Scarlet Letters

JIM: You're evil! ME: Am not! How am I evil this time? JIm: "Kill her, kill the main character." Even my editor said if I did that my readers would hate me. ME: So? Screw em. JIM: Evil! Just because you always kill everyone... ME: Do not! JIM: Do too! ME: Sometimes they live! Dale* lived, and he will go on to have many other adventures! JIM: *mutters* He just won't want to live after what you did... ME: I don't believe in happy endings. JIM You're living one but you don't believe in them. ME: All love stories end sadly. They either break up or one of them dies. JIM: Evil!

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JIM: I guess two of my classes won't be on Blackboard, since I don't see them yet.
ME: You can always do what we did when I went to college.
JIM: What's that?
ME: Find out what your grade was at the next class.
JIM: No. I want to know now.
ME: You kids and your technology.
JIM: I'm not going to college in the days of stone knives and bearskins -
ME: *response redact…

I have really got to stop doing this to myself. I am too old to run around the country like this.

First, I must offer my regrets to the fine folks at River City Comic Expo in Little Rock. There will be many fine guests there this weekend, so please show up and visit with them!

So that kicks me off at Dragoncon, where some postal shenanigans unfortunately delayed my official confirmation and thus my panel schedule is pretty light. At the moment, all I know about are panels on the Writers Track at 2:30 pm. Friday and Sunday, an Apocalypse Rising panel at 4 pm. Saturday, and my reading will be at 5:30 p.m. Sunday. More panels may be added in the future, and I will offer chocolate and a free limited-edition chapbook to attendees at the reading on Sunday.

Naturally, a limited presence means less opportunity to sell books, especially in a zoo like Dragoncon among 65,000 of my closest friends. But I will be there, and I'm bringing the new book as well as some older titles and out-of-prin…

Those of you who follow our family on Facebook know we were hit with some rough times this past month. Jim's mother passed away, and while it was not wholly unexpected given her health and age, it was a heartbreaking loss that has affected us all deeply, especially Jim.

It's hard to know what to write, because her story really isn't mine to tell. What I know of Pauline Adams came largely from stories told by others. I know she was a stalwart mother of twelve children, ten of whom survived infancy, nine who lived to mourn her. I know she had the bravery to stand on her own as a divorced woman in the early 1970s, which can't have been easy, especially since (I think) at least seven of her children were still at home.

And I know how much she loved Dick Adams, Jim's stepfather. They married when Jim was very young, and Papa Dick, as they called him, must have been one hell of a man. There's hardly a person in Jim's very extended family whose voice doesn't c…