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I just got one last week and the bloody thing has managed to startle me about ten times already. The main problem, and it’s one of my own making, is the ring tone. I chose the sonar ping, and set the volume for loud. When you’re out walking on the street you can barely hear it, but when someone calls me when I’m at home I’d swear there was a destroyer twenty feet above me about to drop a depth charge! Still, despite the intermittent cardiac events I love it.

In another bit of happy news Tantor Media Audiobooks have bought the rights to A Darkness Forged in Fire and will be bringing out a 13 CD set this August. The narrator is a gentleman named Michael Kramer.

This is cool.

With each passing day I grow increasingly grateful that I have a full time job, and one that is intellectually demanding. A Darkness Forged in Fire hits the stores in three and a half weeks and I should, by rights, be a bundle of nerves and in need of sedation…more so than usual. The beauty of it is, though, is that I can’t afford to dwell on it. I have a never ending pile of mss to read and a thousand other things that make my job as an editor incredibly fulfilling. It also saves me from obsessing about the book launch. I just don’t have the time or energy to spend worrying about what’s going to happen, and that’s a wonderful thing. Worrying gets you nowhere fast anyway. What ‘free time’ I do have goes into writing the next book, running, exploring a little more of New York and trying – valiantly if not brilliantly – to date in this city. I try to save my worrying for the really important stuff, like should I order the Nabeyaki Udon or the Lobster Itokanyaki for dinner?

Now that I think about it more, I’ll just order a pizza. Who needs the worry?

Last night my running class (yes, I take lessons on how to run…er, faster) went up to the 1/5 mile track near the 106th Street entrance to Central Park on the west side. We did something called pyramids where we ran as fast as we could for one lap, rested, then fast for two laps, rested, then fast for three laps before working our way back down. I’ve been running for over a year now, but it’s only in the last few weeks that I’ve run full tilt. It’s an exhilarating if surprising feeling when you’re no longer in your twenties to zip around on full afterburners. Well, it is if you’re a writer and an editor and spend most of your day parked on your butt.

In other news I am happy to report that I have, thus far, refrained from taking to the subway with my book and pretending to read it. Thus far. I make no promises, however, about what might transpire should I ever see someone reading my book on the subway. Naturally the cool thing to do would be to say nothing at all. I’m rarely accused of being cool. And after all, the motto of the MTA (Metro Transit Authority) here in New York is “If you see something, say something.”

…and her name is Emmy. A friend of mine going back to my days in Ottawa came into town for the Technical Daytime Emmy Awards and he won for animation. We went out to dinner with his fiancé then afterward I got to see and hold his Emmy. So very cool. His fiancé took a picture of him holding the golden statue and me holding my book. Oh! That’s right. A Darkness Forged in Fire has been printed! It came off the presses late last week. I met my editor for lunch where he handed over the first copy in what we are planning to make a tradition. It was all a bit surreal to finally see it and hold it. The ARCs were definitely a thrill, but seeing the actual book was something else again.