Fretful porpentine is fretful.

Dear Twitter:

When you will not let me log in, I cannot play Echo Bazaar. For some strange reason, this makes me VERY CRANKY. Please to straighten up and fly right.

Love,
Mole

---

Dear Citizens of America:

The Fourth of July does not begin on the first of July. I'm just saying.

No love,
Mole

---

Dear Cosmic Powers Of Which We Wot Not:

Many of the people I am fond of are struggling with really terrible things right now. Could you ease up a little?

(Also, I still need a job.)

Love and kisses,
Mole

---

And now I'm going to take this terrible mood and go swim laps.

Project Valkyrie: waterlog

LAPS: 24
YARDS: 1200
MILES: 0.68
TOTAL MILES: 278.38
MILES LEFT TO RIVENDELL: 179.62
NOTES: This was all about the compromise between mind and matter. I started with my right knee protesting the frog-kick in a way that suggested it was because I was doing the frog-kick wrong, so I got all mindful about that and made my thigh and hip do their share of the work. Then my right groin and hip started hurting, in that, Hey, we did not sign up to do work! way. I persisted grimly. Then the left side shin-splint started up in all its red-hot agony. I stuck it out through 24 laps, but as I have a dressage lesson tomorrow, I decided the better part of valor was not crippling myself today.

---

Today I was sharing the pool with a group of very young women. Given what they were doing, my hypothesis is that they are this year's hopefuls for the high school swim team. They spent the last ten minutes or so of the time I was in the pool doing strange swim-cheers that involved bouncing up and down in the shallow end, splashing, and yelling.

Young women, I note for the record, have very piercing voices, especially in the acoustical hell that is an indoor swimming pool.

I was feeling bad about being all You kids get off my lawn! about it, but then I realized that I would have felt exactly the same way when I was their age, only with even more actual fear that they would start picking on me.

As I was getting dressed, I noticed a BEST FRIENDS charm necklace in the locker I had chosen. In celebration, as John Pelham Ratcliffe says in "Drowning Palmer," of the fact that I am no longer fourteen, I took it to the office on my way out. They have a lost & found, so hopefully the young woman who lost it will be able to find it again.

...

Also, "Lost and Found" so utterly needs to be the title of a Booth story.

Q&A 4, plus...

1.
Q: What does Felix see (or what is he able to see) when he looks off the battlements?

A: I'm not quite sure what you're asking: what the view is, or how good his eyesight is. The view from the battlements is of all the rooftops of Mélusine, as the Mirador is both the tallest building in the city and on high ground; Felix tends to gravitate toward the view to the south: the Lower City.

If you're asking about his eyesight, he can certainly see well enough to pick out major landmarks like the cathedrals and the Judiciary. (My shorthand for Felix's eyesight is that he can see about as well as I can without my glasses on--which, as legally blind goes, is actually pretty good.)

2.
Q: Did you research Labyrinths for this series or did you make up your own ideas about them and if you did have particular books, can you tell us books you read or books that you recommend.

A: Mostly, I made up my own ideas, as I could not find any books on labyrinths that were not cloyingly New Age (for my tastes). I suspect I was also heavily influenced by Barbara Hambly's Dog Wizard and M. R. James' story, "Mr. Humphries and His Inheritance." And there's a certain amount of the Minotaur and the actual ancient labyrinths on Crete as well. But mostly, sorry, it's just me.

3.
Q: How old are Steven, Victoria, and Shannon at the end of "The Mirador"?

A: Victoria was born in 2242, Stephen in 2244, Shannon in 2257. Mélusine starts in 2279, at which point Shannon is 22, Stephen is 35, and Victoria is 37. The Mirador takes place in 2283, so Shannon is 26, Stephen is 39, and Victoria is 41. Assuming my math is correct, which may or may not be the case.

---

And, from the Department of "If Locus says it, it must be true," I have sold a short story collection, Somewhere Beneath Those Waves, to Prime Books. I will provide more details when and as I can, but for now, let's go with, this will be a collection of my published non-Booth short stories. Also, I'm very psyched.