Heading into the writing zone a little late tonight -- had to check out the Galerie d'Apollon, where I'm staging the fnal fight scene. The Baroque ceiling features "Apollo Vanquishing the Python" by Eugene Delacroix (1851), an amazing, radical painting for its time. Delacroix knew how to rock, but even better, Apollo knew how to shoot, and there's a female dragon contained in the piece guarding the treasure on Mount Parnassus (can you say, Kuei-fei?) Ties up the fight scene like Eugene painted the damn thing for me, knowing I was writing this book.

  ¶ 11:04 PM

  Reader mail bag offerings: Amanda got an "A" on her S.L. Viehl report. Christa is writing hers now and promises to let me know how it goes. A self-proclaimed "sexually conservative" man wants to know if I've written about sex in my other books, so he won't buy them. Another man cried after reading the end of Shockball (how are they getting these copies so early? the author wonders). Two people want to know why I didn't show at WorldCon -- ha, like I'll ever go to a SF con. When Hades offers ice skating, maybe. Two of my quilter pals are throwing in donation quilts for the New York project. Couple more commenting on Reparations, nobody expected the plot twist. (laugh) Nailed 'em again.   ¶ 8:34 PM

  Chinese woman got past customs, knife wound sutured and bandaged, dead man dealt with, made dinner for the kids (would be nice if they'd both eat the same kinds of food) indulged in a little watermelon, now sipping tea and feeling smug for resisting all the Halloween packs of M&Ms the kids brought home. I control the chocolate, the chocolate doesn't control me.

Also did a bit of research, and found the perfect object d'art in the Louvre to park my assassin and his employer in front of so they can have their second conversation. The Torso of Miletus -- basement room 3 -- Greek Antiquities. Nothing like a headless, armless, legless, castrated sculpture to drive home the point of what will happen to the assassin if he fails again. And Rilke actually wrote a sonnet to it! In 1908, while he was secretary to Auguste Rodin. Tres cool sonnet, too. I'm quoting some lines from it -- the change the way you live your life has a nice, grim resonance.




  ¶ 6:42 PM

  Today I have to smuggle a Chinese woman into France, suture a nasty knife wound to the biceps, and kill a man in a crowded restaurant but hide his body so it won't be discovered for several hours. Cutting his throat is out -- too much blood -- so I'll have to have him strangled.

And you though the life of a writer was dull.  ¶ 5:47 PM