Sultry

The weekend was fun, if strenuous. I'm happy to see that "This Old Death" (http://archiveofourown.org/works/1990179/chapters/4310805) is currently up to 376 hits and 20 kudos, and wanted to take the opportunity to point out that I have finally managed to disable the function keeping anonymous people/AO3 non-members from commenting, so please feel free to do that, if'n you're so inclined. Naturally, I'm thinking intermittently about exactly what might happen after the story, over the maybe ten years before Carl probably raises an armya nd comes back to "avenge" his "dead" Dad, only to realize Rick's actually been alivea nd living in Woodbury this whole time. Part of this takes the form of simple world-building stuff like What kind of threats could they encounter? (plague, Negan, infrastructural decay), while the rest is character stuff like If Haley gets pregnant, what sort of a father could Rick allow himself to be, given he needs to keep Philip un-jealous and on an even keel? or What sort of shoulder-angeling will Rick find himself doing in future?, which gives rise to such potential Rick-to-Philip advice as: "You know you don't actually have to fuck Meghan Chambler's mother just so you can pretend to be her Daddy", right? or "Maybe it would be smart/advantageous for us to make alliances with the people we've saved from assholes like Terminus and the Claimers--like, we don't have to invite them to live in Woodbury, but we could trade with them and give them support as they build their own communities, on the promise that if we get into trouble they'll come back us up." But I definitely don't have time to do much more than think it over, and maybe use Season Five as research, because we're moving into the new release/get back to work portion of the year.

New release: We Will All Go Down Together is due out by August 19th, so I need to do as much as I can in support of that--did an interview yesterday, doing another today, will provide links to both as they appear; I'm both surprised and happy to note that a lot of people seem to be looking forward to the book, especially since even after what's been a slightly traumatic final edit, I think the manuscript is now looking very nice indeed. So it behooves me to return to things like that series of alphabet posts I started on Music at Midnight, and create a nice spread of supplemental material.

New projects, OTOH...at the top of the roster, strangely enough, is Experimental Film, number one with a metaphorical phantom bullet. But there's also a few deadlines coming up which I cannot afford to miss, mainly because I've allowed my name to publicly linked with the projects in question. And then there are various Drive-by Review posts I owe, considering I've seen and/or revisited some great stuff lately. But all of this continues to be complicated by Cal being at home, which takes big chunks out of every day. Ah well: he's happy, thank God. So am I, mainly.

That's the state, at the moment. Back soon with more, is my mantra from now on.