This won't surprise you but

Neil Gaiman makes my life happy.

I discovered that his new book, The Graveyard Book, the book that's going to make my September happy (well, my October really – like I need anything to make my October happy!) , it's called that because of The Jungle Book. It's a joke. Get it? There's a little baby that is two and gets abandoned in a graveyard (instead of a jungle) and raised by dead people (instead of wolves).

Why should it be that Neil Gaiman is so insanely awesome? Why should that be the case? Like remember that time when he wrote that really good screenplay for what turned out to be a really good movie about a girl who wanted to run away from the circus and join real life? AWESOME. Why should it be that way, really? When there are so many dozens of awful people around who could use some equal distribution of awesome, and they can't because Neil Gaiman is using it all up?

...But not all of it actually, now that I come to think of it. I am glad to report that my three favorite living authors (that I can think of right now) are all publishing books in this upcoming year. Diana Wynne Jones (God please preserve her life forever because her books are my longstanding and permanent love affair) is releasing another book about Sophie and Howl (darling Howl! I fell in love with Howl when he said his shining dishonesty would be the salvation of him) on June 10th; and Elizabeth Peters, bless her, is releasing another book about John Tregarth on August 19th; and Neil Gaiman is releasing his Graveyard Book on September 30th.

WOW.

Oh, and, and, and – not my favorite living author but I do love her a lot – Lynn Flewelling, who apparently has the same birthday as Viggo Mortenson that I also love and adore (he's this generation's Manly Epic Dude, and I think he is generally much better at it than the late Mr. Heston), she is also talking about releasing another book this year. July. But I don't believe it. I've heard this story out of her before, and I waited around two years for Oracle's Queen and was kind of let down by it when it finally arrived. So there will be no hopes-getting-up with me, because I can no longer be fooled by her tricky little games.

AND, Pushing Daisies is coming back in the fall for season number two (probably the last season, but more season than I really had reason to expect given its strangeness and the team of people working on it), AND there is a new Joss Whedon show about which I have excitement feelings, AND another season of The Office, AND I am thinking of taking kickboxing, AND I will soon be getting my very first apartment that is a real apartment with rent and utilities and everything, AND there is my car, my lovely car, my beautiful car, that will remain in my life and not have to be sold, AND I have a new and really excellent hat. And although I have lost my beautiful jacket that meant the world to me, I must just think of it as passing it on to its next owner, and not being greedy with what is clearly the best jacket in the whole universe, and feeling grateful for having had my jacket in my life for so many years before it was required of me to give it up. (This is Acceptance.) And I have reason to believe that I will soon be in love with Doctor Who, about which I have heard for such a long time now, and that would be very joyous because the deep desperate Joss Whedon withdrawal is not far away now (I know it's two seasons left of Angel and four of Buffy but that is so few! compared to five and seven as it was two months ago! that's HALF of how many there were left when I started, which, wow, means that I've watched three seasons each of Buffy and Angel since mid-February).

(Wesley Wyndham-Pryce is, incidentally, dead to me. Like Stephen Colbert, we keep a brief list of people who are Dead To Us, and last Thursday I was forced to the unpleasant necessity of adding Wesley to it. It's such a shame considering all we've been through together, and how awfully awfully fond I was of him when he first showed up on Angel and he was a rogue demon hunter. Oh well.)

Oops, I wasn't supposed to ever mention Buffy again. Oh well.

And the happiness continues because my lovely flatmate Marie is going to live at my place in May, and my lovely friend tim is coming for a visit in the summertime if she wants to and I can get off work to entertain her, and darling Kate is coming home in a month and I've thought of a really brilliant gift to get her if I can obtain it.

Er, this started out as a brief sentence about The Graveyard Book but then I got distracted by remembering all the new good books that are arriving later this year. So that was my bad. I'll stop now.