I was on a writing vacation last month, and posts were sporadic. Here’s an update on a few bits of rather big news from the last two weeks.

Mary, Livia Llewellyn, and Kelli Owen were invited to speak at CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time an all-female group of writers gave an address there (I’ve spoken at Langley several times, but my co-speakers were all men — J.F. Gonzalez, F. Paul Wilson, Douglas Winter, etc.) So this was a pretty big deal.

Since they had to depart for Langley at 5am Tuesday, the girls spent Monday night here. The plan was to go to bed early, but I made them jambalaya, and Geoff Cooper got wind of that and showed up to have some, and we all stayed up until midnight. Despite this, they managed to take off on time the next morning, and I’m told the talk went very well. Mary wrote about it here.

Also, speaking of Mary, there are less than a dozen copies of her Hollower Trilogy Collector’s Set left in stock. Order a copy here.

While they were doing that, I was trying to sort out the Ghoul viewing parties, and not having very much luck with it, I’m afraid. Some venues who were previously interested have now had to cancel in lieu of sporting events. Others have insurance concerns. Some cited the economy. Not sure how it will all play out yet, but I may end up scrapping the idea.

I did, however, finish a prequel to the movie. It’s a short story that takes place in the film’s mythos, rather than that of the book. This was commissioned by Chiller for their website, and as a result, has to be run by the folks at NBC – Universal before it will appear, but I imagine you’ll see it sometime later this week. With that out of the way, I’ve been able to turn my attention back to The Lost Level, Hole In the World, and the initial beginnings of both With Teeth and Suburban Gothic.

Speaking of Ghoul, here’s a new review of the movie. Also, if you haven’t, head over to Facebook and Like the official page for the forthcoming Dark Hollow movie.

On Thursday, I was honored to learn that The Rising came in at #11 on Complex’s list of The 25 Top Horror Novels of the New Millennium.

On Friday, while The Cage was climbing to the #1 spot on Amazon’s horror bestseller list, J.F. Gonzalez and I headed for New York to meet with a publisher. I won’t say who yet, because contracts haven’t been signed, but the editor was someone who we’ve wanted to meet for quite some time. He took J.F., Mary, and myself out for dinner, during which we pitched a political thriller which was enthusiastically received. More on this when we can say more on this.

Last night, Mary and I had a delightful dinner with Tom and Elizabeth Monteleone. I could happily sit for hours and listen to Tom’s stories from the business. It’s like a live one-on-one version of his M.A.F.I.A. column. In short, we had a great time. Thanks to them for being such wonderful hosts.

So, yeah. Pretty awesome week in a month of pretty awesome weeks, during which I finished up a LOT of writing.

Finally, here’s a plug for The Monster Men, who had some nice things to say about me in their latest show.

And now… back to work.