a brief pause for a PSA or two

I'm late to the watch-this party, so I'll just say that if you haven't already viewed/heard Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama (and his rather beautiful takedown of McCain' attempted smear campaign and scolding of the GOP (of which Powell is a respected member), why not? Forget about your own vote -- it's a lesson in putting together a coherent argument and making it stick, without getting shrill (and yes guys, you get shrill too) or whiny.

Meanwhile the post-Giants throat has come to haunt me. I sound like a bad parody of Marlene Dietrich *cough wince* despite application of cough drops and tea during the game. Kids, if you're going to be shouting and yelling and letting out stadium-appropriate noise, don't schedule a phone interview for the next morning. I'm jut sayin'...

But there is News coming in the next post...

NEW NEWS NEW NEWS and some OLDER NEWS that can now be told....

I'm tempted to put each of these in their own post, but I spam LJ enough as is. So make sure you read all the way down!

And so, in no particular order, 'cause they're all Important! and Exciting!:

1. "Anna Leonard" has agreed to write another book for Nocturne. Tentatively titled "Mustang," it tells the story, no lie, of an American Unicorn and the woman he is sworn to protect against the evil threatening her family. I am all sorts of giggles and glee about this one. It's not due until July -- yeah, so I'm writing three books next year. Gonna need a bigger boat, definitely.

2. Back in the long-ago months, I got a reject from Polyphony 7 that read, paraphrased "I'm passing on this story because I'm interested in the collection your agent sent, of which this is part." I'm delighted to finally be able to announce that Wheatland Press will be publishing Dragon Virus, a collection of all the "Dragon" universe stories [SF with an occasional touch of horror]. Details to come on that, but it's gonna be wicked cool. Some of the stories have been previously published, some haven't, and there's Nifty Stuff in addition.

3. We have Achieved Cover on BLOOD FROM STONE, and it totally rocks the house. Even if we did finally come to the dread banana yellow type color...* As soon as I get a jpg (rather than the pdf of the sell-sheet) I'll post it.

*when we first sold this series to Luna back in 2003, the only thing I asked of them was "no banana yellow type." But I guess we ran out of other usable shades, and be damned if they didn't make it work!