My morning began nicely. Mike Ashley, anthologist extraordinaire, wrote to tell me he wants to reprint "The Witch's Bicycle" in his upcoming The Mammoth Book of Sorcerers' Tales, which will be published by Constable & Robinson in the UK and by Carroll & Graf in the US.

I'm very happy about this (not least of all because the money's not bad for a reprint). "Witch's Bicycle" is one of my favorite stories, and I was disappointed when it didn't get picked up for any year's best anthologies, only because I'd hoped it would reach a wider audience. (I've toyed with the notion of reprinting it online, but hadn't because it's about 12,000 words long, and many people are reluctant to read stuff that long on screen.) I think it's one of the most charming, accessible, and cool stories I've done, and though it has some flaws, I suspect it's a story that readers will like. At least, I think it's the sort of story that I would have liked when I first started reading SF in earnest, when I was a teenager.

Nick has a good story up at Dark Fluidity: "Quiet Types, Loners Mostly". In a way, it's old-school SF of the "if this goes on" variety, but Nick's prose just keeps getting better and better, and the writing is lucid and concise, with a great weight of implication behind each scene. It's chilling, and horrific, which is exactly what it's supposed to be.

Well, I've had my coffee, and a bit of breakfast. Heather's off to work. I suppose I should put my head down and start working on this essay some more. Until later.