Looking for my old friend in the mountains,
I came upon a young boy in a copse.
He said his master, my old friend, had gone,
Gathering medicinal herbs. He never leaves
these hills, he told me, but my friend
is hidden by the clouds, and the fog.
Brian sent me this T'ang Dynasty poem this morning -- we had talked once before about a favorite T'ang Dynasty poem of mine. Very nice way to start the morning.
Also exciting in the e-mail this morning was a tentative offer from someone interested in publishing my anthology. If it works out, I may make less money, but I wouldn't be taking any of the risk, or dealing with any of the publishing, marketing, distributing hassle. I think it's worth it...we'll see how talks go.
Yesterday was a pretty quiet day -- spent the day working and catching up with e-mail. Evening I came home, read Simon Hawke's The Nine Lives of Catseye Gomez (part of his delightfully funny Wizard of Camelot series), and started Diana Wynne Jones's Cart and Cwidder, part of her Dalemark series. (I had forgotten Lord Valentine's Castle at work...) If you're not familiar with Jones's work and enjoy children's fantasy, I strongly suggest you seek her out. Her Chrestomanci series is fabulous. I first encountered her in the adult fantasy section, with A Sudden Wild Magic, but her children's books are even better. Spent the rest of the evening being totally lazy and talking to Kevin, catching him up on the party and the last couple of days. Nice evening. Went to bed early.
Today the plan is to do at least half the remaining work on the erotica article for Puritan, and to clean up the apartment when I get home...:-)
In case you haven't visited my quotes, I'm enclosing the T'ang Dynasty poem discussed above here.
The autumn leaves are falling like rain.
Although my neighbors are all barbarians,
And you, you are a thousand miles away,
There are always two cups at my table.
--Anon.