Yesterday, I wrote 1,175 words on a story that is, for now, titled "Salammbô Redux." It's the piece for Clarkesworld Magazine, and also the final piece for the forthcoming edition of Tales of Pain and Wonder. Likely, there will be two versions of this story. The first, shorter version will appear in Clarkesworld Magazine, and the second, longer version will appear in ToPaW. This is Salammbô Desvernine at 51, living alone in Watch Hill, Rhode Island (where I have been wanting to set a story for years). There's an oddish young man named Sebastian who keeps her company. I hope, when I'm done, this will be the story cycle's summation and, musically, its final movements. I hope I'm up to the task. Going back to a character after a decade, and looking at her as she is at 51 when I last wrote her as she was at 17 is a strange, strange thing to do.

Sorry the blog entries have been sparse. The heat wave and my swinging moods have been dueling. Not much writing has been getting done (though I actually began "Salammbô Redux" on the 20th). I spent a good part of Tuesday in bed, just trying not to be an asshole. If meteorologists are to be believed, today is the last horrid day of this heat wave. Yesterday, here in Atlanta, we went to a record 104F (actual temperature), and I had to go out in it, in the middle of the day, at the hottest hour, for office supplies and cat food. A hundred again today, I think, but then the temp is supposed to begin falling, and days in the 80s are on the way, or so we are promised.

Er...let's see. It appears that both Low Red Moon and Daughter of Hounds are now available as ebooks. I have no idea about formats and readers and such. This is all news to me. No one at Penguin even told me it was being done, and I don't know why Threshold has not also been made available as an ebook, so long as they're doing this. Anyway, if you're into ebooks, there's the news. The very thought of trying to read an ebook gives me a headache, but I am, in many ways, a backwards sort of beast, set in her ways.

Otherwise, all I have for you is the blur of the last few days, in no particular order. During dinner Tuesday night, I bit the very tip of my tongue with such force that there was a very audible pop. Spooky heard it and thought I'd broken a tooth. Fortunately, I only sheered away a bit of flesh at the end of my tongue, and it's mostly healed, but still hurts like hell. What else? We were visited the same night by a baby opossum, which got Hubero all sorts of excited. I spent part of Tuesday transferring lots and lots of Anne Clark and the Cranes from CD to my iPod. Last night, Byron, newly returned from Chicago, dropped by, and we had dinner at the Vortex in L5P. The usual topics of conversations — movies, Second Life, video games, Henry Rollins, hot girls, Doctor Who, and so forth. It's good to have our gentleman caller back from the dissolute North. Oh, and I've been sleeping better, more than eight hours, three nights in a row now. I don't know how to explain that. It's been much too hot for our evening walks. We did try a couple of nights ago, but didn't get very far. My muscles have atrophied. Soon I shall be a proper mass of protoplasm, typing with ingenious pseudopodia.

Okay. The platypus says it's time to go. I do not argue with the platypus.