Curses!

One day soon -- potentially as soon as 2036, unless the retirement age has been bumped up by then -- I'm going to get round to posting some actual content here, rather than continually pimping my own writing.

In the meantime, though... I have in my hand a physical copy of The Vampire Curse -- the three-decker novella collection about Professor Bernice Summerfield and a number of vampires, featuring the novellas "The Badblood Diaries" by Mags L. Halliday, "Possum Kingdom" by Kelly Hale and "Predating the Predators" by me.

It was posted to me at the weekend by the publishers, and I'm impressed by their speed of turnaround since I mentioned having first sight of the cover in, erm, my last entry here. Which admittedly was a few weeks ago now, but I mean, it's bound and everything.

I'm currently putting the finishing touches to my website extras -- a bunch of annotations to the text, as per my usual custom, together with an exclusive short story featuring characters from The Vampire Curse in the City of the Saved. (Well, I had to do it sooner or later.) I'll update here once those are up at the website -- I probably ought to hold off until people have had a chance to read the thing, at least.

Cursing Graphically

And in slightly less momentous news... Big Finish have released Adrian Salmon's very fine cover for The Vampire Curse. Which means I've been able to update my pages too, with a larger version of the cover and the actual back cover blurb. I've updated Peculiar Tomes, as well, and put in links to pre-order through Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

Now I'd better get round to writing those extras I promised.

Heart on Sleeve Time...

This made me smile. But only after this had reduced me to floods of tears:

"And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of our world – our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand. [...] And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright – tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from our the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope."

I don't think I've ever been so moved by a political speech. It's a weird feeling to be having, but just at the moment I kind of love the United States.