thanky thanky thanky

Yay to my new banner (& thanks for your compliments) & thanks especially to the technical genius of Bohemian Girl, without whom this design would still be a sad little orphan on my desktop. Thanks, Denise!

And thanks also to Greenish Lady for sending me her exquisite poetry book, Shout If You Want Me To Sing. It's beautiful in content and presentation -- gorgeous cover, but especially, gorgeous poems! Thanks, Imelda!

And thanks also to Bonnie for her facts about peepal trees when she read my story "Spicy Little Curses Such As These" (I hope I didn't scare you with my babbling excited email about picking your brain with all sorts of geography and landscape and flora & fauna questions about Central Asia and the Himalayas. I wish I could go on a fact-finding mission of my own, but alas, it's a world away.)

I am deep in research for my second novel, and have been trying to nail down the exotic locations around Asia, to give it a real feeling of place, which is an ambitious thing to attempt with a place one has never been, but I'm going to try it anyway. I got very sidetracked in my reading about the Old Silk Road yesterday evening and ended up drooling over adventure vacations that follow said road to Samarkand and beyond... And though Central Asia isn't at the top of my travel to-do list, this site made me want to do something rash like book a trip to a place I had never even heard of before, like Lake Son-Kul on the "Kyrgyz Riviera". Who knew Kyrgystan had a riviera? And at 4000 meters elevation. It is, apparently, a paradise for shepherds. I resisted the impulse to book the trip.

Other current subjects of research: silk production, especially cottage industry; the teak trade; dragonflies; caravansarays; Romany names; the Hindu Kush, and more. It's amazing the way the world starts to unfold when you just pick a topic you don't know about and start poking around. How many worlds there are, essentially tucked into this one world. And how many pockets in time. It all just lights my mind on fire. I wish I could've taken more history classes in college. I wish I had time to now. In any case, thank god for books and the internet!

And lastly, thanks for all the well-wishing about Jim's health. Fingers crossed, for all of us, that the big C stays well out of our lives and the lives of everyone we know & love.