Happy birthday to Nick Mamatas (who is offering his awesome first novel Move Under Ground to readers for free online under a Creative Commons license). Also happy birthday to Patrick Samphire! Clearly this is a good day, historically.

Yesterday we finished the March issue of A Certain Magazine. I was at work for something like 10 and a half hours. Sucked. I flip-flopped my day off from Wednesday to Tuesday so I could stay home today (which means I have to work three days in a row this week! That's barbaric!). Not for fun, alas. My car has been leaking oil at a prodigious rate, so I wanted to take it into the shop sooner rather than later. Sigh. I had good bus karma, at least -- I got to the shop, dropped off the car, walked a block to the bus stop, the bus appeared within two minutes, and I was in my house ten minutes later. Not bad, really. I'm waiting to hear from the mechanic. I hope the damage isn't too damaging.

I've seen a couple of nice reviews of my stuff online, so here they are.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch reviews various things, including Joe Hill's great first novel Heart-Shaped Box, and my collection, Hart & Boot & Other Stories. The relevant bit:

In keeping with the Valentine's Day theme, "Hart & Boot & Other Stories" by Tim Pratt also might appeal to the dreamy lover. The stories in Pratt's collection deal with the collision of the fantastic with the ordinary, but there also is plenty of love, romance and erotica.

Witness "Romanticore," the story of a love triangle involving a femme fatale, a jealous schmo and a mythological Asian beast that can disguise itself as a human. Don't be fooled by that description, because Pratt manages to tug on a few heartstrings. Even the title story, "Hart & Boot," selected for "The Best American Short Stories" in 2005, is tinged with romance.

I meant the book to be about love, so that pleases me.

Blogger Bill S. reviewed some stories from Twenty Epics, and had nice things to say about my "Cup and Table," which he calls one of his favorites in the book:

This story synthesizes the structure of Arthurian literature with the lurid vivacity of comic books. It also includes one of my favorite characters in the book, a jet-black creature named Carlsbad, who is actually composed of all the evil that is in men's hearts. When the main character asks why Carlsbad isn't doing evil himself, the creature shrugs it off, pointing out that "There's more to both of us than our raw materials." And the final line of the story is one of the most perfect and poignant things I've read in recent memory. It has stuck with me.

So, a little egoboo in the atmosphere. That's always welcome.

It looks like I'll be appearing at an interesting event in a couple of weeks, down in Los Angeles... details to follow once they get nailed down, probably in a day or two.