The weight has been lifted off the shoulders as the dreaded outline was turned in tonight. I get to be grilled about it next Wednesday. But actually, I found out tonight that James Morrow will be sitting in on the first third of our class that night, which is pretty cool. I wish he could stick around to take a gander at the ol' outline since he's talking about the fantastic in fiction (which my novel out of the ten in the class seems to boast the most), but them famous authors are always on the move I guess. However, if you come to the reading the next night, there'll be a big shindig over at the young Dr. Kessel's abode afterward, which is always a treat. Published authors and grad students talking about literature. And alcohol. All adds up to a good time.

Locus Magazine, the preeminent trade journal in the skiffy field, released its annual poll today, and there are some good entries to vote for. Unfortunately, many stories published in smaller presses or by lesser-known authors didn't make it into the Locus database, but you can always write those in. Examples from my write-in votes are "Natural Order" by Mike Jasper, "Little Gods" by Tim Pratt, and "People Stuff" by Greg van Eekhout. The fact that these guys are friends of mine, or online acquaintances, has nothing to do with it. Well, maybe a little. But they are all fantastic stories, and they should get lauded for their scrivening skills. Mike has also compiled a few best-of lists on his journal, mine among them. Vote early and vote often!

"Wicked Game" came back from Asimov's yesterday with the standard "your story failed to rise above the other 849 seen that month" rejection letter. I've determined Gardner Dozois just doesn't like me very much. So, I'm not going to send him anything else until I get a few more publication credits under my belt. I'll be sending the story out to Shawna McCarthy at Realms of Fantasy tomorrow.

And, after reading over half of Mike's phenomenal sf novel The Wannoshay Cycle on my computer screen, I'm taking a break. I need to rest my eyes with some good old-fashioned print fiction. And since I've been devouring Bill Gibson's Pattern Recognition lately, I figure I'll keep going. It's a phenomenal book, his best yet, and you should all buy a copy. Then buy a copy for your spouses, your dogs, and your goldfish. Everybody should read it.

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Now Reading:
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

Stories Out to Publishers:
11

Stories Sold This Year:
3

Novel Word Count:
18,800