I'm way behind on my emails and stuff. I only get about 2 hours a dayon the computer lately, and I'm afraid if I don't use it for writingI'll have to answer to myself later, and I can be really tough.Something my husband is working on right now...getting a program forthis blog that has a commenting feature, so people can respond to myblog. Holly Black does this on her site instead of email and it seemsto work well. I imagine I wouldn't need to reply to every comment, andthen readers could interact with other readers via the comments, and noone feels lonely. I hope it works out.

The graphic novel my husband and I are writing (let's call it Novel X,shall we?) is coming along. I did another pass on the first chapter ofthe script today. He'll do another pass, then I'll format it and doanother pass and send it to my editor in a proposal. Here's the partthat I'm excited about--Nathan Hale(no relation), an artist I've met a couple of times and admire, hasagreed to illustrate a couple of sample pages to send in the proposal.How this works is, a writer like me doesn't get to choose herillustrator, not for a picture book or graphic novel. But having acouple of pages illustrated will: A. help the editor visualize thestyle and storytelling better and possibly increase the odds of sellingthe project; and, B. increase the chances that the editor might go withthe artist we liked. Just hours after I emailed Nathan the samplepages, he emailed me back a gorgeous character sketch of the main gal.I'm SO tempted to post it here, 'cause it rocks, but I'm also sosecretive about unwritten and unsold projects, and besides, I'd needhis permission first. But if Novel X becomes a go, I promise to keepya'll in-the-loop-ed.