Out of the blue in early January of this year, I got a note from Greg van Eekhout who said: "I want to write heroic fantasy that feels like an Everclear song."

Now most folks wouldn't really know how to take that comment, but strangely enough, I'm a big enough Everclear fan, and Greg and I have chatted enough about this grunge-rock-made-it-big band to know exactly what we'd have to do. A collaboration.

So we listened to some more Everclear, looked at some of their lyrics, shot the story back and forth via email, and in less than a month we had a kick-ass story. All the cool stuff is Greg's doing, I swear. I just did the commas and periods.

And now, in today's mail, I get a (dead-bug-free) letter from Gardner Dozois at Asimov's, saying basically that the story is ALL WRONG for Asimov's, and that all the readers would lynch him if he published it, and dogs and cats would live together in harmony and chaos would rule if the story saw print in his magazine (okay, I'm paraphrasing), but he said he'd take it anyway.

That's right, you heard me right -- my buddy Greg van Eekhout and I are gonna be in frickin' Asimov's!!! Watch for "California King" in an issue of 'Mov's in the probably-relatively-distant future!!!

'Nuff said.