I finally finished a new short story last night, tentatively entitled "Bless Me." It's one that's been bugging me for a while--and, I guess, bugging me enough that I could actually write almost half of it while here in Madison, despite all sorts of obvious distractions. Quick preview:

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

"I have been a soldier for la Corporación for the last two years, a “criminal” in the eyes of Holy Mother Church and the Miami Police Department, but that is the least of my sins...."

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In any case, this is a big landmark, since this is my sixth post-Clarion story, meaning that I've finally written *more stuff* in the last ten months than I did in the six weeks before that.

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WisCon has so far been a blast. Through some bizarre fluke of nature and hotel booking schedules, when I checked into the Concourse, I got bumped up from a normal Governors Club room to some sort of bizarre, executive Governors Club-Plus kind of a room, with a jacuzzi, forty two inch screen tv in the main area, second, smaller tv over on the all by the jacuzzi, couch, desk, stray bits of furniture and enough space to comfortably fit the convention in. Combine it with the normal Governors Club perks--complimentary cocktails, etc.--and the whole thing is kind of sureal. Someone said yesterday that it was getting a chance to see "how the other half lives," but I think "how the other 2% lives" might be more like it.

I did the writers workshop yesterday with Jennifer Pelland, which was fun, and last night I did my very first-ever public reading, with Cat Rambo, E.C. Meyers, Heather Lindsley and Ada Milenkovic Brown. I read the first few pages of "Sing, Goddess" and I think it went over fairly well. Also, there was cake.

Meanwhile, it's just been fun to see people I don't get to see nearly often enough--Tinatsu, my wonderful sister, etc.--and meet others. (I had a brief but interesting chat with Nick Mamatas about our misbegotten youths in the ISO, and got to find out that Hannah Wolf Bowen is an ocassional lurker--"stalker" was her word--on this blog.) Meantime, this whole entry is an elaborate technique for wasting time since I popped up so godawful unnaturally early this morning, so I'm going to go seek out caffeine.