People have also been asking me for more stories about faeries and changelings. Apart from "Sealskin," my surfer selkie story, I'm now proud to present "The Fox Queen," a screenplay I wrote a few years back and have been tinkering with in odd moments since. Artwork by Lea Hernandez It's the story of Harvey, a detective, and Ping, an apprentice sorceress, and what happens when the Queen of the Fox Spirits gets into 1906 San Francisco. Yes, martial arts, Chinese sorcery, crotchety Taoist magicians, shapeshifting, sexual vampirism and all the other reasons we love fox spirits so much-along with the Great Quake and Fire and the Grand Masonic Convocation, just to make life interesting. It's done minor rounds through Hollywood, but the general consensus is that it's a great story, but the studios only do one or two blockbusters a year and everyone already has their pet projects. Plus aside from a scene in Kurosawa's Dreams, no one's seen fox spirits so they don't want to bet on them as opposed to proven quantities like vampires, aliens and serial killers. Ah well. It's also been suggested that I turn it into a comic miniseries followed by a graphic novel, and to that end, I've gotten together with comics artist Lea Hernandez and we're going to be making a joint pitch at the San Diego Comicon. If that takes, then "The Fox Queen," will be going offline for a while, but in the meantime, I might as well let folks read it here, since while the screenplay is an artform, it, like the stageplay, is not considered to be a publication until it is actually produced. And if you're a comic-book publisher or radio play producer or animation studio director-or, for that matter, someone in Hollywood who's looking for next summer's blockbuster and actually thinks fox spirits are cool-here's a complete grade-A (from USC) polished script from a professional author with contact numbers and everything. Go for it. Read it. We'll do lunch.