Good grief, I get further and further behind every day with this blog (and so many other things)(funny how that works; don't do anything and fall behind... duh).

Had a great time at DragonCon over the Labor Day weekend and still to hope to write a more thorough report, but this will have to suffice in the meantime. Let's see... Hung out with Princess Alethea Kontis, Eric James Stone, and Gray Rinehart a lot; had dinner with them and Weird Tales editor and perpetually sharp-dressed man, Stephen Segal, on Sunday. Met Eugie Foster in person for the first time (we've traded a ton of emails, but never been in the same place at the same time before)(she's a sweatheart).

Briefly met John Scalzi, and had a couple of conversations with Kevin Anderson and his lovely bride, Rebecca Moesta. He gave me a couple of packs of the most clever marketing/pr thing I've seen in a long, long. You know how he writes those Dune novels with Brian Herbert? We'll he's got gummi worms made up with packaging so that they look like gummi sand worms, and the printing at the top is the cover of the book, Sandworms of Dune. I thought it was brilliant (as was John Scalzi's reading, BTW; funny man, he is).

Alethea and Eric also did readings (they shared a time slot) and drew a nice crowd. Lotta fun, that was. I'd post some pics but I still haven't figured out how to download the pics from my new camera (the kids dropped the old one into a stream on a camping trip and for some reason it doesn't work anymore).

Got strep throat shortly after getting home (another present from the kidlings) (which is partly why I've been so bad about posting here) -- that and the fact that I'm trying to get a million and one things done before I go away. The wife and I are off to Hawaii for our aniversary (our 18th) and I've got to get all of the articles for Diversity Woman production edited and off to the proof reader so she can do her thing while I'm away. Otherwise we'll never make our production deadlines.

All of the stories for the next issue of IGMS are off to the illustrators, so that's all on track, and my own novel, Dreaming Creek, is (finally, mercifully) 100% done and out of my hands. The editor sent me a pre-press pdf of the book last week (Thurs.? Fri.?) and said that it was my last opportunity to look for typos and such. Unfortunately that was when I got strep throat and I didn't do anything but lay around feeling miserable for a couple of days (I despise strep, yet I seem to keep getting it). Fortunately they also sent the pdf of to a copy editor who the main editor described as having 'freakishly sharp eyes,' so I'll have to hope he got the job done right (cuz I didn't touch it).

The main editor then sent the final files off a few days later to the the publisher for formatting and my understanding is that some time in the middle of September the e-version of the book will be ready. I think I'm supposed to get a half dozen printed review copies by the end of the month, and the official release date is Oct. 28th. The publisher has started putting the book up on their website for pre-orders, but it isn't a fully active link yet. You can take a peek if you like at www.lbfbooks.com Just scroll about half way down and you'll the book cover. As I said, some of the books you can click on to pre-order, but not mine. Not yet, anyway...

That's about all for now. Hopefully that's enough.