Heh heh heh heh heh. I just sold my alternate video-store story to Asimov's! "Impossible Dreams" will appear in some issue in the front half of 2006 (so as to predate its publication in my collection). I heard from editor Sheila Williams today, and I'm grateful she's willing to publish it despite the time constraint. I wondered if I'd ever sell another story to Asimov's, having sold "Bottom Feeding" to Gardner Dozois right before he left. I didn't know if my work would appeal to Sheila. But if she likes "Impossible Dreams" -- in many ways an ubertypical Tim Pratt story of weirdness and romance -- I think I've got a fair chance of writing more things she'd like in the future.

Ah, it's been a while since I indulged in the infamous "bitches dance." (For new readers, this involves dancing around, saying "I sold a story/you are all my bitches," etc.)

In other fine and dandy news, "Robots and Falling Hearts", my collab with the estimable Greg van Eekhout, is online now for your listening pleasure at Escape Pod. It's a good reading by Alex Wilson of Telltale Weekly. Hurray!

Today dawned crappy, like most days lately. The shower drain remained clogged, my head was still stuffed up. I got to work, and discovered that my computer was totally screwed -- it wouldn't boot from the hard disk, and it looked like total hard drive failure. So I took the computer to the shop, and I was a computer nomad all day, snatching a few moments here and there at the temporarily unattended workstations of others. Fairly miserable. But then I got the e-mail from Sheila, which cheered me up immensely. And we had an afternoon champagne toast for my birthday and for my co-worker Karlyn's (her birthday was today, mine is Monday), which was pleasant. Then, around 5 p.m., we got the call that my computer isn't screwed after all! There was just a bad sector on the disk, which was successfully repaired, so I'll have it back in working condition, no data lost, in the morning. And when we got home, our drain was unclogged, the plumber and our landlord having come and gone in our absence. So, lo, all was well. (At least, many things were well, and that's all I needed, really -- to catch some kind of a break to offset life's many recent irritations.)

Tomorrow evening we light out for Santa Cruz, for a weekend of birthday fun. See y'all on Monday (unless I update before then. Anything's possible).