: Spider.
Me: Spider who?
Andrew: Spider tape measure.
Me: Um, Anddrew, when I say "Knock-knock," you're supposed to say "Who's there?"
Andrew: . . .
Me: Knock-knock.
Andrew: Spider.
Me: Spider who?
Andrew: Spider tape measure.
Me: OK.  Now you say knock-knock.
Andrew: . . .
Me: Go ahead.
Andrew: Knock-knock.
Me: Who's there?
Andrew: Orange.
Me (thinking at last we're getting somewhere.): Orange who?
Andrew: Orange banana.

And now I fear he may never figure it out, because that near miss had me in stitches.

The proofs for Straying from the Path with final artwork arrived yesterday.  The anthology should be out as an e-book by the end of the month.  My story "Behind the Tower" has 2 very nice illustrations that weren't at all what I would have thought to use--but they work exceedingly well.  The first-page pic of a wolf drinking from a pond echoes back to the mythic roots of the tale, while the internal pic humanizes the story with a scene of the heroine in a moment that underscores both her vulnerability and the depth of the transformation that has come over her.

I also finished a first draft of "Lady Marmalade's Special Place in Hell," which will be my submission for the Scheherezade's Facade gender-bending anthology.  Have sent it to my critique group and a few other friends.  Getting good comments so far, with a few suggested changes.  Anyone else who wants to take a look please speak up. 

And yesterday and today we received three or four more stories for the Trafficking in Magic/Magicking in Traffic anthology, including one that chilled me to the bone, and another that seems worth seriously considering, depending what else comes in.

And the kewl piece of news: aside from a single piece of zombie flash fiction (which missed an anthology deadline by days, because I didn't check my e-mail often enough), every story I have that is ready for submission is currently out on some editor's desk or on its way there.  I don't know how often I manage that, but it's good to be able to get it all out there once in a while.

On the bad news, front, Sarah kept us up at least an hour past midnight SCREAMING.  I don't know if it's teething pain, or if she's caught our cold and is having trouble getting enough air in through her nose.  I've started reciting poetry to her (I did this for Andrew from day 1, but Sarah found us too strung out), but she really seems to prefer her mommy.

On the worse news front, I got a call from Andrew's school telling me that he had to come home because he was bullying the other kids.  This really worries me, because he's a good kid in so many ways, and I love him more than I love myself--possibly more than I love anyone else--but he's developing this problem with how he interacts with others, and I don't know what to do about aggression in a 3-year old.  If anyone out there has any suggestions, please let me know. 

Saw an ostensibly new call for submissions yesterday for a zombie flash fiction anthology.  Spent 20 minutes trying to trim 87 words out of a 587-word story.  Got 85 of them out, then decided to check the Web site for how much it paid.  Found out that the anthology was closed to submissions.  E-mailed Duotrope today to let them know.

Dream journal:
10/3/09: I'm with my parents, visiting the Hamptons (I've been to the Hamptons once in my life; to my knowledge, my parents have never been there), and we see a house that looks like the beautiful glass beach house my parents owned in another dream, months ago.  My mother says, "It's beautiful, but that's the house to buy," and points to a traditional boxy yellow house that is quite spacious and has a view of all the other houses in the area. Later on, I go with my father to check out the yellow house, and it turns out that the house, while sizeable, is only one room, going all the way up to the rafters.  Oh, and there's another house hunter there, with a sleepy kangaroo on a leash.

All Drollerie Press e-books are on sale this week and next for $1.99 or less.  Including my Shadow of the Antlered Bird and the 2 anthologies I'm in: StereoOpticon and Needles & Bones.

The anthologies usually retail at around $10, so if you read e-books, this is a great time to pick them up.  Antlered Bird is currently listed at $1.59--I'm not sure if that's a glitch or not, and I've e-mailed the publisher to check, so I don't know how long that extra bit of savings will be available.

Also a great time to pick up Sarah Avery's Rugosa Coven books, and works by many many wonderful Drollerie Press authors.

Sale ends October 17.

...appears to be, um, Lost in Space meets The Last Starfighter.  May yet be worth watching, if they flesh out the characters well enough.  At the moment, I'm neither dismissing it nor getting my hopes up.

Was sick as a dog on Monday, sick as a cat on Tuesday, but only sick as a mouse today, so I went back to work. 

Actually, Monday was pretty productive.  Rachel saw how sick I was and took pity on me--took the kids out so I would have time to recuperate.  Only she asked for my help getting the kids out, just when I would have been able to nap--so I ended up home alone, and I got 4 poems submitted to an e-zine, and 2 stories printed out and put into envelopes to be submitted by mail the next day.

The new computer arrived.  Cute and tiny and blue.  And so light that when I put it in a briefcase with all my notebooks and everything I take to work with me, it was still lighter than the old laptop I've been using.  I took it to work with me, but I forgot one of the power cords, so I had to drag in the old one from the car.  I'm going to have to find a good outlet to charge it at night.

There may be more I wanted to write, but I've forgotten.

After days of looking at various stripped-down computers for $200-$270, and learning enough geekspeak to figure out what to look for (1 GB RAM, Atom processor, 120+ GB HD or 16+ GB SSD, <3 lb, 8.9' screen), I finally figured out what the priority was that made it worth buying a computer with money as tight as it is.  Yeah, it would be nice to be able to get online at the same time as Rachel; yeah it would be nice to have a dependable laptop that runs Word and doesn't freeze up.  But the thing that makes it an investment is that when a prospective client says "I can't open the interactive writing sample you sent," I can take the computer to the interview and open it in their office. 

This is a big deal, because my best samples of corporate writing are interactive media that nobody else in the world seems able to open.  And I can show them on the page, but then you don't get the interactivity, not to mention the cool effects that the art designers threw in.  So I'm not sure what writing jobs there are to be had in the current economy, but this is a good step toward finding them.

So once I realized I would be using it to show work to clients, I started to wonder about the screen size, and whether it would be good to spend the extra money on a 10.1" screen.  Then tonight I was going through the latest deals when I noticed a computer with an 11.6" screen for only a little more.  And it was blue!  "This is it!" I said--but fortunately, I scrolled down a little further, just in case, and I found what looked like the same computer for about the same price, but with twice the RAM and an insane hard drive (what can anyone do with 250 GB of disk space?  I mean, when I got rid of the old drafts, I managed to store all the manuscripts from my current hard drive on a 1-GB data stick.  What am I gonna do with another 249?).   At 2.8 pounds, it's the upper end of my desirable weight range (I was looking at others that weighed about 2.3), but the battery life is reasonable (4 h).  And it's blue! 

So I placed the order tonight.  I probably should've waited another day to be sure I still liked it, or looked it over to see if there was some catch I overlooked, but so far every time I've seen a deal I liked it was gone by the time I got around to buying.  

So, um, I don't normally do the free advertising thing, but if this sounds like as good a deal to anyone else out there as it does to me (or if you'd like to check it out and show me the nasty catch I overlooked), you can find it here.  The coupon code (END30) expires at the end of the month.

I can’t listen to music when I write, save for on rare occasions…if there is one song that’s perfect for a scene, or some classical or instrumental music, turned low, that I’m not overly familiar with, those are things I can listen to while I write.  But mostly, I can’t because music, to me, tells a story all by itself, and most of the time it’s not the story I’m trying to tell.

For instance, have you ever heard Smetana’s “The Moldau”?  (Note, I said classical that I’m not overly familiar with, earlier…)  It starts out all gentle and floaty, then becomes this dramatic march.  When I listen to it, it becomes the story of the Queen of Winter, and her love for a man of the summer lands, and their battle, and the triumphant end.  “Bolero” is a chess game, fought between a couple and the cruel man who wants to steal the wife from her husband.  Roxette’s “Fading Like a Flower” is a parlor piece, set in the 17^th century…a love story between a highwayman and a young lady.  Maybe it’s because I started listening to the radio in earnest when I received my first radio in 1987, when the TV show Friday Night Videos was still on, showing the rock videos for the most popular songs of the week, but I always see images when I hear a song, I put together a story.

There have been, once in a great while, songs that spurred a story that I would have to write.  There was a song by INXS’s Michael Hutchence, that he sung for a movie soundtrack called “Rooms for the Memory,”  that inspired a short story.  I remember, since this song was on a tape, going over to my Brother Word Processor, hitting play, writing for the length of the song, pausing, rewinding, hitting play again, over and over until the story was done.  To be honest, I’m not sure if the song and the story that eventually came from it match each other very well, but this was how I managed to write…and finish…my first short story.

By the way, the next Drollerie Chat is on Sunday, September 27th, at 4:00 PM eastern.  We'll be giving away copies of our September releases...so come and talk to us!

This just in: annathepiper has posted a review of my book.   Anna's own book, Faerie Blood, came out from Drollerie Press this year, and if you go back several months, you can find a post on my LJ where Tam from Antlered Bird has a chat with Christopher MacSimidh from Faerie Blood.  

I suppose that kills any appearance of objectivity in the review, but I will say that Antlered Bird is one of a short list of books Anna mentioned when saying why she decided to forgo her earlier decision not to post any Drollerie books on her book log.