Do be sure to check out Kathy Danneman's quite insigtful comments on publicity over at Sarah Weinman's yesterday. Kathy works for Soho Press who I love love love - what a great publisher! I wrote about two of their books in my summer reading piece at Bookslut in July and really can't recommend their catalog enough. She has a nice write up on upcoming titles from Soho Crime as well and I have several of them sitting in a nearby stack. I'm hoping to review Billy Boyle as a separate piece but I'd like to write about several of the crime titles in a big "Why Soho Crime Rocks" piece. We'll see how it comes out.

I'm still collecting books for my rewriting the classics feature. I really think this is going to be big fun to write about - just got a rewrite of Peter Pan from Christopher Golden and as he has yet to disappoint me I'm looking forward to this one.

Still working on the October column - "wicked" books everywhere on my nightstand! I finished The Death Collector and it is great Victorian London creepiness - it starts with a zombie so you know it is going to be fab. (Actually it is a corpse reanimated by the use of electricity - does that make this book science fiction? hmmmmm) It reminded me of The Relic as so much of it takes place in a museum - I am a huge fan of The Relic (both the book and the movie). They might be a bit cheesey but the atmosphere is fantastic and Preston and Childs always keep me on the edge of my seat.

(Interesting side note after all of this crazy YA business lately. Death Collector has only one main character who is a teenager, the other three heroes are all adults. So why is this a YA book? For adults it might have to be longer and the science a bit more thought out - just more detailed - but I thought it was interesting that the protagonist in particular is a man. So apparently teens don't need too many other teens present in order to identify with the characters.)

Also finished my next book for Booklist and the wonderful My Sister Guard Your Veil... from my own TBR pile - highly recommend that one if you are interested at all in modern Iran. It's a short collection and a very quick read.

Is it just me or are you glad to see August end as well? I seem to be so stuck this month - the single solid accomplishment was getting my revised manuscript off to my agent. But the YA book is languishing - merely because I am letting it languish. It just seems so much harder to do anything lately and I have no idea why. Even the child has been exceedingly fretful. Much to do around here before it begins to rain like crazy this fall, but I'm looking forward to the rain. I have several writing projects to be excited about and now that this summer insanity is out of the way I'm looking forward to getting back on track. (I swear I blame the long June vacation - it is taking forever to catch up from that!)