If Spooky's positive reaction can be trusted, I've made a good beginning for Joey Lafaye. I did 1,579 words on Friday, and another 1,601 yesterday. I should be able to finish Chapter One today. Then I set the novel aside and start work on Sirenia Digest #24. For me, Joey Lafaye is still at that barely conceived phase, and so I can't tell if it's going well or not. I can tell that the writing of the Addie Lynch chapters will go quickly, as they are first person. I figure, I'm working towards a 2,000-words-per-day thing with the Addie chapters, while the Joey chapters will likely be the usual 1,000 words per day. The chapters are going to be shorter than my usual chapters, a resolution I made while struggling through the very, very long chapters in Daughter of Hounds. I figure that, in Joey Lafaye, they will average about 5,000-6,000 words each.

According to an acquaintance in England, last night's Culture Show interview, while brief, went over well. She said that it will likely leave "an enigmatic" impression of me, which is nice, and she also said she suspects that lots of people will be worried about why I was so pale. Unless someone puts the bloody thing up on YouTube, I'll likely not see it until I get the DVD of the show that BBC2 is sending me.

And our idiot landlord is out there with a leafblower, deafening me and making a dustbowl of the front yard. On the one hand, it makes me want to shove the thing up his ass and tell him to buy a goddamn rake, but on the other hand, it is drowning out the bleating Xtians.

Yesterday, the postman brought the galleys for the forthcoming mmp edition of Murder of Angels, to be releaed in April 2008, and they're due back in NYC by December 4th, so that's another deadline to add to the pile.

Other than the writing, the past two days have been entertaining and relatively annoyance free. Friday night, we did dinner with Jim (Shimkus) and Jennifer (Lee), at the Vortex, and we talked mostly about The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar (Jim's addiction) and Second Life (mine and Spooky's). Last night, Spooky made chili and we watched the marvelous 1982 Terry Hughes and Harold Prince stage production of Stephen Sondhiem's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, with George Hearn and Angela Lansbury.

As Atlanta faces the very real possibility of simply running out of potable water sometime in December, a new United Nations report concludes that "Global warming is 'unequivocal' and carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere commits the world to sea levels rising an average of up to 4.6 feet, the world's top climate experts warned Saturday in their most authoritative report to date." So, buck up, platypus. Sure, the humans have broken a whole planet, but at least they can't say they weren't warned.