Did anyone out there read Drujienna's Harp? It was a very cool, very weird, story. The world was really unlike any other fantasy world. The one weakness in it, from my perspective, was that its tone really zigged and zagged all over the place. In the very beginning, it was very mysterious--a girl and her brother go into a junk shop, look at a glass bottle, and find themselves in another world. Then it gets kind of cutesie for a while, with a cutesie set of characters in the new world. And then it gets steadily more serious, so for the latter, oh, maybe two-thirds of the story, it's just an absorbing story with lots of good themes and adventures. And a cool poem prophecy, which I copied into a special book.

Now, it's practically impossible to find. My hometown library doesn't have it; my sister took it out of the elementary school library, and then I read it too. My current town's library not only doesn't have it, the whole library network it's part of doesn't have it--but I did finally get it out on interlibrary loan several years ago (it came from a couple of states away), and read it to my kids, who loved it. The tall one mapped it. If only I had saved that map, I could have sent it to the author.

One place they pass through in the book is the Shophosian Mists, a place that's always misty. This morning, I felt like I was in the Shophosian Mists. I could see the microdroplets blowing past me. I have my own imagining about a land of perpetual mists--ghosts and memories are alive and wander around in it...but the plot is too weak, falls apart right where it should get to a climax, so I won't be writing up that story anytime soon. Anyway, I'm happy working on the Noon and Midnight Lands.

I'm reading the second volume in the Black Magician Trilogy, by Trudi Canavan. It's called The Novice. Trouble is, when it's lying on the floor in my study, it looks to me like it says The Invoice. I guess I have work on my brain? Finances?