Mainly because of I’ve been damn busy. Also because I’m slow to comment; often, by the time I have my thoughts together well enough to weigh in on a topic, someone else has done it better. It’s the curse of the slow writer.

Also because I’m still feeling disjointed and spacey.

Anyway, tomorrow is Christmas Eve. There’s a Borders down the street from my day job and they finally had the December issue of Locus in stock, one of which is lying next to me. I might have mentioned this before, the Child of Fire was reviewed in there for a second time (it’s complimentary, and I’ll note it in a reviews post) and I wanted a copy. Plus, Christmas.

As a bit of additional good news, they ordered another seven copies of my book for the shelves. I didn’t offer to sign them because, you know, Christmas, but I’ll swing by next week.

But this isn’t going to be yet another post about CoF. In fact, I’m not sure what it’s going to be a post about. I watched WATCHMEN yesterday, finally, and thought it was pretty dreadful, all told. The parts that were fun didn’t fit together, and the parts that were lame were all of a piece. I’m revising Man Bites World, along with inching toward a real title, and playing around with the goof on New Project.

And jeez, how sweet it is to play with a new project. Just the act of sitting down and typing the ideas I’ve been noodling over prompts a surge of new concepts and character ideas. It really is amazing how easily a story will acrete if I sit at a computer and type out any old idea that comes to me.

The only concern is that the ideas aren’t always what you’d call “stellar.” I have to be careful not to become too attached to a decent idea when I ought to push for a much better one.

Actually, that’s not the only concern: a bigger concern is that the shiny fun of brainstorming a new idea will take away from desperately-needed polishing of MBW. I’d much rather be hashing out a new setting than squinting at my lap top screen, muttering “Who put all these fucked-up sentences in here?”

But there you go. I’ll be taking Christmas day off from writing, spending it with my wife and son. It’ll be a quiet day, with lots of time for reading and cooking, and if I’m lucky we’ll light a fire.

More later, I guess.