Hey, "Impossible Dreams" won the Asimov's Readers' Award in the Best Short Story category! I actually found out a while back, because they wanted to know if I could make it to the awards breakfast held during the Nebula Awards Weekend, but there was just no way I could swing it -- not with WisCon coming up two weeks later. That's just too much travel. I'm deeply honored that so many of the magazine's readers liked my story and cast their votes in my direction. (Let's hope the Hugo voters are equally kind!) Congrats to the other winners! (You can read my story here, or listen to a podcast of it here.

I had a nice time at the Tiptree anthology launch party yesterday afternoon. The panel with Pat Murphy and John Varley (moderated by Debbie Notkin) was fun. Saw some friendly familiar faces. Also met John Levitt -- we have mutual friends, and he's got an urban fantasy novel, Dog Days, set in San Francisco, coming out from Ace. Nice guy, and it sounds like an interesting book. Somehow the good folks at Borderlands managed to sell all six copies of Hart & Boot & Other Stories they had in stock (leaving at least one person who wanted to buy a copy disappointed). I read the first 3/4 of "Living with the Harpy" and told the audience the story was in my collection -- I guess they wanted to know how it ends! (I maybe should've mentioned it's available free online in the archives at Strange Horizons, but I forgot.) I declined to go out with people afterward, because I wanted to get back and see Heather. Caught a train back to the East Bay and discovered I'd gotten a parking ticket. Sigh. Sour note at the end of a nice afternoon.

Red Seas Under Red Skies is very good! I'm halfway through, and there's not much in the way of pirates yet, though issues of piracy are beginning to loom large. It's twisty, funny, action-packed stuff with lots of neat set pieces; the novelistic equivalent of a satisfying summer blockbuster. (Unlike an unsatisfying summer blockbuster like Spider-man 3, which had about an hour of good stuff sprinkled throughout and a whole lot of annoying and boring and dumb parts. I liked Bruce Campbell's bit though.)