Isn’t this Scott Bakal image incredible?  My good fortune is that it accompanies my story, “All The Snake Handlers I Know Are Dead” at Tor.com.  It appeared on July 31st, but I was deep in the throes of a computer crash and a glacially slow Carbonite restore that’s had me on a forced vacation since returning from Maine.  Better late than never.  I recently visited the home that inspired this story and had a wonderful time in spite of continual driving rain.

My experience as a resident at Norton Island exceeded my wildest expectations.  What a wonderful place, what wonderful people.  I finished a story and completed a draft of another while there.  I almost lost it all in the computer crash, but fortunately I’d saved that work on a thumb drive as I was leaving the island.  My computer was completely dead when I woke it from sleep the day after I returned.  A humbling experience.

I start teaching on Thursday, an Advanced Fiction Writing class at VCU, and I’m looking forward to it.  Meanwhile I’m trying to reconnect to the e-world and sort out what I’ve lost.  If I’ve neglected anyone out there, it’s only because I lost my laptop, and I was adrift without my virtual life.  Somebody should write a novel about this.