Quite a few days.

Sunday I read at SF in SF with Jeffrey Ford. It was great seeing Jeff again, and he read an awesome story, "The Drowned Life." I was the opening act, of course, and I read "The River Boy" and "Artifice and Intelligence" (which are both free online, true, but I was mostly looking for stories short enough to read entirely in half an hour!). The pre-reading hanging out was great, seeing Terry Bisson and Ellen Klages and Cheryl Morgan and Kevin Standlee and Jude from Borderlands and Jacob and Rina from Tachyon and Lisa Goldstein and so on and so on and so on; lots of good people there. I lingered a bit afterward to sign some books and chat, but didn't join the group for dinner, since Heather was home with the baby, and I didn't want her to have to put him to bed by herself. Weird having a night out sans baby!

Rick Kleffel of The Agony Column recorded the show, and a brief interview with me, which you can hear here, if you scroll down the page a bit. (Charles Tan put up links just to the audio here, though Rick's commentary is also worth reading.)

Earlier in the day Sunday, Greg and Dr. Lisa swung through for a visit to meet the baby and see the new apartment en route back to Southern California. We walked around the lake, ate delicious food at the Lakeshore Cafe, and generally had a fine old time. Too bad they had to leave so soon.

Monday I went to work and diligently worked on finishing the April issue of A Certain Magazine, since our boss and one of our editors had to leave for Florida first thing Tuesday. The day went well, and Tuesday morning we put the finishing touches on the magazine.

About, oh, half an hour before we were expecting to finish, we got word that Arthur C. Clarke had died.

Rearranging ensued to make room for this very late-breaking news. We're pros (okay, according to the Hugos we've won, we're semi-pros, but whatever), so it wasn't too bad, though I did have to move my day off from Wednesday to Thursday. Since the boss is on the other coast, we had to deal with corrections and layout changes long distance, which always makes things tricky. I think I wrote a pretty good obit (with input from others, of course, but the first draft was mine), considering how little time we had. And we'll have a ton of additional coverage, with photos and appreciations, in the May issue, naturally.

Childhood's End was one of the first SF novels I ever read. "The Nine Billion Names of God" still gives me chills to this day, when I think of it. The guy was a giant, and sharp as a razor until the end. He'll be missed.