Dear deviants and friends!

Just wanted to let you know that I'm still alive, and thinking of you, and even though I rarely comment these days, I try to stick around, and follow your journals.

2009 has been a very exciting (and exhausting) year so far, even if the results of our last weekend's elections have been a little damper. We got the same coalition we were having throughout my whole youth (and if this little internet tool which checked my personal convictions against those of 24 political parties is to be trusted, the winning parties rank no. 21 and 24 on my personal list). Maybe you catch my drift if you imagine you went to the polls with high hopes and got the Reagan administration all over again.

But let's not think of this! Last month, I finally took my disputation (final oral exam), so all that's left to do is publish my thesis (i.e., upload it to the university library's server), and I'll finally get my Ph.D. (or Dr. phil., as it is called over here). Next summer semester, I will be holding a little seminar, and we're also busy setting up a research project and organizing conferences; it looks like the biannual meeting of The International Gothic Association will take place in Heidelberg in summer 2011.

My second novel (Die Magier von Montparnasse; "Magicians of Montparnasse") will come out next spring, and I'm quite excited about this. Alas, it's a sad truth that unless you're a bestselling author, doing translations will earn you more money than writing your own novels. So I struggled to gain a foothold in the translation business for several months, until I finally had luck (I'm in the process of applying the finishing touches to the German version of Michael Thomas Ford's "Jane Bites Back" right now). It's the first time in my life I'm getting accurate payment for something I actually learned and, most of the time, enjoy doing.

So despite my best efforts, I'm finally in a 9-5 job However: working at home, no driving around, no bosses who get on your nerves, which is cool. Instead, it's deadlines, deadlines, deadlines – but if things go on like this, I might even be able to afford some new clothing Which is cool, too.

I'll really try to post more often than once in a year!


<sub>Gallery links:
My gallery: Photography and designs.
My scrapbook: Short stories, poems and snapshots.

Amazon links:
Fairwater: Urban fantasy (German).
Gagarin’s Underpants: Short stories by the Creative Writing Class of Heidelberg University (in English). With illustrations by `saintartaud.

More:
The Rainlights Gazette: My blog (mostly German).
IDLS: Keyboard recordings, over at Humble Voice.</sub>