So, some news. As Heather mentioned, I sold the crazy three-way collab I did with Greg and Mike last year, "Gillian Underground", to the good people at Polyphony 5. (Editors Deb Layne and Jay Lake recently sent me a huge box -- two pounds! -- of See's chocolates, as congratulations for my last Polyphony story getting picked up for the Best American Short Stories, so I'm quite fond of them lately!)

My poem "Making Monsters" has won first place in the latest Strange Horizons Reader's Poll. Their reader's poll is always very good to me. I think this is the first year my work has appeared in only one category! Which probably means I should start sending them more stuff...

I'm back into the Bridge novel (tentative title: The Light of a Better World), and it's going well. I think I'm ready for the totally-immersive portion of the writing process, where I do little other than write first draft for two or three months. It's all percolated long enough, I think, and every time I start to talk to Heather about the book I get more excited and babble and talk faster and faster and faster, and as I talk I start to see even more connections... it's pretty awesome. This is a less relentlessly linear book than my previous outings, so I'm having to think more about structure than I have in the past, which is all to the good. Challenging myself is part of the point, after all.

I'm really, really, really envying full-time fiction writers at the moment. It's hard for me to pay attention to things that aren't my novel. But I'll manage with nights and weekends and lunch breaks and occasional days off, just like I have with everything I've ever written previously.