Well, I was looking for an excuse not to feel guilty for being a bit stuck on Undertow--

So, truepenny and I have a revision request on the smutty wolf book (So, yeah, uh, we sorta figured that there was no way that one was getting into print unmodified, but sometimes you have to see what they'll let you get away with) so it remains to be seen if we can walk that fine line between artistic integrity and marketability to find it a home.

I think it would be pretty easy to sell if we were willing to just turn it into a fuzzy wish-fulfillment companion animal fantasy, because it would be a pretty decent type example of that particular (highly commercial!) subgenre. Unfortunately, as a deconstruction of fuzzy wish-fulfillment companion animal fantasies, it's required that living with the fuzzy companion animals demand some pretty heinous sacrifices of the humans involved (and something beyond, lo, the unbearable loneliness of all that Mary Suedom I mean, power and responsibility), which means that large chunks of this book are Pretty Freaking Dark, and Replete With Degrading Sex (TM), so we can't take that bit out.

Which means what you might call the necessity of telegraphing the squick early on, lest we blindside somebody with the squick a bit too hard. Kind of like, if you're going to have a castration by rat, for the love of Mike just get it on the first page so we all know what we're getting into, here.

(***Bear adds the word "catamite" to the first chapter. Repeatedly. Catamite, catamite, catamite... *** Wait, didn't I just write this book?)

Anyway, revise revise. Revise revise revise. Catamite catamite.

Um, sorry, where was I?

Oh, right, so there's that to get done. And also a synopsis of The Dead Shepherd to write, so it and its brother can go off to the great submittal pile in the sky next year.

And lo, there was work, and it was good.

And somewhere in here, I need to get that Undertow proposal done. As soon as I find some antagonists.

and drat it, the big one just volunteered the name Kloss, and he can't have it, because it's way too close to Kroc, and I've got one of those already.

...I suppose he could spell it with a C. Closs Closs Closs. Catamite catamite....

No, I haven't been drinking. Why do you ask?