I take away all my complaints about mail, whether online or postal. This morning made up for all of them! First, I woke up to find an email waiting for me with great news: my story "Stitching Time" will be reprinted in the next issue of Diet Soap! Diet Soap is a really cool-looking new 'zine edited by Doug Lain and M.K. Hobson, and I'm very happy for my story to be a part of it. (If you're curious about the zine, you can email info (at) dietsoap (dot) org for a free pdf copy of the first issue - just let them know whether you'd like a bookletized or onscreen version.)

Then, a couple of hours later, the mail arrived, and it brought us a package with delicious bars of chocolate and the best Christmas present - an advance copy of Tiffany Trent's By Venom's Sweet Sting! I've been counting down the days until I could read this book, ever since I read and loved her first Hallowmere book, In the Serpent's Coils. So far, I'm loving Book 2 even more than Book 1, which says a lot. If you want a chance to win a free copy of By Venom's Sweet Sting - along with either chocolate or shortbread - head over to Tiffany's journal contest! All you have to do is leave a comment on that entry, anytime through Christmas Day, and you'll be entered in the drawing. It's free to enter, and the book is SO good. The moment I started reading it, I was swept right back into that lusciously dark, gothic atmosphere--shivery in the best possible way!

So in other words, it's been an absolutely ideal mail day. :) Now, alas, it's time to get serious about tidying up the monstrous piles on my desk before visitors arrive to be menaced by them in the night. (The desk is in our writing room/guest room, and who knows what those towering piles of papers, books, magazines, etc. get up to when I'm not there to keep a worried eye on them?)