I don't update much, on account of I'm mostly over on the Twitter these days. Updating there pretty frequently. But for some longer-form thoughts...

Work on Bone Shop proceeds. Chapter 2 is pretty much done for next Monday. I'm starting in on chapter 3, figuring some stuff out. In the bath two days ago I figured out a character's motivation for doing something that seemed quite inexplicable. This morning I figured out where the snark and violence (both necessary ingredients in a Marla story) fit into chapter 3, which may be subtitled, "In which there are stabbings." It's nice to have a project for my mind to mull over.

Yesterday, our son ate five bananas, and I taught him to jump up and down, scratch under his armpits, and hoot and screech like a monkey. The whole family jumped around like monkeys for a while. Welcome to the monkey house, where everyone's bananas.

My friend Seanan McGuire, in her secret identity as Mira Grant, sold her zombies-vs.-bloggers trilogy, which is pretty awesome. Very SFnal zombies!

Nick Mamatas is offering sage free freelance writing advice: Part I, and Part II.

And I'm reading a crazy sex-and-comedy filled zombie novel written by a friend of mine, and enjoying it greatly. I said all I had to say about zombies in my novel Dead Reign, but I still like reading about them.

I finished reading all the extant Spenser novels by Robert B. Parker, and am now already nostalgic for them and figuring I'll wait a few years and re-read them. (How cool is it that my city library system had all but one of the 35 or so books in that series? I had to buy that one for $2 in paperback. No hardship.) I tried some of his other books and found them okay but less compulsively devourable.

I also read all the Parker and Dortmunder novels by Westlake. Got some recommendations for other crime/mystery series and have a big heap of books from the library, first books in various series, to audition, as it were.

Actually read a book in my own genre this week -- gasp! shock! Audrey's Door by Sarah Langan, which was pretty awesome. Weird literary horror, a haunted-building story made striking and individual by the level of detail and attention that went into creating the major characters.