Well hello, there.

Good god, it's been a long time since I've written anything in this space. I imagine it gathering virtual dust-bunnies and feeling somewhat sticky.

I'm not ready to give it up just yet, though, because I went back and re-read that post I did almost a year ago about time and realized that I might be able to work some of the ideas into a new piece I am writing about lyric atemporality for my second book project. Which means that blogging is actually good for me as a writer and as a scholar, and I should do more of it.

Yes, that's right, a second book project.  Did I mention I finished my book and sent it out to the editor? And got a thumbs up from the first reader? That was back in December, 2011. The second reader's report should arrive any day now. Any day now. Cue sound of crickets chirping. More chirping, and a large tumbleweed drifts across the somewhat less dusty blogscape.

So in the meantime, while I'm waiting, I've started working on my second book project. I got the idea very early in the morning on my walk to work and immediately texted Veralinda because I was worried it was too sexy or trendy and not scholarly enough, but she reassured me that I'd give it the solid, scholarly, classical treatment because she is that good a friend and colleague, so she knew exactly what I was on about and what my angle would be. So I started plotting it out and writing research proposals, and managed to score some funding from my university for a six week trip to the UK to do some research on the first three chapters. I've already written about fifteen pages of one of them, so I'm really excited to get to the British Library, V&A, Warburg Institute and Bodleian to start looking at dead things that move around in early modern literature. Yes, dead things: mummies, corpses on judgement day, rejunvenated bodies rising from Medea's cauldron, eunuchs (you'll have to read the unwritten chapter to understand exactly how these are dead things), and hopefully zombies and vampires, too, once I can find some (perhaps I will venture into Shakespearean appropriation in popular culture, a la Twelfth Night of the Living Dead). Or maybe I'll just write about some good old metempsychosis.

In a little over two weeks, I shall travel across the pond to share a gorgeous Victorian house (with a patio and a garden and a piano!) with two friends and colleagues in London (Veralinda and let's call her Margaret), where we will keep one another motivated to get serious work done during the day, and go out and see plays like The Duchess of Malfi and have pints and glasses of prosecco at night.

Unless, of course, I receive my second reader's report first. Then I'll be revising. And the dead can wait.