Apologies to everybody who's emailed me without a reply in this last week! It's been busy but really good. We have guests from America, which means I've actually been doing some of the fun touristy Leeds things that I would never get around to normally. Sadly, I couldn't go along on the trip out to York today (or else Nika would have spent about 9 hours alone in her crate over the course of the day, which is way above our comfort limit), but I've been using this afternoon to rest and catch up on work.

I read a fantastic story online today, also in this month's Fortean Bureau--Samantha Henderson's Five Ways Jane Austen Never Died. It was brilliant, weird, creepy, funny and spot-on as a wonderful and original Jane Austen tribute. For fans like me, it's just about a perfect story!

I'm ridiculously tired today, after two nights without much sleep, but all is good, and this morning, while sitting with Patrick at a coffeeshop in town for our pre-work writing session, I started the new adult fantasy novel! Hurrayyyyy! It's a re-beginning of the Vienna/Istanbul fantasy/diplomacy/cloak-and-dagger intrigue, Thief of Souls, which I'd begun last summer and then lost my place in. I finally figured out why--I'd started about 15 years too early in the story!--and today, the new opening just leaped out all at once, fun and sparkly and full of danger. Yay! I'm psyched.

(Notice: yes, I know, in a few months I'll be moaning steadily on here about how hard it is and blah, blah, blah, but right now I'm super-happy about it.)