Alright, y'all. Strange Horizons is currently having its fund drive -- it's a reader-supported magazine, and if you're a reader, you should contribute, and if you aren't a reader, damn, why not? So go donate. Every bit helps. If you support me, you should support Strange Horizons, because they've been instrumental in helping my career (and I hope they'll continue to be instrumental, by accepting the story I submitted there recently...).

My chili turned out beautifully. The taste starts out sweet, then gets spicy as the chiles, vietnamese hot sauce, and wasabi kick in. We've eaten it for the past two nights, and I expect we'll finish it off tonight.

It's my once-fortnightly day off, and I've done nothing but work all day! (it's about 4 o'clock now, and I've been going steadily since about 9 a.m.). What have I accomplished? The lion's share of the layout on Flytrap 3 is done. It has to be proofread, and I have to put in contributor bios, and we have to write a few reviews and an editorial, but all the stories and poems and artwork are in place, which is the time-consuming part. It's going to be a beautiful issue, lavishly illustrated with photos by our own beloved Jenn Reese, who's a tremendously talented shutterbug. We should finish up the rest of the issue within a week, and get it printed sometime in the next couple of weeks. So subscribe now!

I also did a critique I promised a friend (and it was a great story, which is always nice). I finished sending blurbs and stories to Fictionwise. I got a handful of Flytrap orders ready to mail. I answered a lot of my e-mail (though not all).

I also washed dishes, and took out the garbage, and straightened the house a bit. The plumber came (yay!), and now the sink in the bathroom works, so all is very much well.

My to-do list is still a bit long. I need to write a couple of reviews this weekend, and I need to answer Flytrap subs, and I want to finish my agoraphobic quest story (is it a bite-sized epic? I dunno, could be...). But I feel much more on top of things after today. There's leftover chili to eat, beer in the fridge, good books to be read, the weekend is near... yeah, life isn't bad at all.

As for the past couple of days, yeah, also not too bad. We finished the October issue of A Certain Magazine on Wednesday, and it wasn't as back-breaking and wrist-wrenching an experience as it could have been; we actually got done by about 3 p.m. Clive Barker came to the office for an interview, so I got to meet him again (briefly, though, since I had a lot of work to do). He signed my copy of Abarat, and even drew a picture inside! He's an intense, interesting guy, and I wish I'd been able to sit in on the interview.

My boss let us all quit work early, so the staff sat out on the back deck for about an hour, drinking champagne and eating various tasty leftovers from the spread prepared for Clive's visit.

Tomorrow Susannah Clarke is coming to the office for an interview. It's an eventful week at A Certain Magazine HQ.

I'm almost done reading Limekiller (just the last story to go). I'm going to miss having those stories ahead of me... Then I'll read Poppy Brite and Christa Faust's Triads (looks pretty fascinating), and then it's on to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Much literary goodness awaits.