The tendonitis is gone, replaced by a dull ache which is mostly ignorable. Rowena suggested I brought it all on myself playing video games. Actually, I think it was from slinging around heavy boxes of books. But the video games probably didn't help.

I got inspired, the other day, by an article on chapbooks I wrote for Creative Writing for Teens (I really need to get a new photo taken). I dragged out a novel I'd written bits of for Jack Hodgins' novel writing class. I'm not sure why I chose it, but it seemed to make sense. Something about gifts and it being that season, I suppose. Anyway, I pulled together some bits and wrote some more bits, and am generally happy with what I've got. Nine of the bits I stuck together in PageMaker, and now I'll have a holiday chapbook to give everyone instead of the usual "Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas, etc, etc" card I sometimes send out. Stole the idea from Charles deLint (the chapbook-for-the-holidays thing). I've done it a few times in the past--I even used some of my awful poetry once. It's fun. Everyone should do it. Anyway, those of you who are far away will get yours eventually (not that I have that many people to send it to).

And, even more useful to current writing projects, I got an idea for a story for Vinland Stories (or whatever it ends up being called) that has nothing to do with the sea. It's very much a sky story. Has dragons in. I'm not sure how dragons got into these stories. Actually, that's not true. It happened when I decided to write a children's story (which became part of a chapter book) called "Dragon's Egg" and set it in Ravenswing (a village downcoast of Cobbleshore). That was followed by "Fox Point Dragon"; those two stories became the book Fox Point Dragon (which, come to think of it, could really use to be revised again and sent out to many, many publishers). Then White Foxes, Full Moon turned out to have a dragon in it (or will have, when I get that far). The Fox Point dragon will turn up, too, though maybe only as a mention. So now Vinland has dragons. I think the story is called "Where the Sky is Full of Dragons," but that could change by the time it's actually written. After all, "Hollow Bones" has had several titles ("A Gift of Bones and Motley Feathers," "Bird Bones and Feathers," almost "Bones and Feathers," "Bird Bones," and "Hollow Bones"--or maybe it's one title reworked until it's more or less right).