And there's more story news (which is good, because there's precious little novel news, and even less writing/revising news, as I haven't done any writing for almost a month now! Unless you count what I'm doing for work... like building almost all of the content for our User Help site) -- the blue state vs. red state anthology Jigsaw Nation is now available! You can get it for a nice discount at Barnes and Noble.

This anthology contains one of the stories I wrote last year, and it was the first story antho I was ever invited to, which is way cool. The story, "This Divided Land," started off as an experiment in voice, as I was trying to write the whole thing without any dialogue (I'm not sure why, now, other than I was trying for a mythic feel, like a fairy tale). There's only one line of dialogue in it. And the subject matter is important to me -- how one's lifestyle can curse you in the wrong environment. It's a nice companion piece to another story I wrote at about the same time: "A Brotherhood of Trees."

So while I've not been writing or revising my own fiction, I'm reading as much as I can, when I can -- I usually read during the early hours when I used to be writing, although I have been (gasp) sleeping in some days. Still enjoying Charles de Lint's stories, but I also read a story in the latest Glimmer Train, a mainstream quarterly, that made me realize something. I think I'm getting tired of genre. Also, it made me think a lot about the narrator of my barely genre novel, The All Nations Team. I think I'm getting close to figuring out some important information about that book, and my own writing as well. But I'm not there yet, not even close...

And now, I must stop rambling and dig up some coffee, and do some more noodling in my paper journal and read a bit more before the two loves of my life wake up. Later!