Can You Hear That? It's Copernicus' Skull !!!!!!

Google told me it came from somewhere here. Why does it exist? I cannot say.

I pray I have not lost your affections by my absence. Come back, koochykins! I've returned to our digital love nest after an incredibly busy week of preparing for last weekend's incredibly busy hospitality and bonhomie. Having three times the usual number of people living in my home and ten times that number visiting could have turned out just awfully. It could have fueled awkwardness at holiday dinners and inebriated outbursts of enmity for years to come. But it won't. 'Cause it was actually fun.

Still, I am exhausted and so far behind on the NaNoWriMo word count (650 of 50,000) and a couple of other writing obligations that I'll be hunkerin' down for the next couple of weeks to dig out. That's my long form excuse for the following post which is so very scrivenocentric and full of emphatically overused punctuation, too.

1) John Epstein opines about why literary prizes shouldn't be overrated. At an MWA panel I recently attended, Steve Hamilton, who won the Private Eye Writers of America award (the Shamus) for best First Private Eye novel in 1997, reported he got all his marketing juice from the nomination. The eventual winner is rarely remembered while people have months to buzz about and read the nominees.

2) The crusty and ungregarious John Fowles has died. While he may be best known to you for writing The French Lieutenant's Woman, he impacted me the most with The Collector, which I was assigned to read in school. At that time, I was mature enough to internalize the horrific content and twisting of the characters but young enough to be deeply shocked and saddened by the death of someone I had childishly assumed would be saved. Fowles wrote fine books. That's as wonderful an epitaph as I could dream someday to deserve.

3) Earlier this year, I read the first three books of George R.R. Martin's cycle of the Songs of Fire and Ice. Over a decade ago, I read him first in a book I still consider too little read, Fevre Dream, which made Anne Rice's creations seem derivative when I first encountered them. I'm not sure how I missed the Fire and Ice saga, but I did. When I found it, I consumed it. Up late every night, half-wanting to stop but unable, I plowed through the thousands of pages and vast numbers of POV characters, always wondering how he would get it all tied together by the end of book 3 at his rich and textural but glacial pace of plot development. Well - as I'd have known had I researched online before cracking the first cover- he didn't get it done. And the 4th book was delayed for years, finally to be published this month.

Now, in this article to promote the new release, I discover that this won't be the end either! He'll need three more books and through 2011 to finish. This may be the finest contemporary fantasy saga, but knowing the coming thousand pages won't bring resolution but are just the halfway bump makes me want to tear out my eyebrows. Enough details of the lamprey pie and banner decorations- who are The Others, will the Dragon heir bond with the Starks to save the world, where do direwolves come from, what's up with all the zombies??????!!!!!!!?????? Martin had better get on the stick with some answers, or I swear on my aurochs that I'm not going to care anymore!

4) Escaped Death Row inmate captured because of an irresistible urge for drunk dialing.

5) Okay, I guess it's cool we can differentiate Copernicus' skull from the other underachievers in the crypt, but why do we want to again?

6) So you'll have something pretty to look at and listen to, April of The Bummer Girls forwarded me this link to an unusual Hallmark card laying out the cruel truth of the J-O-B when you're slaving for the scribbleMan.