On the road again: Boston, day 2

When your day job is all about confidential work, you don't give out details of novels or stories in progress, and you try to respect the privacy of others, the most you have to report on some trips is what you ate. That's my situation today.

Dinner tonight was an augmented version of the tasting menu at Asana, a lovely restaurant in the gorgeous Mandarin Oriental hotel. I say "augmented" because we added a foie gras course and opted for both the cheese course and the dessert; oink, oink. The meal was good but not great, but three courses were perfectly executed exemplars of their type: the truffled risotto, the foie gras, and the dessert. I'd go back just for those three.

I'm making my way through the second pass of Children No More, and after revising the first eight chapters, I'm happy to say that at least so far, I think this thing is pretty damn good. I must admit, of course, that I'm probably the worst person on the planet to judge it, and I haven't hit the part where I (intentionally, of course) juke the narrative in unexpected ways, but I was rather pleasantly surprised by this initial bit. Here's hoping the surprise continues.

On the music front, I've been wearing the electrons out of the (top-quality, WAV format, of course) copy of The Gaslight Anthem's The '59 Sound on my iPod. I'm chair-dancing as I work. I'm here to tell you that there's not a bad track on this one.

Join me in another one: "Great Expectations." Enjoy