Yesterday was a day off, the first in eight days, though we did little but spend some time at the Emory Library. I'd thought of going to see Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle, but it never happened. Day before yesterday, I started Chapter Five. It's off to a very good beginning, and I did 1,238 words on Saturday. I'm thinking this chapter will be shorter, probably only 8-10K words, and I hope to have it done shortly after Father's Day. Daughter of Hounds has finally managed to pull free of that part of the book that's all about getting things started. It's a lot easier to keep up the momentum when things are unfolding, and you know the only way you'll ever understand how it all turns out is to keep writing. Gods and goddesses would probably do the same thing.

Spooky and I have been watching Season Five of The Sopranos. We should have been reading Shardik, but whatever. We'll have breezed through the whole season in another few nights and go back to reading. Last night, I played what may well be the dullest videogame of all time. Oh, I've played videogames that were worse (recently, Stolen, for example), but LucasArts' Gladius, which looked like a nice mindless hack-and-slash filled with gore and violence, beats pretty much everything else I've played for sheer frelling dullness. I don't understand these games that are meant to simulate pencil-and-paper d20 rpgs, where one has no real control over one's own characters, where the computer moves them about for you. This was the main thing that drove me away from Knights of the Old Republic and The Sith Lords. When I play a videogame, I want my thumbs to hurt. I want to have to perform all manner of dexterous acts with my actual RW fingers. I want issues of hand-eye coordination to come into play at some point. Add to this the fact that Gladius looks like crap, is jammed with badly animated cut scenes, and characters with the most generically Nordic sounding names imaginable, and you get the picture. This game made me want to hurt someone, for real.

If you haven't checked out the latest eBay auctions, please do. This ARC of To Charles Fort, With Love may be the last I sell. And after that, you'll have to wait until September to read the collection. Also, if you've always meant to read Silk but have just never gotten around to it, we have copies for only $9.99 (and I'll write in them and everything). And there's other good stuff, too. Okay, time to get back to Chapter Five...