Quiet. Too Quiet.

Damn, I'm lame. Yeah, yeah, don't all agree at once. Three months since the last post. I wish I could say that was the longest amount of time between blogs for me. Sadly, not the case. How on earth does Neil Gaiman do it? I wish I could figure out how to get all my work done, spend time with my family, have a little downtime for myself, read TMZ (heh), and STILL have time to blog. Ridiculous. I should do it monthly at least. Weekly would be ideal. When he's not in China, freakin' Gaiman does it every DAY.

Show off.

So...some news, perhaps. At least if I talk about what I've been working on it won't seem like I've been just lazing around the house. (We did go to Disney World for a week back in June...don't ever go to Disney World in the summer.) Anyway, news...

**I absolutely cannot wait until September 19th, when I arrive in England for Fantasycon, at which I'm among the Guests of Honor (I suppose I should spell it "Honour") this year. I'm looking forward to seeing so many good friends there, and then heading off to Wales with Lebbon for a couple of days before coming home.

**Next week, look for the all new trade paperback of THE FERRYMAN, the one thing I've ever written that I would say is purely a Horror novel, with a new afterword by Charles de Lint and a striking reworking of the original cover into something super cool.

**Mike Mignola and I turned in the first (really the second, but for the studio's purposes, the first) draft of the screenplay adaptation of BALTIMORE to New Regency. Now we're in the midst of all the conversations about what to do for the second draft.

**Tim Lebbon and I finished the second Hidden Cities book, THE MAP OF MOMENTS, which will be out at the end of January. We're both extremely proud of the novel. It's among my very favorite books I've ever worked on, alone or in collaboration.

**SOULLESS, my MTV teen zombie novel, will hit stores in October. It's getting some great early reaction and I'm looking forward to the feedback...some of which, I'm sure, will be telling me how inappropriate it is for young readers. C'est la vie.

**POISON INK, the YA supernatural thriller I did for Delacorte, came out last month to great reviews and has some interesting Hollywood inquiries. We'll see what comes of that.

**October will also see the publication of PRINCE OF STORIES: THE MANY WORLDS OF NEIL GAIMAN. I wrote the book with Hank Wagner and Stephen R. Bissette and will be out at the NCIBA event in California the first weekend in October for a signing. I've got the ARC sitting here on my desk, and honestly, it's one hell of a book. The hours of interviews with Neil alone are worth the price of admission, but it's also pretty damn comprehensive, and there are several unpublished pieces in those pages, including a small snatch of the beginning of an as yet unwritten novel, and major revelations about the current state of the whole Miracleman legal entanglement.

**Though Cemetery Dance do tend to take forever, the anthology BRITISH INVASION, which I co-edited with James A. Moore and Tim Lebbon, should be out very, very soon, followed swiftly by the CD limited edition of MIND THE GAP.

**FIVE STROKES TO MIDNIGHT, a collection of stories by five writers--Tom Piccirilli, Deborah LeBlanc, Gary A. Braunbeck, Hank Schwaeble, and me--not only won the Stoker for Best Anthology, but has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award as well. Fantastic. Congrats to all of the contributors and especially to Gary and Hank, who were the editors on the book.

**I've done a brand new story, "The Hiss of Escaping Air," for Pete Crowther and PS Publishing. It'll be released in a special edition for Fantasycon and available only at the convention or through PS directly. More info to come soon.

**What else? Lebbon and I are starting work on our new YA adventure series, and Jim Moore and I are finally ready to write BLOODSTAINED WONDERLAND. We're a little too gleeful about our plans for that book, but we felt the same way about BLOODSTAINED OZ, and it worked to our advantage, I think. :)

**Hollywood stuff: TALENT and OUTCAST are still in development at Universal, THE SISTERHOOD at Intermedia, and BALTIMORE at New Regency. No news I can actually report, but I expect to have some major news on at least two of those projects very soon. Also, THE HOLLOW, the YA horror series I did with Ford Lytle Gilmore, is in development at Lionsgate TV. That's looking very promising as well, but I learned a long time ago not to assume anything when it comes to film and television.

WATCHING: Psych, Saving Grace, old episodes of Rescue Me and The Wire. Waiting for the fall TV season to begin.

READING: A Short History of Myth. Jack London: A Life. Mark Morris's upcoming short story collection (damn, he's good).

LISTENING TO: My iPod's been on "shuffle" forever. I haven't picked up anything new that I liked in a while. Suggestions welcome.

RECOMMENDING: A Kiss Before the Apocalypse by Thomas E. Sniegoski, of course. Plus, since it's about to come out, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. It may well be my favorite thing that he's ever written. As always, his style is elegant and amusing and chilling and touching all at the same time, but here more than ever.