Greetings, CCLaP faithful! Sorry you haven't heard from me in almost two weeks now; for those who don't know, I had a pretty serious bicycle accident here in Chicago at the end of July (someone in a parked car opened their door in front of me too fast for me to avoid it), with a resulting spill that shattered my left hip and also broke my right hand. I've been in the hospital almost the entire time, going through a series of surgeries to correct the problems, sadly without access to a computer which is why I haven't been able to post updates; but happily, just today I finally got transferred to a nursing facility here in the city, and one of the things they have is an online computer in their basement, which is what I'm on right now.

The bad news is that I still have quite a way to go before I'm fully recovered -- in about a week, for example, I'll be heading to my parents' place in St. Louis, where I'll be spending a couple of months doing my long-term physical therapy and recovery. But the good news, of course, is that it doesn't take too terribly much effort to read books and write essays while doing that physical recovery, so I'm very much hoping to get the CCLaP website up and running again in just another couple of weeks from now. And of course, don't forget that before the accident, we had just been a few weeks away from publishing CCLaP's latest original book, Sally Weigel's debut novella Too Young to Fall Asleep; so I will be bringing all those files with me down to St. Louis and very much hope to have that actually finished up and out to the public by the time Labor Day rolls around. (By the way, would you like to be a volunteer proofreader of the manuscript right before it comes out? Just drop me a line at cclapcenter at gmail.com, or of course feel free to send wishes of good health through that address as well.)

For those who would like more timely updates on how the recovery process is going (as well as see lots of cool gory photos starting next week), you can always stop by my Facebook account [facebook.com/jasonpettus] for the latest; otherwise, I simply ask for your patience and well-wishes for now, and rest assured that the book reviews will be starting up in earnest again here near the end of August. I want to thank very, very much all the people I've already heard from (including my brother Colin and my friends Tom and Kate, who have been getting updates on my status posted online while I was in the actual hospital), and of course I look forward to speaking with all of you again very soon.