Or maybe I’ll call it Made in Malkuth.

Well, I’ve basically tidied up We the Enclosed, and I’ve been through all the surreal stuff like Maldoror Abroad and other bits and bobs, including some poems that I want to include, and there isn’t much left to do on all of those. Heart of a Mouse and Saving the Gleeful Horse are too new for me to see what might need doing to them, ditto the story for Baggage, Vision Splendid. I’ll probably wait for an editor’s opinion on those three.

Which means I have four stories to really work on: The Art of Dying, The Love of Beauty, Beach Rubble, and Between the Covers. I want to get them fixed by the end of the year. Yeah, I know that’s a lot of time for four stories, but I know my own sluglike pace, and Preston and I are still working on Book#2, which, I can now reveal, is called The Floating World.

I’d also like to get a couple more new stories down. I’ve only got 73k words, which doesn’t leave much room to cut material, and I think a couple of fresh, not-published-elsewhere stories would be very good to have in the mix. So I could fiddle with them this year and work properly on them next year, and hopefully have 80-90k by mid-year.

In other news, I have plants! Someone was moving house, and I acquired a whole lotta greenery at a bargain-basement 1000 baht the lot, plus ceramic pots. Some of the greenery is rather large; the biggest, a golden cane palm, reaches the ceiling and bends down to overhang the coffee table. We’ve put little paper-lantern party lights in it, which gives a bit of a tiki bar effect at night. There’s also a giant spider lily and an exuberant lady palm, and sundry smaller plants, including a badly sunburnt bird’s nest plant that I’ve put in the bathroom to convalesce (apparently it likes moisture much).