check-in

My wife has been nagging me about clearing out the junk. I don't do it, because frankly, it makes me angry. I tend to save useful stuff: old pots and pans, random tools, four-legged nightstands, etc. Lots of books. The problem is, we always need this kind of stuff later. And "later" in our case might be when we have no money. It's one thing to get angry and say, ok, next time you need a pan, you can just buy one, they're only a few bucks. But I can already sense the time when even that will make me angry. What fun is it saying "I told you so?" Less fun every time.

Almost done with my fairy tale, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, set, if that's possible, in Thailand at the time of the forced closing of Tiger Temple. Does that make any sense? You might be able to sense who the Beast is. But I'm not giving it away and besides there could be more than one.

The problem is, I've kind of lost track of my other writers - those who wrote one set in each interesting country. We had a bunch of communal agreements and I lost track of those too. It was exceedingly difficult to finish, mostly because of time pressure here. I was working and we spend a lot of time just shuttling kids around. Turns out it's really difficult for kids to get started these days - get a car, get a job, get a life. And we have several we're watching out for.

Keep your eye out for the fairy tale, tentatively called Be Our Guest. Working on the covers and the before-TOC-stuff. Not to mention TOC itself. It won't be too long. It's just a fairy tale!