And just for a laugh, here's the cover of the current issue of Ottawa City Magazine.

Doing the three-hour photo shoot for the cover and interior photos gave me a whole new respect for people who have their picture taken for a living. The crow came from the Museum of Natural History here in Ottawa. The poor stuffed beastie is a hundred years old and, according to the photographer, the museum wouldn't let him take it outside so he had to build a little forest in his studio for the shoot.

But the funniest part of all of this so far was when someone stopped me in a store, saying "Don't I know you?" After going through a couple of possibilities (at a gig, or from back in the days when I worked in retail), I realized it was from the magazine cover. "Oh, right," the person said. "I didn't recognize you without your crow."

And while I'm not sure where else it's shown, the episode of The Hunger based on my short story "The Sacred Fire" ran on The Movie Network here in Canada a few times during the past month. They did an all-round fine job of it, and I particularly liked the way they brought The Tombs and Crowsea areas of Newford onto the screen. I knew they could do Crowsea because it was filmed in Montréal, and the old parts of the city are just right for it, but I never knew they had sections that could pass for the Tombs.

Lastly, I should have some news in a week or so about a new short story collection that will be available before the end of this year in a limited-edition run from a specialty publisher. As soon as everything's confirmed, I'll post a notice here.

"Nothing new since June???? Oh come on!! LOL!! Even my life is more exciting than that!!! and I'm a decidedly boring person!"

And shamed me into finding something to say, so here I am again. I've updated a few pages (bibliography, forthcoming books), tidied up a few others, and now I'm left with the final task of putting a few words down in this space.

Like the reader quoted above, I consider myself fairly boring as well. It's not that I'm bored—I like my life—but much of it entails my sitting at a keyboard, writing stories, and while that's entertaining for me (being the one doing it), I think it'd be very dull to watch. And even duller to write about. But racking my brain, I find there are a few things I can talk about.

First, the next novel, Forests of the Heart, has been turned in, edited by Terri Windling, I've done my final corrections, and now it's in production with a release date of June 2000. Those of you who might have seen me at a recent convention or signing, will already have a taste of the cover from the bookmarks I've been handing out. Unfortunately, until I get a cover proof from Tor, I won't be able to put that up on the site. But when I do, both it and a few sample chapters will be available for you to peruse.

MaryAnn and I went to conventions in Spokane, WA, and Providence, RI, in the past couple of months, the latter being the 25th World Fantasy Convention. We had a great time there, of course, cheering on our pal Charles Vess when he won an award for best artist, hanging with him and his wife Karen who's pretty mobile now, though she still walks with a cane and has some paralysis. (Thanks again to all of you who contributed to the Good Goddess Fund—it was a tremendous help to them.) Other high points were visiting with Terri Windling, Pat McKillip, Tim and Serena Powers, Walter Jon Williams, Nina Hoffman, Kathi and Kim Nash, and other friends too numerous to mention that we hadn't seen for ages; playing some songs with my other Tor editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden who's a fabulous guitarist (he's one of the few people I know who can jam on a Celtic tune and make it sound good); making a whole bunch of new friends; taking in the art show which, as might be expected, was of its usual high quality; and just generally having a good time.

InCon (the con in Spokane) was a quieter affair, but I like that since you get to spend more time with folks. One nice evening we visited with locals Chris and Andrea at their home. Also present was Donna, another of my readers from the east coast, and we had a great time, enjoying a home-cooked meal and getting a Steve Earle and Fred Eaglesmith fix from their CD player. Andrea was very pregnant at the time; by now she should have had her baby and I hope everything went well. The con committee in InCon was particularly friendly and we got to have a huge dinner with them on the last night of the con.

We were also in Montréal recently, playing some music at a Chapters store before I did a reading and signing with Terry Brooks. The evening before that, I hosted an event at the National Library of Canada here in Ottawa which included Terry as well as Toronto sf writer Rob Sawyer.

Oh, and if you're into independent films, some local film makers needed an author for the "at a book signing" scene in their film, so now I've had my few seconds of celluloid fame. Once it's done, I'll post the name of the film and the director (I only know his name is Josh) on this page. The day before that I spent three hours at a photographer's studio, being shot for the cover of an upcoming issue of Ottawa City, a local magazine. I shared the camera time with a hundred-year-old stuffed crow that had been borrowed from the local museum. Both experiences were instructive—there's so much more that goes into that sort of thing than the final product we normally get to see.

Lastly, for those of you who use a PalmPilot or have access to a Windows CE environment, I'm just finishing up negotiations with a company called peanutpress.com to publish a number of my books in those formats. Again, when I have more details, I'll post them here.

In case I don't get back to this page before the calendar rolls us over into the year 2000, here's wishing you all a wonderful holiday season, and thanks once more for all your interest and support.

DeLint [English] [For People Over 13]
This list is for readers of fantasy author Charles de Lint and those who appreciate urban faerietales, Celtic music, folklore, and related topics.

On the writing front, I'm on the next-to-last draft of Forests of the Heart and hope to turn it in to Tor within the next couple of weeks. I'm just waiting for MaryAnn to finish her edit before I do the final draft. In the meantime, I have all this copious spare time (ha!) which I've been putting to good use updating these pages, sketching out scenes for the next book, and doing some more organizing from our move last summer. At one point, I simply stuffed books on the shelves and left many boxes unopened. So now I'm organizing those shelves. (So I can actually find a reference book when I leave the keyboard having to know something immediately, but the book's not to be found. Or only found when I no longer need it.)

Or course, the sad thing is that, as happens with every move, a number of those titles have simply vanished into limbo—run off on holiday with all those single socks that disappear from our dryers and key chains that go "missing." But we know better now, don't we? And please don't go blaming the pennymen.

I've also been catching up on my email and other correspondence. The amount I get has been increasing steadily, and while I still try to answer it all (at least the first letter someone sends me), my response time isn't always as quick as it once was. If you haven't heard back yet, please be patient. But if a month has gone by, then yours is one of the responses that were bounced back. I've given up resending them. So make sure that your return address is correct if you'd like a response.

And there's still not much new. Moonlight and Vines is due in the stores any day, I'm still writing the new book (at a glacial speed, to steal Poppy Brite's recent comment on her own book when I was talking to her the other day), the Thursday night open sessions have moved to Patty's Pub and turned into more of a gig with MaryAnn, myself and a few invited musician friends. Our fiddler Don Fletcher is there most weeks.

On the chance that I won't be adding anything to this before the new year, here's wishing you all the best for the holiday season (however you may celebrate it) and a happy new year.

There is little news except that I've turned in the third Newford collection to Tor—it's called Moonlight and Vines and it's scheduled for a January 1999 release.

I'm getting an awful lot of mail these days—which I do enjoy—but because of the volume, please be patient in regards to a reply.

Other than that, I'm working away on the new novel and looking forward to an uneventful summer so that I can get it done by the fall.

For the other changes, I'll leave them for you to discover as you go exploring through these pages on your own.