Kage Baker often wondered aloud: where has the Time gone? Actually, she tended to scream it frantically, demanding to know who had made off with the time she needed to complete something. because someone had to be responsible – time didn’t just evaporate on its own! It does, of course, but Kage didn’t believe it.

There are cultures hither and yon on the face of the rolling world who are convinced there are never, ever any accidents. Someone is responsible for every things that goes wrong; every sparrow falls from the sky on purpose, every flower withers by design, all deaths are murders. Kage would have fit right in with them.

But there are accidents. The majority of the fabric of Life is composed of accidents, I think; we live on tiny bits of coherent weave held together with a universe of slubs. I personally am a natural inhabitant of slubs … this can be an attractive texture in, say, raw silk. In life it’s usually a mess.

Someone kindly reminded me today that I have not posted a blog in 2 weeks. (Thank you, Steve!) Two weeks! How the hell did that happen? How did I not notice? Obviously, somehow I fell off a slub and into the yawning chasm between the few well-spun strands of my life, but how it happened – I do not know.

Except … our 2-car household has been afflicted with serial automotive plagues. Stupid physical ills have afflicted me. I slipped in the wet mulch after our unseasonal rain and scratched up everything from my nape to my ankles. Then I pulled a muscle in my back while chasing socks behind my bed – I have unusually active socks, and kleptomaniac cats. I’ve developed an allergy to something unknown, and have been spending time blind, choking and/or asleep. And I have been dealing with all sorts of super peachie keen requests from publishers and agents; which are delightful to have to handle, but take time, time, TIME!

However, they do have good results. Contracts I had thought doomed are now successfully signed and on their way back to Italy. My agents are incredibly cool ladies.

The gummint forms to convince Uncle Sam that I am NOT supporting foreign princes are also filed; now I’m just waiting for a certificate proving I dwell legally in, and pay taxes to, the United State of America. I’d have thought they had figured that out, after my paying income tax for the past freaking 42 years! – but no. You gotta fill out a special form and get a special certification to prove you are not clandestinely contributing to the Bavarian Illuminati. And it can’t be done electronically, only by hand. I should probably consider myself lucky I don’t have to make out the forms in triplicate in my own blood.

Best of all – but once more, time-consuming – I have been making officially requested changes to Knight & Dei. It’s just been partitioned into sections, with an eye to giving it some internal skeletal structure. Without the help of Kimberly – who is a veritable goddess of coloured pens, sticky notes and little flags, and has the Manual of Style inscribed in her very genes – this would have been impossible. But she actually enjoys this kind of thing!

Oh, and I forgot also to remind you, Dear Readers, that the next 2 installments of Stefan Raets’ reread of The Company series are up on tor.com. Go and read them! They are great. It’s fascinating for me to see what questions occur to other people’s minds as they read the stories. I’ve lived with all the characters so long – a couple generations, in some cases – that seeing them through someone else’s eyes is always a revelation.

Anyway, I got so busy with other things that I honestly did not realize 2 weeks had gone by. I have the date displayed on my computer, of course, but that only works if you, you know, look at the thing. I seldom even know what day of the week it is. Kimberly promises to nag me the next time I get lost and forget how much time is passing.

In the meantime, there are still stories demanding to be written; the while I wait for the next request from my amazing agents. Who, by the way, have confirmed  to me what they are doing with that manuscript that they so astonishingly like.

They’re sending it to Tor. And Tor wants to see it.

I don’t know where the Time goes, nor what it is doing. But I like it.