Just back from Camille Alexa’s reading at Powell’s, which went smashingly. Lots of fine Portland writers at dinner beforehand as well.

I’ve had a number of nice things arrive in my mailbox recently: contract for the vampire story, galleys for the werewolf story, a nibble on film rights for one of my short stories (probably won’t come to anything, but it’s nice to be asked), and some other really good news that I’m not at liberty to share yet.

We’re having the oil tank in the back yard taken care of, finally — should have done it years ago, when we replaced the oil furnace with gas, but we’d just had the back yard landscaped and didn’t want to mess it up. But now that the Japanese maple’s been replaced by a pile of sawdust, it’s time to take action. Today we had soil samples taken; we won’t have results until tomorrow but the samples look and smell clean, indicating that the tank hasn’t leaked. No leakage means we’re looking at an $800 “drain the tank, fill it with gravel, and leave it there” job rather than the $5000-7000 “dig up and cart away half the back yard as toxic waste” job. So I’m cautiously optimistic on this.