Here’s a couple of reviews of Baggage, one from Charles Tan and one from Joanna Kasper.

On the subject of writing, I’m on the home stretch in making a new version of The Art of Dying. It’s been taking a long time, partly because there are four different versions I’ve been hopping between, trying to pick what I like from each one. Boundless opportunities for indecision! I’ve put back some stuff from the original, which was only published in Australia, and I’ve cut out some fancy bits that I liked in themselves but which I decided I liked the story better without. There are no big changes, just tweaking, tweaking. I once did start on a rewrite from the ground up, and it was probably a better written story, but it was also an entirely different beast, and it seemed kind of irrational to change it so much.

One of the temptations is to cut out a campy gothic bit or two. But since the whole story is on the campy gothic side, I should probably leave them in

I was trying to remember how I got enamoured of weird dark cities. I think first bite was probably from Bowie’s Diamond Dogs, especially Sweet Thing/Candidate. (It’s safe in the city / to love in a doorway / to wrangle some screams from the dawn…) Which is a good excuse to post a link to Sweet Thing with Bowie and puppies, isn’t it? Bowie! Puppies! Get ‘em here, thing!

ETA: Most Swedish Chef skits could be metaphors for writing, but this one struck me as especially apt.