Middle of the week...

The talk on Gothic fiction was very well received, though it is unnerving to find that your audience contains one of the country's leading historians, who knows more about this than I am ever likely to. However, that's the sort of thing that makes you raise your own standards and that's never a bad thing.

I am avoiding reading any lit crit on the subject, but trying to work out some issues for myself. I want to have a look at some other people's theories after I've formulated some of my own. But one question was raised: is the Gothic reactionary, or subversive? So much vampire fiction contains an aristocratic protagonist - are they leeches on the proletariat, or are we supposed to succumb to their superior glamour? At the moment I am swinging wildly in both directions on the issue.

In other news, my editor has now finished her first pass at BLOODMIND and, thanks God, is very pleased with it: she thinks it could go straight out with no harm done, but there are some minor points that need a look. I'm going to go over the whole thing now that there's some distance between myself and the mss.

I have spent the entire morning making incense. We now have a very fragrant house.