* I dreamed that I’d written the sequel in Persian up to the halfway point, and was terribly stuck as a result. I couldn’t even go back and read what I’d written, because it was all in Persian. I finally found someone who could translate it, but then the alarm went off before she was three sentences in.

* Now I’ll never know what happened, which is too bad. It looked much more exciting in Persian, but then, maybe everything does.

* Did anyone catch the Simpsons on Sunday? It was so much like my life that I was falling off the couch,  laughing and weeping. Lisa, in particular. She was writing a novel and her procrastination techniques were just epic. EPIC. Toward the end, she said, “A hard deadline will really help me focus!” and I completely lost it.

* I have concluded from this that I would make much faster progress if only I had Neil Gaiman here to bring me beer and tase me. Surely that could be arranged? Don’t tell me he’s busy. I watched the show. We all know better. “British Fonzie”, ha ha ha.

* In other news: my agent and editor surprised me by getting Christopher Paolini to read my book. He has written me a nice blurb, in fact, to go with my collection of blurbs from Tamora Pierce, Ellen Kushner, Naomi Novak, and Alison Goodman. What a nice surprise! I’ll have to put it up on the front page with all the blurbage.

* Five blurbs is, I believe, enough to make a hand in Blurb Poker.