Luckily, I am not superstitious. I am many other often unsavory things, but superstitious is not among them. Yay! That means I can stride boldly into this great day. In fact, I might even take famed UK astrologer Jonathan Cainer's great advice and tie a black cat to each of my shoes today so that black cats are crossing my path all day long! (Isn't that idea hysterical???)

So... Where have I been???

Yeah, well. Jesus. Where haven't I been, is more the question. And all of it is psychological. Mostly, I've been to the Land of Exhaustion but I am feeling really, really good this morning.

And M. Christian and I are getting closer and closer to being able to officially announce the details of what will be our annual literary award. So I am very psyched about that. It will be one award but in alternating years it will be given either to the best unpublished science fiction novel, or the best unpublished erotic novel. No anthologies, no short stories -- novels, gang! It will be a monetary award and we will also offer publication. What we really want to see is writers completely redefine what their genre is all about. So he and I are just really, really excited about discovering new books, new writers -- a brave new world, so to speak. Yay!!! And you can be gay, straight, polyamorous, ambidextrous, schizophrenic, even just mindbogglingly shy -- we don't care!! Just write the heck out of yourself, that's what we want to see!!

Okay. So, gang, what is tomorrow all about??? Tomorrow is all about Pirates of the Caribbean Part 4,964: On Stranger Tides  showing at the Cannes Film Festival! Yay!! And last night, Variety gave POTC #4 a really nice review. So. What the heck, gang; sounds fun! I'm gonna go ahead and go! ha ha ha. [To Cannes, I mean.]

Actually, I would rather die than do something screaming-frenzy like that. I prefer to be, like, pretty much the only person besides my stalwart cousin in any given theater of basically every single movie I go to see. (That's not really too much of an exaggeration, either.) (It's called being an "Introverted Writer".) (In fact, the only person on earth more introverted than I am will actually be in my house on Saturday afternoon -- someone I haven't seen in eleven years, gang!! She and I are very "connected", in that she gave birth to me almost 51 years ago...)

Anyway. You know, if I were invited to Cannes for some heady career-related reason, of course I'd figure out the right combination of easily obtainable anxiety meds to help me not only attend but also to have the very best time! In fact, part of me, of my energy, at any rate, is at Cannes right now! In that I contributed to a screenplay that has an American actor attached and that is there looking for producers. So even that little bit of "6 degrees of separation" feels really fun!

(You know, when my first book, Neptune & Surf, came out, it was lauded profusely by the late writer Hubert Selby, Jr. When I went to Los Angeles, he took me out to lunch and he had just come back from the Cannes Film Festival, where Darren Aronofsky's film version of Selby's novel Requiem for a Dream had just premiered to much acclaim. And I have to say, Cubby (Selbert's nickname) sure made it sound like a spectacular time. So I guess you should be open to anything, gang.)

Well, okay. I suppose I should get crackin' around here. I'll close this with photos from my dear friend Peitor Angell's trip to Palermo, Sicily. (He's in Europe for the whole fucking summer, the lucky duck!!) These were among the photos he emailed me this morning.



[My personal favorite!]



All righty, gang!! Have a terrific Friday the 13th!! And don't forget to feed & water those black cats!! They're going to be pretty fatigued after all that stomping around....