When I was little, I made up my own fairy tales, and the ghostly echo of Once upon a time shapes all the fiction Ive ever written.

I spent the year behind on deadlines and everything else. It's only now in December that I feel even slightly caught up. 2016 has to be better.

Zombies are the proletariat. Long live the workers!

I was wowed by Margo Jefferson's memoir, Negroland, which is about growing up black and privileged in Chicago in the fifties and sixties. It was a window into an alien world. Obviously, I'm not black, but what was really alien to me was her family's focus on respectability. I was never taught when to wear white gloves, what length skirt is appropriate.

Really, according to the shrinks, I am angry at everyone ever. Especially them. I am all anger and resentment all the time. Not one of them has ever suggested that maybe I lie because the world is better the way I tell it.

I am not Nostradamus.Nor would I want to be. I'm convinced being able to tell the future is the worst superpower. I'd rather be invisible and being invisible never ends well. Just read H. G. Wells!

Lungs, they do not like to be messed with. I give pneumonia one star and that's for the silent p.