I feel I'm overdue for an entry here. Way back on August 19, The Chronicles of Nightfire, Texas #15 "Into the Light" was added to the release schedule. I actually finished writing it the preceding Tuesday or Monday. This marks the end of the story arch that has been "The Haunting of Alexas Mansion." It surprised me that, even though The Chronicles of Nightfire, Texas will continue, I still felt the same as I usually feel at the completion of a novel. Excited and accomplished, but at the same time melancholy. It's strange, after carrying a story for so long in my imagination, to finally have it expelled onto the written page. It's been released into the world and is no longer just a part of me, and that makes me feel a tremendous sense of loss. But I'm very pleased with the story. I shouldn't feel this way, I tell myself, because I'm going to go right into #16 as soon as my schedule permits. But I did say goodbye to some things with this cycle. And life has once again been permanently changed for all of the central characters. It wouldn't be a story worth writing otherwise.

Today, we launched the Metrognomes MySpace page. If you have a MySpace account, feel free to add us as a friend! :) The plan is to add to this page as well as add some character pages for the gnomes whose characters make sense on MySpace. Pete for sure! (And he would almost certainly create a page for his "unfortunate" Old World friend Ak'ten). This is a fun way to spread the word about the book, before I spend time doing signings this fall and winter.

I haven't been writing recently, because of technical issues at home. No electricity, again, to be precise. This time, it wasn't my fault, and I could go on for pages and pages about the evils of my utility company. To summarise the ordeal: I paid the bill, but they didn't catch that little detail, so they cut it off. I called them, they found I was right, but they were sorry to say I'd still have to pay the full amount of my next bill to get it back on. It was supposed to be back on at midnight last night, but I called yesterday afternoon, out of justified paranoia, and they informed me that they had neglected to turn that order in. Now I'll have to wait until Sunday. I really could throttle someone.

If one of my books every really, really takes off, and I become the most absurdly wealthy zillionair of all time, I think that I shall always characterise these early years of my writing career with the image of myself reading novels by candle light in an un-heated, un-air-conditioned apartment, either in the dead of winter or in the heat of summer, as italways seems to be one extreme or the other when these things happen. I am sure that one day I'll enjoy telling these stories, but for now, they are an endless source of frustration.