As those of you who follow the Twitter feed on this page will know, I have just returned from a sojourn in the desert. While there, I was able to contemplate the sere and scorched mysteries of life, while at same time practicing the ascetic discipline of forgoing dessert in the desert, because dessert does not lie within the range of my deserts. That said, one of my friends remarked to K. (who then remarked to me) that I seem happier than I’ve been in some time. This came as a surprise to me, but I guess we must attribute this to my ever-sharper acting abilities. While I present a dynamic and cheerful persona, I’m afraid that I am withered inside, worn down emotionally and intellectually by the absurdity and pretense of our daily lives, which we live as if death will never come for us (“You can high-hat me all the time/And you may never come my way/Mother Earth is waiting for you/There’s a debt you got to pay/ I don’t care how rich you are/I don’t care what you’re worth/When it all comes down, you got to go back to Mother Earth”). Just listening to Tracy Nelson sing those lines brings me right out of it though. Sing the Blues. Live the Blues. Take the Blues right down into the grave with you.
     The fact is, I lost a good friend a few days ago. Ariane Fasquelle was my editor for Éditions Grasset et Fasquelle for the past quarter century, and she was a woman of grace, beauty and talent, who always made the City of Light all the brighter every time I visited, and seemed to make the sun shine brighter when she visited me here in California. I will miss her. And I treasure the hour we spent together last month in Paris. We reminisced. We drank wine. And we said our farewells. Such are the days and the hours and the minutes of our lives.
     For me, and for those of you attuned to my monthly musings, life goes on, at least for the present. To that end, I will lighten things up here by telling you how drought-stricken California looked like the Amazon after Arizona and that I was revivified and rededicated to the stories I am now writing, even as I push to discover what will become the fifth in the succession of new ones. Thus far, in addition to the five stories completed before I launched into The Terranauts, there are four new ones, written since January: “Subtract One Death”; “Surtsey”; “Warrior Jesus” and “The Fugitive.” I have had joy in writing them. And I hope they will go out, in due time, to various magazines, and that you will see them in print and take joy in reading them.  As it stands, I would like to see two or three more emerge before I turn my hand to the next novel sometime later this year. We shall see.
     In the meanwhile, I’ve just received ARCs of The Terranauts, and that’s pretty exciting for me (see the Twitter feed from April 26 to see that excitement illustrated). We are six months out from publication, but both my editor and publicist at Ecco feel that releasing the ARCs early is a way of expressing their enthusiasm for the book and, they hope, communicating that enthusiasm to a wider, if select, group of influential readers. As for public appearances, I thank those of you who attended my event at the L.A. Times Book Festival earlier this month, during which I delivered a reading of “The Relive Box,” after a lively introduction by Tom Curwen. My only upcoming appearance will be on Monday, May 2, at the 900-seat Newman Center for the Performing Arts in Denver. I don’t know about the availability of tickets, but rest assured that I, at least, will gain admittance (that is, if the pilots and aircraft and weather and fates allow).
     Finally, since the only thing that really counts is what we give to the future, I want to update you on the rat situation here (see my letter to the rats of the future on the Letters to the Future website), and so I present you with this stunning portrait of Rat #104, just prior to her release in the Santa Ynez Mountains. All one hundred-four have been live-trapped here on my property in the past two and a half years. Like Dave LaJoy, I abjure poison, which is not only cruel to the animals afflicted with it, but works its fatal way up the food chain (the resident mountain lion of the Santa Monica Mountains has twice been darted and detoxified, for example). At any rate, beauty is where you find it. Enjoy.