It was a pretty good week, though just now it's rainy and I'm coming down with a cold, so everything feels a touch gray and hazy. I did some revising, and played with my kid a lot. We had a great time on Tuesday, going to two different parks, including one where he splashed at the edge of a creek, and another where he chased ducks... and actually caught one. Very briefly. With no damage to baby or duck, because I was right there to break things up. The kid faked me out though -- he was chasing one duck, with no hope of catching it, when he suddenly veered and grabbed another duck I hadn't even noticed. Otherwise, a normal week of reading and drinking wine and eating and hanging out with my wife.

I finally read Against the World, Against Life by Michel Houellebecq, and thought it was quite interesting, and that Houellebecq's central ideas about the development of Lovecraft's fiction seem valid. I'm glad I didn't read it before doing "The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft" though -- would've influenced the writing perhaps too much, as we tried to explore the racism that Houellebecq finds so central to Lovecraft's work.

My superhero monologue piece "Origin Story" has been accepted by Escape Pod. I've had a lot of reprints at EP, but this will be my first original story there. I wrote the piece thinking it would be great to perform at readings, so it naturally made sense to send it to a podcast. I imagine it'll see print somewhere sometime, but I'm happy its first publication will be aurally-oriented.

You can go download a PDF of The Patriot Witch by C.C. Finlay (Charlie to his friends) at his website, totally free and unencumbered. Then buy it when it comes out. Then buy the two sequels, which will be along mere weeks after the first one. I can't wait to read it, after I finish my old friend Seanan's cool detective/fantasy Rosemary and Rue, which'll be out later this year, and which I got to see early, because I'm lucky like that.

The Locus Roundtable blog is active, with posts from critics and reviewers and other smart people about the good stuff published last year. Go, read, comment, etc.