More happy publishing news -- Jeff VanderMeer sold a book to Tor, and Bantam will be reprinting two of his previous small-press books. (Bantam rocks! Editor Juliet Ulman specifically rocks -- she keeps buying such great stuff!)

I must bask in the writing news of others because I have no writing news of my own. Heather is reading my poetry book today, and if she doesn't find any typos, and if she thinks the order of the poems works, then I'll send it off to the Yale Younger Poets contest tomorrow.

Otherwise, I'm reading a lot. Reading Anagrams by Lorrie Moore, which surprises me by being a speculative novel, in which the same characters are considered in various permutations of circumstance, a series of alternate personal histories. Like something Robert Anton Wilson would do (but well-written). So that's enjoyable. I've also been reading Flytrap submissions, and have accepted a couple more obvious must-haves that came in. I have room for perhaps one more story, and about a dozen sitting in my "maybe" file, so there will be difficult decisions ahead. But it's already obvious that issue #4 is going to be stellar.

Work is, theoretically at least, easy and quiet this week, with my boss off to World Fantasy and other co-workers missing for various reasons. I say theoretically because today has been rather frantic, plowing through the piles of work my boss left behind for us, and dealing with miscellaneous emergencies. It will be settled-down by tomorrow. I hope. I'm very, very, very tired of feeling stress at work.

We're going off to Santa Cruz this weekend for Hallowe'en fun, and I'm looking forward to it tremendously.