In Light at the End of the World, I provide Rick Buchanan's e-mail address (devilray69@gmail.com).  I was hoping that someone would try and send him a message, which "he" would respond to.  Nobody's done it yet.

Oh, well.  I'll just keep trying the whole interactive character thing.  Maybe one day there'll be an enterprising Cricket who'll try it out.

Rick has a Facebook page, too, by the way.  ;)

I amuse myself entirely too much.

In other news, the first 17 minutes of the Collected Poems audio book were sent to me.  I like his performance, but it's really too quiet.  I had to really work to make it out using my computer's speakers.  I asked him to try to boost the volume.  Hopefully he can do so.

The Four Powers is now in the middle of Chapter 10, and I was able to check two more bullet points off of the backchat.  Big Cat asked me yesterday how many chapters I thought the book would be, and I told her, "lots".  I honestly have no idea.  Most of my books run in the 26-chapter range, but I fear this one will be longer.  I'm going to predict 32 chapters.  We'll see whether I'm right or not.

Take it easy in the summer heat, Crickets.  Don't let your exoskeletons get burned by the sun.

more news from my world

Well, here it is, summer once again.  I hope all Western US Crickets are staying safe in the record heat.

The Nightchild audio book is being worked upon by the talented David Bolden, and as of yesterday, another talented gentleman, Charlie Anderson, has signed on to do the vocal honors for Collected Stories and Collected Poems.  I'm especially excited to hear his take on "Trench Rats" and "Headhunter", as well as "Tell Me No Lies."  It's so exciting to have the work come to life this way.

I'm continuing to plug away at The Four Powers, which is now halfway through Chapter 9.  Assuming that I'm roughly one-quarter of the way through the book, that leaves me hoping that I'll be finished in time to really enjoy the debut of the audio books, which should happen in October for Nightchild and November for the others.  I'm enjoying the process, and the wall next to my computer is a disgrace.  It's covered with pages and pages of notes and homemade maps, all taped to the wall with scotch tape.  Two of my cats have discovered that Mom stops writing and pays attention to them if they try to pull the pages off of the wall. One has discovered how to turn off the CPU while Mom is typing... and she managed to kill 6 pages of chapter 9 that way this past Saturday.  She'd be in real trouble if I didn't love her so much!

Anyway, Happy belated Canada Day to my Canadian Crickets, and Happy 4th of July to the Crickets of the USA.  Enjoy your summers, remember your sunscreen, keep hydrated in the heat, and I'll be in touch soon.

Love,
Mama Bug   :)