The cover is spectacular.

An emailing service called BookSCREAM (@BookSCREAM) picked up the promotion, and I’m guessing about three quarters of my downloads were due to that. So thanks, BookSCREAM, and my fellow authors, keep an eye out for them. They’re an up-and-comer worth watching.

The first line is “I’m pretty sure the first story I ever wrote would have gotten me arrested today.”

The Amazon paperback version: Darkness Ascendant: Book Two of The Catmage Chronicles (Volume 2)

Darkness Ascendant – trade paperback at CreateSpace store

Darkness Ascendant on Kindle

Darkness Ascendant – Nook version

CNN can’t find the strength to put that in their headline of the piece about the awards.

MSNBC implies that he stuffed the ballot box in their text article, and Al Sharpton goes after him on camera.

NPR includes the worst parts of a horrible review in their account. (Kirkus Reviews are usually bought by the publisher. Here, I’m pretty sure that Kirkus solicited a free review.)

HuffPo outright says he stuffed the ballot box.

Funny, in the CNN piece, we’re told the voting is carefully vetted.

Kids voted for their favorites online with the help of their parents and teachers, or educators submitted group ballots after polling their students. The teen finalists were chosen through a joint program with Teenreads.com, part of The Book Report Network. The top author and illustrator finalists were determined by the bestseller lists. Voters were also allowed to write in finalists that weren’t listed. The Children’s Book Council’s vetting process ensures that voting is done by children and teens, or submitted from classroom ballot boxes, they said.

So I guess we’re just looking at Rush Limbaugh Derangement Syndrome. Heads are exploding all across the country. Me? I find the whole thing hilarious.

Yet now some powerful figures in mental health are claiming to have identified a new disorder that could vastly expand the ranks of young people treated for attention problems. Called sluggish cognitive tempo, the condition is said to be characterized by lethargy, daydreaming and slow mental processing. By some researchers’ estimates, it is present in perhaps two million children.

There are several alarm bells going off as I read this article. Here’s the first:

Experts pushing for more research into sluggish cognitive tempo say it is gaining momentum toward recognition as a legitimate disorder — and, as such, a candidate for pharmacological treatment. Some of the condition’s researchers have helped Eli Lilly investigate how its flagship A.D.H.D. drug might treat it.

Isn’t that interesting. The “experts” researching this condition are being paid by Eli Lilly to figure out how they can treat it with already-existing drugs–thus adding to Lilly’s bottom line.

Here’s the second:

Yet some experts, including Dr. McBurnett and some members of the journal’s editorial board, say that there is no consensus on the new disorder’s specific symptoms, let alone scientific validity. They warn that the concept’s promotion without vastly more scientific rigor could expose children to unwarranted diagnoses and prescription medications — problems that A.D.H.D. already faces.

“We’re seeing a fad in evolution: Just as A.D.H.D. has been the diagnosis du jour for 15 years or so, this is the beginning of another,” said Dr. Allen Frances, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Duke University. “This is a public health experiment on millions of kids.”

In other words, there have been no scientific studies on the so-called disorder.

And here is the last alarm, which proves to me that this “disorder” is a load of crap:

Dr. Barkley declined repeated requests for interviews about his work and statements regarding sluggish cognitive tempo. Several of the field’s other key researchers, Stephen P. Becker of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Benjamin B. Lahey of the University of Chicago and Stephen A. Marshall of Ohio University, also declined to comment on their work.

If it’s a true disorder, why are they not speaking to the press? Could it be because there is no science behind it, only the desire to increase their research grants from Eli Lilly?

Dr. McBurnett recently conducted a clinical trial funded and overseen by Eli Lilly that investigated whether proposed symptoms of sluggish cognitive tempo could be treated with Strattera, the company’s primary A.D.H.D. drug. (One of Strattera’s selling points is that it is not a stimulant like Adderall and Concerta, medications more susceptible to abuse.) His study, published in The Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology, concluded, “This is the first study to report significant effects of any medication on S.C.T.”

An Eli Lilly spokeswoman said in an email, “Sluggish cognitive tempo is one of many conditions that Lilly scientists continue to study to help satisfy unmet medical needs around the world.”

Uh-huh.

You know what makes up a significant portion of my writing time? Plotting. You know what another word for plotting could be?

Daydreaming.

If the New York Times is treating this trend with such outright skepticism, I don’t believe it will take root. But in this era of Nanny State Uber Alles, I wouldn’t want to lay odds.

I will never promise anything late any night ever again.

“Sometime” is my new time of day to submit things. And then I’m going to add a day.

Actually, I’m going to remember how long it takes me to edit for the next book, and not procrastinate like I did this weekend.

I know a lot of writers think I’m crazy to print out and edit the final manuscript on paper, but I think it’s pretty important. You read differently on different media. I’ve been passing by “Andy and his mom got into the cat” several times onscreen. Caught it on paper. Oh, you rascally r & t keys.

Darkness Ascendant: Book Two of The Catmage Chronicles, is done. I just finished it a few hours ago. Look for it in paperback and ebook at the end of the month.

I’ll send it to my copy editor in a week or so, and it should be out by the end of March.

That said, I got a great amount of writing done today. I’m in the home stretch, about to reach the finish line. I don’t think I can achieve it tomorrow, but definitely in the next few days (though I’m seriously thinking of taking at least half of Monday off to finish the book if I’m that close).

My March publication date is effectively firm, assuming the copy edit and proofreading go well. I know the typesetting won’t be an issue, since I’m doing it myself. Someone remind me to give myself a raise.

Book three is going to take a lot less time than book two. My life is far less complicated these days, thankfully. A happy Meryl is a productive Meryl. I’ve been pretty productive since December.