NOTE: Some of the facts here have changed, as I've placed my acceptance to Five Star on hold as I await a response to my novel from a New York publisher! :)

On Saturday, Elizabeth and I are heading out to my parents' for a baby shower hosted by my mom, sister, and sister-in-law, and before we begin that party, we're taking a bunch of stuff to be framed over to some friends of my folks. We've had these photos from our trip to the mountains as well as the excellent artwork Janet did for me last year, sitting around unframed for a LONG time, along with some degrees and acceptance letters and odds and ends we've wanted framed, but have never gotten around to doing until now.

Looks like we'll have one more thing to frame now.

I got up and checked email this morning and saw one from an editor at a book publisher. As usual, I was afraid to open it, but finally got up the nerve to do so.

Five Star Books is buying my SF novel, The Wannoshay Cycle!

Yow. I could hardly believe it -- I had to pull Lizzie in and ask her to read it to make sure my eyes weren't deceiving me. Sure enough, there was a contract attached to the email, and my novel is coming out some time in the next two years! Holy shit!

I had a really good feeling about this, especially after talking about Five Star with two other writers at the Oregon workshop, Julie Hyzy and Michael Black, who have both published novels with Five Star. They do beautiful books (Julie brought hers out to show us all, and it's quite nice looking), and I can't work to work with them.

Now I'll in the fine, fine company of many excellent writers like Julie and Mike, as well as Jim Hines and David Niall Wilson, to name a few.

Wow. My first novel sold (not the first novel I wrote, mind you, but the first to sell). I can barely believe it.

And this one only took 8 years to do so (I wrote the first Wannoshay story at Clarion '96)! Hopefully the rest won't take QUITE so long... Later!