Yesterday I wrote 1,774 words, which isn't so bad. Better than "That'll do pig." Still, that number, two more words and it might have been mistaken for some bizarre act of patriotism. Blah, blah, blah. I've been at this two solid weeks now, the 1,500+ words every day and no days off for good behaviour thing. It's not so very different from prison, I would imagine.

Despite the remarkable weather, there wasn't time for a daylit walk yesterday. And walks after dark, they seem too much like someone I used to be. Our high today is supposed to be 69F*, last I checked, but then the cold and wet comes back. Weather like that is good for little but writing. So I must get out for an hour or so today, even if it means a lower word count. Because we're in for a week and a half or so of highs in the 50s, lows in the 30s, drizzle and clouds — ugh. Anything else about yesterday? I signed a box full of signature sheets for Tales from the Woeful Platypus, finishing up about 10 p.m. (CaST) only to remember that the mail isn't running today, so I can't get them back to subpress until tomorrow.

Oh, I also got a PDF galley for Subterranean Magazine #6, which includes my sf story "Zero Summer" (formerly known as "Night"). I have to make time to proof it it sometime this week. I like this story a lot. It's a piece I wrote during the bleak and dismal summer of 2005. The title comes from T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets." I also did the three illustrations (photomontage) which accompany the story.

Today would be a good time to order Daughter of Hounds or snag a copy at your local bookshop, if you've not done so already. Thanks.

Late last night, as we were getting ready for bed, I began to ramble on about the coming year, what I will and won't be writing. Dinosaurs of Mars and Joey LaFaye. Those are definite "wills." Also, I began thinking about the next two collections. Likely, they will not be finished before 2008, but they are taking shape in my mind. The sf collection, which I was going to call A is for Alien, as an homage to Bradbury, until I learned Neil will be titling a book M is for Magic as a tribute to Bradbury. Now I'm thinking that the sf collection will be called, maybe, Rumors of a Strange Universe, but that's way, way subject to change. The other book will be dark fantasy stories and might be called Worse Things Yet*, a title I've been sitting on for years.

Okay. I gotta wake up. Somehow. Coffee's a start.

* In point of fact, the temperature has reached 70F (as of 6:39 p.m. CaST).

** A nod to Manly Wade Wellman's Worse Things Waiting (1973), of course.