This is what happens: I start going on chatlines and blogs, and before I know it I'm spending every waking moment on my computer. Now I'm even contemplating Facebook--where will it end? I'm like an addict, which is why I spent the last few years going cold turkey. But now the cycle is starting again--help meee...

Thanks to everybody who has been kind enough to offer congratulations on my four-book deal with Berkley. It never fails to amaze me that I still have fans after being in limbo for the last five years--I love you people.

Here's how the deal will play out: Apocalypse Blues (formerly called Xombies) will be released this October (I just discovered it can be pre-ordered now on Amazon--unbelievable!), followed five months later by the epic sequel, Apocalypticon, in March. With all due humility, I predict Apocalypticon is going to be big--it goes places no zombie novel has gone before, and I've been polishing the damn thing for five years. It's the War and Peace of zombie novels.

These two books will be followed by my latest novel, Mad Skillz, sometime in Fall 2010. I'm particularly excited about Mad Skillz because it is a bit of a departure from the Xombies series (though it takes place in the same universe, pre-apocalypse, and shares several characters). It's a funhouse-ride of a conspiracy thriller, about an ordinary young woman who survives a terrible accident only to become a guinea-pig for mind-control technology, a la The Manchurian Candidate. The fourth book is still up in the air, but I'm thinking of capping off the Apocalypse trilogy with a big bang. What happens after that...who knows? I'm just glad to be workin'.

Okay...just thought I'd mention a few Good Things, a la Martha Stewart:

The movie Let The Right One In--beautiful Swedish vampire film, came and went without notice, but it's great. Little girl vampire befriends (then helps) lonely boy, which sounds adorable...until you start to really examine what's going on, at which point it becomes the most horrible thing ever.

The opening credit montage of Watchmen, done to the tune of Bob Dylan's " The Times They are A-Changin'"--brilliant. I'm reminded of the opening of Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead, which used Johnny Cash to equally good effect.

Revolutionary Road--terrific, and not as unrelievedly glum as many reviewers would have you expect. I see the movie as pure satire, quite grimly funny in the way of Husbands and Wives, and not depressing at all...unless you happen to be one of the pathetic people it's poking fun at. Which we're not, are we?