You know that thing where your kid sings “Jingle BELLS, Jingle BELLS, Jingle BELLS, Jingle BELLS, Jingle BELLS, Jingle BELLS, Jingle BELLS, Jingle BELLS,” in an overexuberant yet tuneless manner for six hours straight? Yes, well, in the future it will seem more adorable in retrospect than it is right at the moment. So at least you have that to look forward to.

You’re welcome.

Subterranean Press zipped over to me a couple of early copies of the “Judge Sn Goes Golfing” chapbook so I could pet them and love them and rub my scent all over them (okay, that last bit was more than you needed to know), and I have to say I am delighted with how they’ve turned out. They look great, and by “great” I mean holy cow look at me I got a story illustrated by Gahan Wilson. In collaboration terms that’s a little like having Eddie Van Halen drop by your home studio to give song chorus you’ve been working on a little extra push. I’m so happy I could just plotz. You’ll know what I mean when you get it.

This reminds me that I’ve had a couple of questions about the length of “Judge Sn.” It’s 32 pages plus the cover, which is signed by me on the inside back. It’s the sort of thing designed specifically for fans and collectors, rather than the general public, which is why there’s a limited number of them out there. I think it’s worth the cost, but then I would. Heck, I think it’s worth it for the Gahan Wilson illustrations alone. Have I mentioned how geeked out I am about them? Well, I am.

Moving from “Judge Sn” to The God Engines, Paul Witcover reviewed TGE in the February Realms of Fantasy magazine (out now at news stands). I won’t reprint the whole thing here — hey, go buy a copy of the magazine, man — but here’s a nice pull quote:

[G]rippingly dark and subversive… though The God Engines is indisputably a work of fantasy, it is simultaneously a brutal critique of fantasy, a searing evisceration of the valuation of blind faith and magical thinking that underlies so much of the genre, at least at its most popular and mindless.

The whole review is actually very interesting (albeit with spoilers, which I suspect are unavoidable with this particular work), so check it out if you can.

And it was going before I got up the stairs to upload the pictures. Meanwhile, 30 mile an hour wind gusts and other various delights. But no snow! So that’s something. I may not have to eat one of the pets after all. Unless one of them annoys me.