Sorry about going quiet around here - I'm in florida visiting family right now and there's a ton of things to do everyday that don't include updating my site. But no more radio silence from now on.

I had a long conversation with my mother and cousin the other night and worked out a ton of details about the YA urban fantasy, so that was very cool. There have been a dozen different questions/plot points hanging in the air over the last few weeks - stuff I knew I needed to work out but wasn't sure which way was the best way to do that. It helped a lot to talk about it (my cousin came up with one killer idea that has really blown everything wide open), so hopefully that book will be in some kinda draft form by the end of July.

I am reading Mohr and it's as good as I hoped. I can't get over the idea behind this novel, or photos that are used to illustrate it. I'm thinking about emailing the author and asking a question a two - I'd like to know how he came up with the idea behind it. Everybody finds old pictures, but this is the first book I've come across that was completely written around such a discovery.

Several new books are looming on the horizon that have me excite - the second Nursery Crimes book, The Fourth Bear, by Jasper Fforde; the fourth in the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear, Messenger of Truth, and Nick Bantock has another illustrated collage novel due out at the end of the year: Windflower. I follow these guys religiously - all well written stories and Bantock's artwork is amazing. No reviewing jobs for these titles though, just pure pleasure reading. It must be the holiday mood I'm in, but I'm strangely excited by the idea of reading several books for fun. (Not that the rest isn't fun, but the no deadline idea is very appealing.)