Today we critiqued my fourth story, "In the Valley of the All-Father," in which I placed archetypes of the Norse Gods as residents in an apartment building, called Valhalla Apartments. Almost everyone enjoyed the first three-quarters of the story, then hated the last quarter, where, admittedly, it fell apart. Tim Powers gave me a huge ego boost by telling me that the first part was something that David Lynch would eat up. So what I'll probably do is ditch the whole Nordic thing and concentrate on the stuff that people liked. I was spending too much time trying to match the gods' behavior to the characters, and it just fell flat. But I still see this as my strongest work to date, and I'll definitely be revising it.

Afterward, Janet gave me a big hug, which really helped.

The rest of the day was pretty relaxing. Janet and I walked down Grand River, stopping occasionally in thrift stores and new age stores and book stores. We had dinner at the Five Star Deli, which was fantastic. I had one of the best gyros of my life there; the tzadziki sauce was particularly delicious. Then we walked back through campus and stopped at the waterfall in the Red Cedar River, where dozens of ducks were flapping and quacking and having a good time. We fed them with some of the leftover bread from Janet's dinner, and it took about eight seconds for the entire group of them to converge on our position. After we ran out, and the ducks wandered away, we gathered up a bunch of feathers from the ground. Then we walked back.

There's going to be a Cowboy Bebop marathon tonight in the lounge, the first disc of which will be provided by me. It's a really cool anime series, and you should watch it if you get the chance.

Tomorrow, Janet and I are going to check out the Krege Art Museum here on campus, and then go to the school's library, where all the manuscripts from Clarion alumni are stored. I'm interested to see how awful the stories are, since most folks who graduate from here go on to get published. It'll be funny to read the early attempts by James Patrick Kelly and John Shirley and Nalo Hopkinson.