I will tell you something darling that happened first thing this morning. I’m in the bathroom, “performing my morning ablutions,” and Carlos comes to stand outside the door with music blasting.

He gets up earlier than I do, often to watch an hour of Contagious Laughter on Reddit and laugh his butt off. Like Beatrice he “hath often dreamt of unhappiness, and waked (him)self with laughing.”

But this morning he was watching a little video by the composer of the Baldur’s Gate 3 soundtrack: specifically, the really big Disney-villain-esque song during the Devil’s combat in Act III, House of Hope, called “Raphael’s Final Act.”

So many interesting things about the composition, not least of all the fine tradition of Sprechstimme, or speaking the tones in a song rather than singing them (my musician friend Mary told me, when the subject of singing devils came up in our collaboration a few months ago, that, in opera, the Devil never sings, because music is too beautiful, and he is always ugly; when his parts come, he only chants), and all kinds of other tidbits, but…

BUT! What you really have to know is this: it was 7:30 in the morning; I had just rolled out of bed; my eyes were still crusted over like a newborn puppy’s; and this song was full-out OPERA-EPIC, and playing at full blast.

And Carlos was standing outside the bathroom door, holding his laptop aloft in the air, trembling with the warm aliveness coffee, and playing the Devil’s song for me, because he thought I needed to hear it.

It was totally our “Say Anything” boombox moment, Carlos in the role of John Cusack.

Speaking of Carlos, this is happening this July:

My beloved shall is going to be one of this year’s GUESTS OF HONOR at CONvergence!!! They posted it on their Instragram today, so I wanted to share it with you. Let us know if you’ll be attending! It’s in Minneapolis! I can’t wait!

I’ve never been to a CONvergence before, but I’ve been in love with it ever since they had Amal El-Mohtar as GoH, and she glowed about the experience afterwards. It was her first time as GoH, and she said it really set the bar.

(And speaking of AMALFACE! She’s one of the Guests of Honor at READERCON this year! AAUGH I AM SO HAPPY! AAAAUGH JULY! IT IS SO FULL OF CONS AND FRIENDS! Which means… SO MANY FANCY DRESSES! We have bought fancy new luggage. Just today. Yes, yes. All our other luggage fell to pieces last year.)

Since Carlos and I are doing double-duty cons this year, both SFF writing cons AND gaming cons, I decided to give myself a break and not try to do programming at Convergence. My job, as I see it, is to follow Carlos around in FANCY FLOUNCY FUN FESTIVAL CLOTHES, and take ALL THE PICS of him being ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. What a load off.

But that reminds me: must fill out panel stuff for GenCon. Origins is coming up fast. Aaugh, wait, Cooney. Just pay attention to your novel deadline: WHICH IS TOMORROW. (But my editor’s giving me the weekend to do a bit of a spit polish on it, and read it out loud to Carlos and my mama, so that I can at least get some of the typos ironed out. But I’m TRYING to finish by tomorrow so I can TAKE THE WEEKEND to do that!)