It seems that as I get older I take more notice of the changing seasons than I used to. I also find myself welcoming autumn and winter more than spring and summer. Well, more than summer, anyway. Summer means bugs and mowing and oppressive heat and high electric bills. I prefer the cool weather. Even the cold.

We’ve had one or two fall-like days here in central Oklahoma the past couple of weeks and it’s really put me in the mood for autumn. (Today was NOT one of those days. It’s 97 degrees F here right now with a heat index of 104.) Much of this, of course, is because autumn means Halloween. I regret that my kids don’t know Halloween the way I knew it. They don’t even get to have costume parades at school anymore. Not many kids trick-or-treat and most who do go to churches for it … and some of them don’t allow scary costumes. It bites. If I had the money I’d establish a Halloween celebration of my own here in Moore, with family-oriented activities during the day and early evening, then more adult entertainment at night. Story-telling, live music, trick-or-treating, a haunted house … the works. And it would be scary, dammit. You come to my party dressed as Snow White and you better have a really, really short skirt or an alien crawling out of your ear. Maybe someday …

Winter means I get to break out the black leather coat and gloves. And sometimes we get snow. Sometimes we even get enough snow to make life interesting. (Marcy, you just hush up about our meager snowfall. We can’t all live in the Canadian snowbelt.)

But, like I said, it’s still hotter than hell here today and thoughts of snow — or even a cascade of red and gold leaves — are just fantasies right now.

Alex has a football game starting in about 30 minutes. It’ll be the first one I miss. It’s down in Norman and I just don’t want to take the younger kids to the stadium and have to deal with them there. Go Panthers!

No writing done yesterday. I was quite disappointed, as I’d had a brainstorm about Chris, Fenris and the cops. But family matters intervened. This afternoon has been spent working on freelance journalism. Perhaps this evening. Gimme an hour and I can at least finish that chapter. Then there’s the next chapter where Ulrik sees Gar die … Ugh. Gimme two hours … As I tell the ladies, I may not be good, but I’m quick. (Once upon a time I could type 90 wpm; haven’t tested in a long time, though.)

I need to prepare for FenCon. Practice the story I’m going to read. Make more promo stuff. I wasn’t going to do all the giveaways I did at Horrorfind, but now I’m thinking I should make another batch of sampler CD ROMs. Those went quickly and I saw a spike in my Web traffic the two weeks after Horrorfind. Just not sure how much interest there’ll be in horror at FenCon.

Oh, and Call to the Hunt was back up in the 46,000 range of Amazon.com’s sales ranks for a while today. Sales for Murdered by Human Wolves are up, too. THANK YOU to those buying the books. (I’m not as anal as you may think … I was just bored and so checked on the sales.)

A UPS truck drove past the house today. Then a FedEX truck parked across the street. But alas, still no copies of the new Shara. And an e-mail to Scrybe Press asking if the book would be available at FenCon has not been answered. Looks like I’ll be going to the con with seven copies each of CttH and MbHW, and that’s all. Still probably more than I’ll sell, though.