Edited to add: At this moment there are twenty-five people who have signed up for the newsletter but who haven't confirmed their subscription by answering the necessary email. The privacy rules for the newsletter service won't allow me to email any of those twenty-five, even the ones whose emails I recognize, to remind them. The simplest way for you to know one way or another is for me to send out a test message, which I will do this evening. If you don't get that email by tomorrow, you are not signed up, and should try again (link in the navigation bar above).

Coming up soon:

On December 31 I'll be sending out a new newsletter, which will include:
• the name of the person who won the signed first edition of Queen of Swords

• a letter from a character you know and love

• other odds and odder ends

If you're not yet signed up for the newsletter, you'll find the link in the top navigation bar.

On January 1 the new weblog will launch, and this one will go static. To be clear: this weblog stays just where it is, but all comments will be closed, and there won't be any new posts. There will be a link right up front to take you to the new weblog, in case you get lost.

After three years the underlying structure of this site needs some major tweaking. I attempted to do this a couple times without success, and finally it occurred to me that I could just ... move. Start fresh. So storytelling² is now ready to go.

The templates for storytelling² are much simplified, and the archives are all dynamic -- which might not mean anything to you, but it saves me a lot of time, and puts much less pressure on the server.

And of course, there's a new banner. I can never resist the opportunity for a new banner.

Between now and then I'm going on hiatus, to get some work done and gather my resources for a good start on the new blog. If you have any ideas of writing/craft type things you'd like me to talk about, I'd be happy to take on such subjects. If you're confused about some aspect of POV or how to handle a certain kind of dialogue, if you want to know why I wrote something the way I did, anything of that sort, please speak up in the comments to this post.

I have been thinking of doing the occasional sentence or paragraph analysis. That is, when I'm reading sometimes a sentence strikes me as particularly successful or a complete mess. Once in a while I'll post the sentence/short paragraph in question and record my observations. People should feel free to ask me to look at things they've run across in their reading that they'd like to discuss.

Also in January, but over in the forum:

ASDFG has kindly volunteered to host, organize and moderate the discussion of Queen of Swords. She's got some really good ideas on how to handle it, and some great subjects for discussion that go beyond the usual what did you think of... I'm quite looking forward to listening in. If you want to take part, or just to lurk while others discuss, all you need to do is sign up for the forum. Link above.

I'll make an announcement here before things get started.