Today's Daily Planet

Eric Slick with fellow drummer Steve Drozd from the Flaming Lips

Hey hey hey, let's start with the music first. Eric is indeed friends with the Lips and I don't know if I mentioned this before, he was on stage with them last month in disguise -- he was dressed as Santa Claus.

He gets around, my son.

Here's another cool Adrian Belew article over at Live Daily where he talks about their upcoming west coast tour and yes! yes! yes! the recording of the Side Four Live CD with Julie and Eric which is being plotted and planned as we speak.

Meanwhile, Eric is in heavy rehearsal mode for his trip out to St. Louis next week with Mike Keneally and Bryan Beller -- very difficult and challenging music and he's loving every minute of it. Bryan Beller, who is an unbelievable bassist, is a very cool guy. Check out his bio -- most interesting.

Eric also has more touring plans in the works with both Project Object (late December, early January northeast tour perhaps?) and Chris Harford.

Julie, who has a brand new recording studio, is producing a new CD by Sweatheart. She also produced their first CD which got some very nice reviews and there's already buzz about this new one...and how cool is this, their backing band is The Toddlers -- Rock School grads Julia Rainer, Max DiMezza, and Dave Papp.

It's just so amazing to see all of these awesomely talented kids I watched grow up into way hip adults now out there making great music.

Saturday night we're all going to see Adrian Belew play with Robert Fripp in his side band known as Projekct 6 at the Keswick Theater in Glenside. Ooh, I really want to meet Robert. I asked Eric if we'd get backstage and he's like, Mom, I'm in Adrian's band, what do you think?

I think I'll be really happy if I do, but if Robert isn't the kind of guy who likes crazy blonde women gaping at him and blabbering either before or after he performs, then I'll understand. But it will be way cool to see Adrian again.

Oh, and make sure you click on Robert's link and read his diary. He's brilliant...but as a faithful reader of said journal, I think that's where I probably got the idea he's not going to be open to having me backstage but I'll let you know how it all pans out on Monday.

In writing news, Romance Divas had very nice things to say about Another Bite of the Apple and if you visit my publisher's home page, you'll see Another Bite is their #4 best seller for September. It's slipped to 2nd highest rated in erotica over at Fictionwise but I really can't complain - that's 2nd highest rated out of 2,071 books in that genre.

But um, if anyone wants to buy it, rate it "great" and help me get back to number one, I will...hmm...I don't know, you tell me what you want in return and maybe I'll do it.

Dear god, why do I set myself up for these things?

(Because you love it, Rob. You do, you do. Don't even try denying it.)

And if things aren't fabulous enough, tonight I received a special invitation to edit a new anthology which, quite frankly, has me over the moon. I will talk about that more once it's officially confirmed and announced (of course I immediately replied YES!), but the bottom line is, I'm not only editing this anthology, I get to select the final submissions to be included. It's slated for a summer, 2007 release. I wish I could blab the title and premise now but you'll have to stay tuned for more details.

Speaking of writers, Susan Henderson has an awesome question of the week over at her website:

"Are you, or have you ever been, obsessed? Tell me your story."

Now you know I couldn't resist answering that one. And yeah, yeah, of course I got my Neil Gaiman mention in. Go ahead over and have a read and add your own thoughts/comments -- some of the other replies really rock...but of course I had to be the one to open the flood gates. I especially liked "Aimee's" response...and I'm wondering, could Aimee be one of my favorite short story writers ever -- Aimee Bender?

Sue? Is it? That's so freaking fantastic! But even if it isn't, I was just over at her swell site (Swell? Where did I get that one from? Gosh and golly and gee whiz!) and see she has a writer's exercise of the week. And now of course because I'm an obsessive as you will read in Sue's blog in case you already haven't figured that out from reading mine, I must immediately write a story using said exercise.

And so I bid you goodnight.

Oh my god, am I a dork or what.

Later,
xo