A week has passed since I got the email acceptance, and I just noted with pleasure that my collaborators and I will be sharing a table of contents with the wise Nick Mamatas, so I have to spill the beans at last -- "Gillian Underground," the collaboration I did last year with Tim Pratt and Greg van Eekhout, was accepted for Polyphony 5!

This is doubly sweet, maybe even triply sweet, because while Greg and Tim have both graced the pages of this acclaimed anthology, I've never been able to crack it. So with the help of my Nebula-nominated writing pals, I was able to sneak in the back door. It's also quite awesome because the story sort of got stuck in its penultimate draft, and almost never saw the light of day.

But most of all, it was fun working with these guys again. Collaborating with excellent writers is a fantastic challenge, and you get this nice buzz (at least I do!) trying to keep up with the others and always trying to top yourself. And this story goes "all over the place" but in a good way -- I never knew where we'd end up.

Look for Polyphony 5 in September of this year. Now I need to track down #4 to complete my run of the antho. Later!