In case you missed it, my reading from BaltiCon 45 is up at the Balticon Podcast. In it, you’ll hear me read the story I did for JR Blackwell’s “Birthday Book” about Dr. Mercury.

If that’s not enough of my voice you can always catch my reading of “Blood Dauber” on StarShipSofa 206. There’s more in the wings there as soon as Tony gets it scheduled. Watch for my reading of Allen M. Steele’s “Observation Post.” It should show up fairly soon.

In other news …

The promised website overhaul hasn’t happened yet. It’s still rummaging around behind my eyes somewhere. It’ll get here.

Double Share has been pushed back again. Ridan will be trying to get it out before Christmas but those of you who are looking for it any day now, um, not so much. For what it’s worth, the three (yes, three) books ahead of it in line have been waiting for a year – longer in one case – for their turn in the chute and I fully support the decision that Ridan has made on this. It is disappointing, I know, and it has a significant financial effect on me as well, but that’s the price I pay for working with a publisher.

That’s one reason that I’ll be publishing Ravenwood myself. My goal is to have it out in time for Samhain, the pagan new year. You might know it as All Hallow’s Eve, or Halloween. The cover may not be as spiffy, and the layout will be my own, but I’ll be getting work out for you to read.

More to the point, Cape Grace is about to go into binge mode. I took a trip back to Maine last week to visit my sister and to smell Atlantic salt again. I’m rather excited to get this underway and to get it podcast for your enjoyment while we wait for Double Share to make its text debut.

Honestly, this has been a difficult year for me, and not for the reasons that so many of you have speculated about in the comments. Some stories are not mine to tell, so you’ll have to forgive me for not putting out spoilers on works that aren’t my own. I still have almost three months left to 2011, and that’s enough time to get my own little ship pointed in the correct direction and start building some momentum.

Let’s see if I can actually do it.

That is all. For now.

Cape Grace is still the next work in progress. I really want to fill that slot in before I go to Captain’s Share. My ideas on Cape Grace are working in my mind, and I really hope I can pry myself out of “Day Job” for a few weeks here sometime soon.

The “Day Job” — as some of you may know from reading the comments on the last thread — is in survival mode. It depends on earmark money and grants for continued support. If you’ve seen any of the financial news lately, you’ll understand why things are so desperate. The Feds are pulling the plug on all earmarks, grant agencies are only writing grants to the largest and most prestigious institutions, and foundations are suffering from the economic meltdown. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for a small, specialized organization that’s working to help teachers for kids who are blind, deaf, or have significant support needs. It’s not all bad news. We have several initiatives underway that are potentially game changing, but they’re requiring a lot of work on my part to make sure that — if the “Day Job” folds, it won’t be because we didn’t do everything humanly possible to try to make a difference. I won’t bore you with the details, but we’ve developed new tools to teach science which are on the cutting edge at the intersection of instructional design and technology. You can probably imagine how much effort is going into these. On the upside, if I lose my job, I’ll have more time to write. On the downside, I’ll lose my job.

My teaching load has been doubled since last fall. I used to teach only one course a semester, and now I’m doing two. This semester is a “new teach” – which means I need to do a lot of work to get the course established and I made the mistake of not doing enough ahead of time. It’s sucking up a lot of the time that would normally go to writing.

So, the bottom line is that I’m still here. I’m still planning to write more. I miss the production process, the writing and reading maybe even more than you all miss getting new content.

Thanks for being out there, and thanks for all the support you’ve shown me.

Yes, it’s coming! November means NaNoWriMo and you’ll be able to follow along with my progress by clicking the icon on the left. I’ll post occasionally here on the Trader’s Diary, and you’ll be able to see my word counts on Twitter as well.

I’m so looking forward to this!