This weekend is all about freelance work that I was too chicken to turn down. It's been tough to turn down project after project for this one company and I got the feeling that the next thing I turned down would cause questions to be asked such as whether I was really a real person or just an auto-reply. If I had still been freelancing full-time, I would be getting ready for NaNoWriMo, which I'd thought about doing with my mom. We'd actually been thinking of doing it in August, a better month for us. But I had a job in August. Instead as November rolls up I am reading a catalog of other people's novels and wishing that my clever friends would write novels for me to read.



Part of the freelancing this weekend has involved going back through the list of all the books I've read professionally this year, from January to when I stopped picking up freelance work. One story has stuck in my mind, and I just re-read it just now for fun. It's called "For Those Who Ride the Dog," by Nikki Barranger, from the anthology "Stories From the Blue Moon Cafe III." It's the first story in the anthology (after a poem) and it might be the best thing I read all year. The hard part is that even as I read it I can understand why other people whom I like and respect would not like it. The other things I read and liked a lot were three books by Will Christopher Baer, which unfortunately I read on page proof so have not got a copy on my hard drive to re-read. These books are very sick but have some lovely writing. They're the kind of books that you almost can't recommend to anyone you know if you live outside certain West Coast subcultures. Like, anyone who gets the V. Vale newsletter would be down with these and get them 100% without having to actually subscribe to the lifestyles portrayed therein. I get the newsletter and am down. But can't imagine anyone in my East Coast life being even slightly so.

I am reading a book about stairs. Maybe the most interesting thing about it is that the architect who wrote it is mainly noted for being an expert witness in injury lawsuits involving stairs. I think there are a few logical slipups and some assumptions about architectural intent that seem specious to me. But the book is also missing a few pages, which were neatly removed so that I didn't even notice before I bought it. One page that is missing has an illustration of an industrial staircase that has alternating left and right treads, so you have to start with the same foot every time. I kind of want to see how that works, sort of like the alternating pegs on a telephone pole. I'm not sure if it would be an improvement on our spiral stairs but it might be. After hearing our guests go up and down them last weekend with some difficulty, it is on my mind.