So, let's see...

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That space-noir story stalled really early and pretty badly.

Post-Clarion, I seem to be getting really good at writing the first three or four paragraphs of stories. I've been doing a lot of that.

I guess I could go in for something closer to Borges-style ficciones so I wouldn't have to write much more than the first few paragraphs, but I just don't think that's me.

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I think I've finally got something else coming down the pipe that actually has enough momentum to at least get finished. We'll see whether it's anything with enough there to be revised, or if it'll be (as Fred Engels said in a different sort of context) "finished and left to the gnawing criticism of the rats", remains to be seen, but I'm just happy to be working on something.

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The original Engels quote, as I remember it, was about his and Marx's book, 'The German Ideology.' He said originally they were planning on just going to "write it to clear up our own minds about the subject and leave the manuscript to the gnawing criticism of the rats."

(A little trivia from my misspent youth there. I was reading stuff like that while Shawn and Tina were reading Ayn Rand.)

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Otherwise, I guess the big new here not yet covered is that I'm officially going to World Fantasy in November, I got my plane tickets, made my registration and figured out hotel-room sharing arrangements with some of my fellow bearers of the secret decoder ring for at least two of the three nights.

Should be interesting. I think I technically spent a night on the Texas side of the Texas/New Mexico border (Texas borders on New Mexico, right?) once during a family vacation elsewhere, but other than that I've never been to Texas. Of course, I know some people would argue that Austin doesn't count, but it'll be as close as I've ever come, so one step at a time.