In case any completists were wondering, this is NOT the season of the short-lived anthology TV series The Hunger that includes "The Dream Sentinel," their rather loose adaptation of my short story "The Sixth Sentinel." Mine was on Season 2, hosted by David Bowie (which was pretty much the only cool thing about it), as was an adaptation of a story by faustfatale. I do gather from mentions of Season 2 in the reviews that it may be released eventually.

If I didn't know faustfatale and I were destined to be BFF before, I realized it when I found out we had both enthusiastically bought and read the wonderful book Washed Up: The Curious History of Flotsam and Jetsam by Skye Moody, though others scoffed at our "goofy" reading. But right now I use the phrase because I have many little skritty bits of subjects to write about, nothing worth a full entry. Chris and I have booked our 20th anniversary trip to Amsterdam, our second-favorite city in the world, which makes me very happy. We'll be there for our actual anniversary (November 5, Guy Fawkes' Day) and for Museumnacht, a wonderful event we stumbled across on our last trip in 2000.

Gardening goes well; as you know if you read me on Facebook (hey, don't be shy; I'll friend anybody except ex-stalkers), the milkweed I planted attracted a monarch butterfly, the first I've ever seen in my garden! Actually, I made a whole little butterfly garden with purple and white coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, and Queen Anne's lace as well as lots of milkweed, a Golden Trumpet esperanza, & three kinds of salvia nearby. I also have a big passionflower vine for the Gulf fritillaries and plenty of parsley and fennel for the black swallowtails. I found a caterpillar on each one, and I'm betting our black swallowtails from this spring came back and laid their eggs here. We got grandworms!

Later this week I must return to my doctor and discuss whether the Vilify Abilify is actually, er, abilifying me any. I have kept a log of possible side effects which I present to you here:

Overall -- increased use of -pams; intermittent twitch in eyelids (though this is something I've had off and on for years)

6/21 -- bug crawling sensations (I did spend a lot of time in the garden that day and once there really was a bug on me)

6/22 -- a weird euphoria in the AM but it went away

6/25 -- could not concentrate on reading; jumped from one book to another unable to settle on one (this virtually never happens to me -- I finally gave up and read some Carson McCullers, as it's almost impossible not to become absorbed in "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe")

6/26 -- major mood crash; feeling of utter futility & hopelessness -- lasted about 12 hours

6/27 -- still no appetite; price of meds is actually raising my stress level

6/27 (11:30 pm) -- sudden dizziness & extreme nausea -- lasted 20-30 minutes (?), then headache

And that is my flotsam and jetsam for today.

faustfatale, a.k.a. my good friend and sometime collaborator Christa Faust, just sold her novel Money Shot to Hard Case Crime. Not only is Hard Case probably the coolest crime fiction line going; not only did they publish Stephen King's The Colorado Kid (which I loved, so suck my dick, ye "nothing happened" naysayers); not only do they have nifty old-school pulp covers ... aside from all that, Christa will be the first woman author they've published. They couldn't have made a better choice had they scoured the earth from pole to pole hunting for tough chick wordsmiths.

Speaking of books, I've been wanting to do a post about my recent reads including greygirlbeast's excellent forthcoming novel Daughter of Hounds and a business book about Emeril that was actually very interesting, but this will have to do for now.