About Momo. My fiancée got a cat, the cat is named Momo, and by every available account Momo is having a wonderful time. She gets brushed. She gets carried from room to room. She gets spoken to in a voice I have heard maybe twice, both times at an airport.

I am not asking for less of this for Momo. I want that clearly understood. I am asking whether the brushing is open to the public. I am a grown man with a full-time job and two children, and I would like it on record that I would sit very still for it.

Roach Coach is out. On Amazon, with a price and a page and everything. It is the first book of The Roach Coach Saga, which means I have now announced, in public, that there will be more of them, and can no longer quietly change my mind.

Here is how the last week actually went. I have a process. The process involves beta readers, a stack of checks that hunt the prose for everything from limp dialogue to my unexplained lifelong weakness for the word ledger, and a spreadsheet I will not be describing further. Roach Coach went through all of it and came out the other side approved.

Then I sent chapter one to my mother, as I do, and she read it on her phone and said she did not understand the order.

She was right, of course. One sentence, sitting in chapter one, which had survived every draft, every pass, and every reader who was not my mother. I am not going to tell you which sentence. I will tell you that it is fixed.

My first attempt at fixing it made the chapter worse in a way I did not notice for an hour. You can write a whole book and still find out something load-bearing about chapter one on the last morning you own it.

My mother has not asked for credit. My mother does not need to ask for credit. My mother knows precisely what she did.

Since June: The Bond Cutter is finished, in both editions, because there is a Spanish one, which exists for exactly one reader and was the most fun I have had at a keyboard in years. And for everyone asking after Book Two of A Boy Who Killed a King: in June I said Bond Cutter first, then straight back to the Shroud. Bond Cutter is done. The Shroud is next. The boy and his very expensive memory have been remarkably patient about all this.

If you enjoy the rewrites, please tell me. If you hate them, I can give you my mother's email address for complaints. Be gentle with her. She is the only quality control I have left.

The twist is that my fiancée does not actually care about soccer. She is not the one shouting at the referee. That would be me, alone on the couch, performing patriotism for two nations to an audience of no one. She isn't here to witness it either; we are still doing the long-distance thing, a country apart, until the paperwork and the plane tickets start cooperating. So my days are run, to a frankly undignified degree, by my phone. A picture of her smile can rescue an entire afternoon. A video of her rolling her eyes at me can reorganize the rest of the day. I have built a grown man's emotional weather around a single notification sound, and I regret nothing.

So here is the part where I tell you what I'm working on, and the honest answer is: I'm working on not starving anything to death. The kids, the fiancée, the full-time job, the books, the distant memory of sleep. They are all technically dependents, and every one of them would like more of me than there is of me to give. I have a system. The system is bad. But it is a system.

Here is where the books actually stand.

Roach Coach is out with beta readers, which is the publishing version of handing someone your diary and then standing very still while they read it. It's a comedy starring a washed-up captain, a kid who is too smart for everyone's good, and a food truck at the edge of the galaxy, and I love it more than is strictly professional. The early notes are kind. I've chosen to believe them.

The Bond Cutter is officially underway. I've started writing it, which means it got promoted from "thing I think about in the shower" to "thing I think about in the shower and then occasionally type." A romantasy, strange in a way I'm proud of, and the most fun I've had at a keyboard in years.

And for everyone who read A Boy Who Killed a King and has been asking after Book 2, quietly or not so quietly: it is coming. It has not been forgotten or shoved in a drawer. The plan is Bond Cutter first, then straight back to the Shroud. The boy and his very expensive memory are not going anywhere.

That's the month. If you need me, I'll be on the couch, loudly supporting two countries on behalf of a household that could not care less, secretly hoping nobody checks whether I'm also writing.