It's 6 a.m. My mom calls from Moscow. I have to call her back because she can't afford the international phone charges. She's happy. She borrowed money from people, and got some from me, and grandpa won't be cremated but buried, like a proper Christian. She has been religious lately. It helps her. I understand. The funeral will cost $1,000. She's also happy because of all the running around she has lost five pounds.

Now there is a new problem.

There is no place for him in the cemetery where the rest of my family is buried. There is only one (she thought there were three), and she is saving it for grandma who is clinging to life, laughing deliriously for no reason and soiling herself and eating only yoghurt. Two more days, today and tomorrow, will be devoted to hunting for a burial spot and hoping to find one.

I yawn. I listen and try to tape my brain together. There has been no sleep this week for me. Beginnings of a cold. Beginnings of a urinary tract infection. Because my body is frankly pissed off at me for not taking care of it, because in 12 days it wants to go on a bloody train to start writing a new bloody novel when this bloody novel I'm working on right now will be finally done in 10 days. I will have a two-day break.

Why am I writing this? To empty my head of this stuff so I can concentrate on Dracula and four kids dropping on his head and him kidnapping one of them (the girl) and the rest of them trying to save her (the boys). Because. This is my art. This is important. For fuck's sake, people pay me to get their brains out their shit and plop them into a silly adventure and feel happy.

So, as you can see, this thing called "life" continues.

And people ask me where my stories come from. Man, I have so many, I have barely time to type them all up.