Assistant Pig-Keeper

I have a bit of a problem. At bedtime, The Daughter and I have been reading through The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper, and The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander. We've been alternating through the series, and tonight we finished The Black Cauldron, putting us at the two-books-down point in each series of five. OK.

However, it didn't occur to me that I might have this particular problem until last night, when we read the last chapters of The Black Cauldron. If you've read the book and know the story, you know that a particular character executes a pretty amazing act of self-sacrifice at a critical juncture; it's one of the most emotional moments of the series, and last night while reading that passage I found myself getting choked up.

I did pretty well at concealing it, and the real difficulty is still three books away, so it'll be a while, but it's real and it's going to happen. The problem is that I can't get through the last two chapters of The High King, the last book in the Prydain Chronicles, without crying like a little girl. Wow, that's going to be a hard book to read aloud. Hmmmm. But as I say, that'll be a while; tonight we're back into The Dark is Rising, with Book Three, Greenwitch.

In other news, two short stories of mine went out into the world yesterday, where they will do battle against editors who will likely vanquish them with mighty Slips of Rejection +4. But you never know, so wish them luck.