Headed up to Seattle tomorrow for the Emerald City ComicCon. I'll be at a table with Jen and mercuryeric. I'll have some books to sell, stories to tell, and if it goes well, all will be swell.

I'm very sorry about that last sentence, and I beg your immediate forgiveness.

There's a DC Nation panel on Saturday, from 1 to 2 pm in "Panel Room A," which I suspect I'll be asked to sit on. Dan DiDio is out for the show this year, so if nothing else, he'll be endlessly entertaining as he frustrates fans. As for my part, I've actually got no idea if I'll be up there, because just about everything I'm doing for DC is still under information embargo at the moment, which inevitably leads to me repeating, over and over again, "I can't answer that." So maybe I'll be the one who's endlessly frustrating.

Oni Press will be well-represented at the show, as well, and Sunday from 11 to 12, again in "Panel Room A," they'll be having their Quiz Show. Apparently, I'm on that as well, along with Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O'Malley, and Jennfer Van Meter, who, for those of you who still haven't figured it out, is the same Jen from Paragraph One, above. Bryan's very talented wife, Hope Larson, will be at the show, as well.

I like this show; Jim Demonakos has done a terrific job with it, and it's one of my favorite of the circuit, one of the few I actually get excited about attending every year. The Portland Crowd tends to be pretty thick in attendance, as well, including most -- if not all -- of the Periscope Studio crew. I'll also get to see Matthew Southworth, which is great, because Stumptown is inching its way ever-closer to a release; we're hoping for the first issue in September.

Work is continuing apace. The novel has reached a crossroads. Should know which direction I'm taking it in the next two days, and once that's decided, then it's just a matter of typing the draft as fast as I can. I'm running about two weeks behind (according to my personal schedule), and I'm eager to make it up, as other work (primarily comics works) is back-burnered for the time being.

Philip Tan -- who will also be at the show this weekend! -- is continuing to deliver amazing pages on FC:R. I get leery of posting stuff without permission, but if you've checked out his blog, you can see some of his work-in-progress.

There's an interview with me up at Newsarama right now about the next thing with my name on it that'll be coming out from DC, Final Crisis: Revelations. Look for a companion interview with the amazing Philip Tan, as well. If you've seen any of his art, then you'll understand why I'm willing to use the word "amazing" to describe it.

So we have an official announcement, now, of at least one of the things I'm working on, Final Crisis: Revelation, five issues of 30 pages each, Crispus Allen and Renee Montoya sharing pages again, though each of them in a much-altered form. The Spectre and The Question. Has to go down in history as one of the all-time oddest team-ups ever, which is probably one of the reasons why I'm enjoying writing it so much. First issue is out in August, I believe, so yes, it's a wait, but I think it'll be well-worth it.

( Here's a little taste of what Philip's doing. )

While we're on the topic, the ancillary material for the The Question: The Five Books of Blood hardcover that's coming out in June was finalized on Monday; we've included some six pages in the back about the Montoya Journal, including images of a couple of the props that didn't make the final cut for inclusion. I've written some commentary about the journal, the process, the ideas behind it, and the like. For those of you who were intrigued by that particular flight of fancy, it's definitely Value Added Content.

I promised a couple of posts back to explain the quiet that has descended here... and it's going to be relatively quiet for another month or so as I finish the draft of the tentatively-entitled new Kodiak novel, The Walking Dead. That's priority right now, and until I get out of the Very Dark Place that is this novel, I'm not going to have a whole lot I want to share, or even will feel like talking about, I suspect.

A week from today, on the 24th, mercuryeric and I will be doing a live chat at the ComicBloc Foum, starting at 9pm Eastern, 6pm Pacific. I expect it'll last 90 minutes or so, but it may run longer. If you're not registered at the 'Bloc, I believe you'll have to be to participate, but I could be wrong, as I've yet to actually do a chat there.

And then there's The Blue Religion, a new short-story collection edited by the blazingly-talented Michael Connelly, including shorts by the man himself, Laurie R. King, Alafair Burke, and many others. I'm one of the others, and the short is entitled "Contact and Cover." Fans of A Fistful of Rain might want to check this out, as the story is told by Tracy Hoffman, and gives a little insight into what her life on the job was like before making detective.

( Here's the cover for the collection. )

Finally, an unsolicited endorsement. Find E. Benjamin Skinner's book A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face With Modern-Day Slavery.

Buy this book.

Read this book.

Read the parts that make your heart break. Read the parts that make your eyes burn. Read the parts that twist your stomach.

Read this book.

Then find someone else, and make them read this book.

And while they're reading it, get to work, and any way you can, in any of the ways that Skinner suggests, join this fight.