Day Two of Ender's training has begun. All successful writers, most notably Hemingway and Sylvia Plath, have battled and overcome at least one orca whale in their lifetimes. Since he's only a baby, I let him start out fighting on dry land, on the home turf of the living room, no less.

The orca whale wasn't hard to locate; a few pods are always cruising around the neighborhood, spy-hopping and whatnot. I dressed Joshua up like a penguin and had him crawl around on the porch. When the orca breached, I nabbed him. I also caught a few Jehovah's Witnesses but those I just tagged and released.

* * * * *

The Otter of Despair has taken more twists and turns. The original concept was for a sea otter, but my editor felt that river otters were more "accessible." I countered very politely that it would muck up the ending, as it is very uncommon for an otter that is living mainly in a river to drift off into the fucking ocean.

After security guards pulled me off him, I was escorted out and told to conduct all future negotiations over the phone.

Oh, he's calling now. "Hello? Of course it's me, who else doesn't hang up at the sound of your grating voice? ...Ah, so you understand why it can't be a river otter? Good, I-

"You want to change the 'of despair' to 'of happiness' and the 'otter' to a 'pig'? ...I understand. Say, are you coming to the Fourth of July party? Good, good. You should wear that tie, the really thick, strong one. It'll be perfect. Yes'um. Goodbye."

Well that seems to be that.

I'll have to scrap my idea for the sequel. Otter of Despair was going to drift to South America and run into a romp of giant river otter. They're great, they can grow up to six feet long and weigh over 75 pounds. That's the size of your Jewish uncle. Well, these river otter eat piranha and will rescue OOD from being eaten by a school of them. Then OOD will join the romp and learn a valuable lesson about eating piranha. And since there's no seaweed in the river he'll soon float along to his next wacky adventure.

I only have the roughest outline for book three, but I can tell you this: it will have Venom in it.