New print-run!

For those of you who've asked me about this, I just heard that Dead & Buried has been re-printed (trade paper) and will be in the warehouse within a week or two. And, I'm extremely gratified for this extremely solid demonstration to my publisher about what a desireable property I am.

Striving toward getting most of Draft 2 done before the 29th of August, which is the day school starts. I'll be teaching three classes (one of which is a new one for me, but one to which I've looked forward for a long time, World History - Ancient China, YES!)  Heian Japan... one of the top contenders for Weirdest Civilization I've ever encountered... compare, for instance, two works written at roughly the same time at opposite ends of the Eurasian landmass... Beowulf and The Tale of Genji. Both - like many ancient tales and epics - address the issue of, what is it, to be a man? (Consider Achilles in the Iliad. He's not even NICE. Nobody in that whole epic ever does a single nice thing for somebody else, except for Achilles giving back Hector's mutilated body to Hector's dad, because the gods ORDERED him to. But, he's the Hero because he's the best). Face-off: The Shining Prince vs The Big B.