This time tomorrow, I'll be almost all the way to DC by train. Eeeeeeeeee! You can't see, but right now I'm dancing in my chair. Maybe it's a good thing you can't see, otherwise I'd have to endure your riotous laughter.

I've been looking forward to World Fantasy for months now, and every day this week has absolutely plodded by. I'm excited that I'll have company there and back on the train with Ol' Mike. I have lots of things to do on the ride up (critique 6 stories for the Clarion 2002 mini-reunion, read Billy Budd for class, and work on the opening chapter for BlueGreen), but I'm sure part of that will be spent chatting. And it won't be lonely with a good friend.

I took a look at the preliminary schedule online (which I hope has been concretized by this point), and there appears to be a metric ton of stuff going on: readings, panel discussions, publisher parties. Not to mention the kick-ass small press partay on Saturday night, with one table of literary goodness and one table of culinary goodness. I just printed up the cover on 11x17 paper to slap up on the wall. There have also been rumours of a wings-and-beer get-together, maybe on Friday night, though the specific time may be in flux. I figure since I'm rooming with Mike and Jay, there will always be a party somewhere.

Also, at some point, I'll need to get together with John Kessel and go over my story that was critted in class last night, and which will be critted by the Clarionites duing the weekend. The class response was pretty positive on the whole, and just about everybody said the story creeped them out, which was indeed the desired effect. "Don't Blink" is the rewritten incarnation of my Valhalla story, whose beginning Tim Powers praised as "very David Lynch-esque", but whose second half devolved into a jumbled mix of Norse mythology that didn't work at all. So I completely scrapped the ending and rewrote it, giving it a more Hawthornian "Young Goodman Brown" kind of vibe, which seemed to work much better, though there were still problems. John did say it's the best thing he's seen from me so far, which is a good sign. Nice to know I keep improving.

I'm submitting "Watersnake, Firesnake" and "Book Storey" to the NCSU story contest (to be judged by Margot Livesey). If you live in North Carolina and haven't submitted yet, you've got until next Monday at noon to have it in their hands. Plus, it's free to enter, and you can submit as many stories as you want (within reason), so you really have no excuse.

Sweet merciful crap, I'm going to be at the World Fantasy Convention tomorrow! Wahoo! I'll get to see some groovy folks I normally don't see, get to know some groovy folks I've gotten acquainted with through the blogoverse, and meet authors whose work I have enormous respect for. I'm taking fifty copies of Four Seasons in One Day with me, so everyone who wants a copy should be able to get one there. If by some miracle we sell out, copies will be available through the website; I sold ten through preorders, and another two at work, with six or seven other people saying they were interested in a copy.

I can't wait. There's a good chance I won't be able to sleep tonight.

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Now Reading:
Billy Budd by Herman Melville

Stories Out to Publishers:
4

Books Read This Year:
47

Zines/Fiction Mags Read This Year:
35