The Pacific really does it off Hawaiian islands, notably the Na Pali coast of Kauai. I've found myself surrounded by schools of porpoises there; somewhere, I have pictures.

t biting back the grinding jealousy of all the neat places and people deb's seen

He comes up dripping, ice already forming on every surface in the biting air. Gloveless, his fingers are blue, blue, and all exposed skin that should shade in the pink to rose to red range is grey, lavender, purple, blue.

She rips his coat open, lays her ear against his silent chest, then forces her fingers between stiff lips, noting with a tiny, grim satisfaction that blood seeps at the tear her fingers make. Alive then, if barely. She sweeps to clear and bends to blow into his mouth before she finds his sternum and begins to pump and count.

Jesus, Bev. Wow.

Connie, a round-trip three-day package on Kauai from here runs about $400 per person, total. That's two weeks worth of groceries, when money is normal. Sometimes, we travel instead of buying groceries.

I found those pictures - dolphins! - but I have no scanner.

Slightly cheered - and on topic, no less - because Roz Kaveney liked my clowns story:

Debs, Sweetie,

This is, as you know, quite solidly good. It takes a standard fantasy trope and works its own spin on it - and I love the idea of the world being saved by a petulant teenager's principled stroppiness.

She got it, first time out; of course she did. Petulant teenager's principled stroppiness.

Roz can generally cheer me up with only a minimum of effort, but this time, it was fortuitous, and very good timing.

And my agent thinks I should write "The Burden of Memory" - the vampire novel in which vampires are not atop the food chain - with an ending that could lead to more of them, as in, another series.

So, yowza.

Oh, Yay on Roz's thumbs-up, Deb. And also hopping with anticipation on the vampire novel. There have been some thumpingly bad vampire novels. I want to read a good one! And another series? Oooh, steady income, if only it would, you know, come in, in timely fashion.

There have been some thumpingly bad vampire novels. I want to read a good one!

What. She. Said.

What great news for you!

Heh. All I need to do now is finish the last bit of Matty Groves, do some stuff that I must do and send Plei, and then I can start the big pound-away at Dory and Gil (she was Dorotta, a not-quite-victim of the Blood Countess; she turned Gilles, depressed young intellectual, on Bastille Day, during the Terror).

I'm happy for you Deb. You're just...like a machine...in the keeps-on-ticking productivity sense, not the cold, impersonal one...

The machine is a ratchety beast, though, erika. I'm fortunate to have never actually suffered from writers' block. And this? This would be a truly crapola time to start.