1. Pub date for The Queen of Statue Square: September 23.  If I were the publisher, the pub date would have been announced about a year ago, but I’m not, so it wasn’t.  Launch events in Hong Kong to be announced within the next few weeks.

2. We have a tentative cover treatment, but the publisher is still tweaking it.  That should be finalized within a matter of days.

3. After much deliberation, I’ve decided to postpone publication of both Murder in the Cabaret Sauvignon and A Garden Fed by Lightning by a year or so each.  What it boils down to is editing time.  Although I could release Garden more or less any time, I’m not going to rush to churn books out.  I may not have huge sales or be widely known, but I want my work to be good when it finally comes out.  I say this both as an author and as a publisher.  And MitCS… although the writing is fine, and it’ll be a lot of fun when I’m finished with it, I’ve just had a year of my life eaten by a very draining and often unpleasant day job.  As a result, I’m behind on a number of things, this being the item at the top of the list.  And while I would love to shove other things aside in order to focus on it, I’m not going to do that.  Once I’ve written more of the dissertation, and have gotten the next two Signal 8 Press books sorted out (both of which entail heavy edits), I’ll be in better shape to focus on it.  (Having a new job helps, too.  For what it’s worth, I start tomorrow.)

So, my current idea is MitCS in early/mid 2016, Garden maybe in late 2017, and the dissertation in like 2018, by which time I really ought to be finished with the goddamn thing (all of it/them).

4. I would still like to write a sequel to MitCS.  It’s just an issue of finding the time and letting the story solidify in my head.  But there’s this other novel I’ve been thinking about for six or seven years, and it will need to be written as well.

5. I’m still also thinking about a sequel to The Concrete Sky, but it’s one of those things that — if it ever gets done — may end up looking quite different from what I currently envision.  As I’ve said for years, I’ve always known what happened to Chad and Jonathan after the end of that story.  I even know what the title will be.  It’s just that there are only so many hours in the day and most of mine are spoken for already.

6. My flash-fiction story “Distance Fades between Us” will be read at Liars’ League Hong Kong in September.

7. I have finished a new short story, “Grape Night,” which is another of those ideas that incubated for years (probably five or six) before I was ready to write it.  I’m fairly pleased with the way it turned out, although I think I’ll have to edit and edit before I am convinced it’s ready to send anywhere.  I wanted to so something as ambitious as “The Infinite Monkey Theorem,” another story that had a long gestation but ended up being well worth the wait, and… did I pull it off again?  I don’t know yet, but I think the story coheres quite well, and having a cast that includes the Greek gods Dionysus and Persephone can’t possibly hurt.