A Notebook is a Laboratory

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It's Thursday morning in Hangzhou and I have a whole day to myself to read and loaf. Mostly, I plan to wander about the astonishingly beautiful West Lake, and possibly return to the Sidu Causeway, a public works project that's still paying dividends today.

And yesterday, I got to sit and talk for some time with Zhou Haihong, an old friend and a very fine writer.

So I am happy and my life is blessed.


And speaking of the Image Book . . .

The image of a woman in her underwear using a public pay phone was surreal enough it felt like it should have a place in my world. I didn't much like the sexualization of the image, however, so I added a dragon head.

Still not happy with the results, but a notebook is a laboratory. Not everything in it is going to work.

Above: For those who came in late, my latest novel, The Iron Dragon's Mother, will be published in 26 days. To draw attention to this fact, I'm serializing the Image Book I made to help me imagine a strange world for the book.

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