The revised draft of The Tropic of Serpents is off to my editor. Now, I just want to fall over . . . but no, I should try to ride that wave of inspiration that was attempting to distract me from the work I needed to be doing. In other words, I should work on a short story.

The candidates which have recently been trying to distract me are, in no particular order:

• “To Rise No More” — the Ada Lovelace Onyx Court story, explaining why she was involved in the creation of the Ephemeral Engine. (Status: started.)
• the sequel to “Love, Cayce,” provisionally titled “Advice to a Young Lady on Her Way to Hell.” (Status: a paragraph or so.)
• “The Unquiet Grave,” based on the folksong of the same name. Do I have any idea what I’m doing with this story? No. But I keep getting the song stuck in my head, and it makes me want to write something. (Status: nothing.)
• Edward Thorne’s Onyx Court story, about how he came to be a valet to faeries . . . aka “the Peregrin/Segraine Buddy Cop Tale.” (Status: not even a title.)
• “This Living Hand,” which is the Onyx Court Romantic poets story, except I’d have to do a lot of research for that one. (Status: a title, but nto much more.)
• “An Enquiry Into the Causes,” ditto, except I’d have to research the Bow Street Runners. (Status: I know who I want to have show up in it?)
• Another Xochitlicacan story, a la “A Mask of Flesh,” with a jaguar-woman and a temple that hasn’t been decommissioned properly. (Status: uh, nothing.)
• “A River Flowing Nowhere,” which is a new Driftwood story. (Status: vague plot outline.)
• A modern sort of punk-ish Tam Lin retelling. (Status: a paragraph or so.)
• alecaustin, I haven’t forgotten that I owe you a story about the sacking of Enryaku-ji. (Status: I need to get that biography of Nobunaga out of the library again.)

. . . yeah, my brain wanted to do anything other than revise. So, time for a poll!