I’ve slowly been working away on a number of projects in the background here at Coode Street. In addition to the overagonised rationalisation of financial paperwork and such, several new proposals are even now winging their way out to publishers, and we’ve finalised the plans for the family trip to the US in August/September.

To give a brief run down, Marianne, Jessica, Sophie and I will fly out of wet and wintry Perth on the morning of Tuesday, August 15. We’ll be overnighting in Suh-Suh-Suh-Sidenney, before flying on to San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon. We arrive there on Wednesday morning. I think we’re going to stay in a B&B in Berkeley or something like that on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, catching up with friends, taking the girls to Fentons, and seeing CHARLES. The girls willl then fly on to New York on Saturday morning, and I’ll head up to CHARLES’s house for a couple days of fine scotch and conversation (I might even try to record the first ever Locus deckcast, if I can). From there, CHARLES, Liza and I fly down to Los Angeles for LAConIV on Tuesday 22 August, getting in around noon. I’ll be sharing a suite with the International Society for Little Pink Girlie Drinks, which should be enormous fun, hanging out with the Locus gang, the Night Shade Posse (of which I am a member), and catching up with friends. I might squeeze a business get together or two in, but basically this one’s mainly going to be for fun. Then, on Monday 28 August, at just after noon, I fly off to New York to catch up with the girls, see family again and such. I know we’re planning some time up in the Catskills that week/weekend, which should be great, then back to the city for the week of the 4th of September. I know we’re also going to spend a couple nights at a hotel in Manhattan, when we’ll do mega-tourist stuff (Sophie really wants to go to the Statue of Liberty), and I’ll do a little business and catch up with industry friends like Howard, Ellen, LaGringa, and maybe even the Lad. We’ll celebrate Marianne’s birthday with her family, then we have the horror trip back doing New York – LA – Sydney – Perth non-stop. We will be weary by then.

Now, if you’re going to be somewhere that I am, and you’d like to catch up, let me know. I’d love to see EVERYone, but especially CHARLES. I’m tired now, but this is going to be fun.