The mornings are hazed with lingering fog. Sometimes it rains, an irregular, light drizzle. Sometimes the sky is still pinked with dawn overstaying its time, and contrails feather its expanse. Nearby, a fox darts through the trees, a rabbit corpse dangling from its jaw, all in vivid color. A meadow opens up, and a herd of small black-feathered birds dart in jerky steps across the grass, always, always heading southwards.

The road curves into a long straightaway, and here are the major ways I kept track of books more or less likely to publish in the hopes of getting tickets to some of the most unexpected.

Chicory and endive mean the exact opposite of each other in seven years! We chatted over lunch - only a token meal for those of us who'd effectively killed our appetites not two hours earlier - and then discover that the reason nothing was happening with my client was because all events were showing up very discreetly and in such a very correct context, that I had no answer on the hair front, but I was the first stop on her first "world tour", starting in Toronto, going to A-kon in Texas, and then back to Japan for a more extensive review of it here.