Okay, so I'm in the middle of working on a job application. Really.

Sigh. Turns out, when it's a job that I'd actually like, I get so nervous that I completely freeze up when confronting the appliation form (and particularly the essay section). How silly can you get, right? Here I am, a writer and a PhD student, someone who writes all the time. I've stood up in front of large audiences to read academic papers, I've written novels and stories...but lord, I hate writing applications.

Oh well. I had a good teaching session this morning (my last-ever 1st-year university course, quite possibly!), and I worked a bit more on a new (untitled, and very dark) short story. I'm still figuring out Chapter Two of Thief of Souls and don't want to start writing it until I'm actually sure of what happens in it...I'm consoling myself with the reminder that it took well over a month to write the first two chapters of Masks & Shadows.

But hey, here's my really good news: I may be able to get my own copy of the March Locus in May (thanks Karen!) and in the meantime, at last I've got the actual quote, from Rich Horton's review:

"Two January stories at Strange Horizons are effective reworkings of traditional fairytales. In 'Inside the Tower' Stephanie Burgis looks at the aftermath of Rapunzel's story (or a similar story), and finds a moving and difficult mother-daughter relationship."

(The other story he mentions is Merrie Haskell's fantastic "Huntswoman". Have you seen the review yet, Merrie?)

I don't know if I can express just how geekily happy I was to read those two lines. I've been reading Locus since I was fifteen years old. It's been my (pathetic, I know) fantasy to get reviewed in it for nearly thirteen years. So okay, it was only two lines, but they made me extraordinarily happy.

Now I can move on to fantasizing about novel reviews and interviews...oh, and maybe a castle in Ireland, as well...