Impassioned Amateurs of Melpomene

"Though TUH is within less than a chapter of completion, Mr. Earbrass has felt it his cultural and civic duty, and a source of possible edification, to attend a performance at Lying-in-the-Way of Prawne's The Nephew's Tragedy. It is being put on, for the first time since the early seventeenth century, by the West Mortshire Impassioned Amateurs of Melpomene. Unfortunately, Mr. Earbrass is unable to take in even one of its five plots because he cannot get those few unwritten pages out of his mind."

                                                                                                                                                --Edward Gorey, The Unstrung Harp

I offer this as an apology to csecooney , whose performance this evening will be a source of undoubted wonder and delight to others.

The last few days have been somewhat astonishing.  Every new twist I've thought of, the story itself--sometimes the history itself--has already set up for me.  It's all there in the cupboard.  Spooky.

Yesterday I woke up way too early and just wrote the climax—whoosh, like that.  Right now, I'm part way through a rather tricky afterpiece.  And after that, I need a final rocket.

I'm not safe in traffic.

Nine