Yes, that's me, making a joyful noise, even while there are Barbarians at the gate! (Yes, I'm going to be full of metaphors and cliches today!!)

The joyful noise is because I'm just plain happy. I am making so much progress with all the dream work, gang -- the dream recall, gaining clarity about my own dream symbolism and how it informs who I am always becoming; the excitement of feeling the "ego layer" of who I am becoming more and more flexible in nonphysical realms, even having astral projections again. Yay, yay, yay.

The Barbarians at the gate, however, refers to the Orkin guy sadly informing me yesterday that now I have termites!! Not so Yay. (Even with my $300 discount due to the carpenter ant problem they are already dealing with around here, it's still a great big k-ching of about 2 thousand more dollars, gang.)

And the bathtub drain is backing up when I have someone moving in here starting tomorrow.

ME [greeting new housemate out in the driveway]: "Welcome to Happydale Acres!! We hope you enjoy your stay!!" (house collapses to the ground behind me.)

Heavy sigh, gang, and still life couldn't be better. My girlfriend in Paris wrote and told me that yesterday she'd been in the main FNAC store in Paris (FNAC is sort of like what it would be like if Best Buy and Barnes & Noble merged & became a huge superstore here), and on the center table of the store, there was my brand new book!! Yes!! The new French edition of Neptune & Surf, center stage in Paris. I am so thrilled, gang. So thrilled. (It officially comes out tomorrow.)

(The new French edition has been re-titled, though, from Neptune & Surf to: Sex in America.) (I am hoping that this new provocative title, while having little to do with my actual book, will help the book sell like French hotcakes regardless. Yippee ki yi yay.)

Other good news: my dear friend Valerie, in NYC, is working on a wonderful cover for the electronic edition of Twilight of the Immortal. Which is coming out in September. (Along with a kindle edition of Freak Parade, at long last!)

Plus, word at Deadline Hollywood yesterday was that Johnny Depp and Rob Marshall are moving ahead with the re-make of The Thin Man. A few months back, when it was announced that Johnny Depp was planning to re-make my favorite movie of all time, I was pretty distraught by the news. Mostly because I am incapable of not going to a movie that has Johnny Depp in it (this painful condition has not abated since 1993; it has only gotten worse), but I also don't want anyone on planet Earth re-making my favorite movie of all time! It felt like the Universe was conspiring against me!!

Well, seeing as how there's not a thing I can do about it, I have gotten used to the idea that this cataclysmic thing is going to happen and I have, instead, started planning what I am going to wear to the theater on opening day...  Deadline Hollywood said something about there's going to be a musical number or two in the re-make which is kind of exciting to me (could mean this movie will be really delightful! Could also mean it will be utter madness, which, as it turns out, I also enjoy!! Win-win all the way around!) They also said that David Koepp is doing the screenplay. He adapted and directed Secret Window which I really loved (and was actually watching the other day, wondering, what is David Koepp going to do next? Kinda ironic, isn't it, gang? Big fat answer from the Universe: He's going to do that movie you're so desperate to avoid!) (Oops! I meant to say: see. That I'm so desperate to see. Right. Got it.)

Okay!

I'm still teaching my writing workshop and it seems to be going really, really well. I love being a teacher. I love being able to share what I know and have other, much younger writers benefit from twenty-some-odd years of my professional experience (emphasis, I guess, on ODD). And this coming Friday, I'm meeting with a magazine publisher about possibly doing some editing for their magazine -- the zine is about role models for young girls. Interviews, stories, etc. We'll see. Editing a magazine is a helluva lot of work, and I get the impression their budget is eensy-weensy (like the hard-working spider that climbed up the water spout...)

Who knows, who knows?? We'll just throw it all out there into the Big Mix and see!

Speaking of The Thin Man... my dear friend, Mark Pritchard, a San Francisco-based writer, sent me the coolest gift the other day: the new biography of Myrna Loy!! (Did you know that Rudolph Valentino and his wife Natacha Rambova discovered Myrna Loy and gave her her big break in movies??? Well, it's true!!) I cannot wait to read this book. It looks totally fantastic. All about old Hollywood -- including William Powell, of course, and The Thin Man movies that made them both huge stars.

On that happy note, we've come full circle and I'm gonna scoot, gang. Make it a great Wednesday, okay?? Thanks for visiting! See ya!!

[William Powell & Myrna Loy]