Ah, the year-end round-ups are beginning to appear. I love this part of the year. Rich Horton has started posting his year-end summaries, which are always very thorough and insightful, and in his write-up about Asimov's he has good things to say about my story "Impossible Dreams", which he reckons is about his third favorite short story from that magazine for the year. I'm happy with that!

SFBC editor Andrew Wheeler has been listing his favorite fantasy works from last year (2005), and he includes my story "Bottom Feeding" in the top ten of his short story list. That's gratifying, because Wheeler is a very well-informed and intelligent reader, and because I felt that story got less attention than my other Asimov's story, the infinitely more lighthearted and far more loveable "Impossible Dreams" (which I'm also very fond of, don't get me wrong, but in many ways "Bottom Feeding" is a much more personal story). Wheeler also has kind words for my big crazy three-way collab with ol' Mike Jasper and Greg van Eekhout, "Gillian Underground", and for my lovely wife Heather's "Single White Farmhouse" (which he calls a feel-good story -- I agree!). My tastes seem to align pretty closely with his when it comes to short fiction, too.

More as it trickles down. I feel vaguely guilty about taking such pleasure in this feedback -- as if I should be committing Art without so much concern about how it's received -- but, damn it, so often short story writing feels like ephemeral howling into the void, and it's good to know that someone noticed.