Newest News: In addition to school beginning (see the school bells up at the top here?) there's always something going on in Balona under the warm September sun (actually the September moon!), only most old folks I know don't want to see it, and the teens don't want anybody to notice the goings-on. Mostly it's nooding (a word you can figure out for yourself) in the Yulumne River, where kids leap in the icy water in the moonlight, shriveling most of their important parts. Constable Cod Gosling parks his police cruiser up there on the levee so he can save drowning bodies, he says, but probably only to look at the naked cavorters. I have not deigned to go up there yet since I haven't decided on the just-right bathing suit that could give the impression I was naked, too. Besides, I'm all bloated up from happiness with the great review in School Library Journal about my book Verga's Blessing (which is advertised as coming out in October, but is really arriving this month, right now). Balonans are just beginning to realize, now that the sores on their necks are healed up, that Ms. Bless was a true vampire, even though hard to remember.

   Readers are writing emails to BalonaBooks and telling us that Tery Ordway's new book Nobody's Fault is really super-great reading, even though poor old Junior Kuhl doesn't talk in very good English. To make up for Junior's lack, Tery speaks sort of hoidy-toidy, which does sort of grate on an older, more sophisticated person like me. You could email me and tell me, especially about a book I'm a star in: Community Spirits, a ghost story you can read any time of the year.

    More yet: Mr. Don Keyshot is telling about some of his funny and painful adventures. I am one of the stars in his book which is titled, A Perched-in Soul, and tells (in November) how I'm a pretty good journalist, etc.

   Our cute, curly-headed editor Jon Riis started his own blog on MySpace.com. You can read it over there at Jon's Blog I hope you will e-mail me and tell me if you like my own blog.     Patella's E-Mail