Lovely weekend, apart from the bit where I paid the equivalent of about two months' day job salary to the government for taxes. Sigh. But the good parts:

Went up to Berkeley with the kid, where we ran around the park for a while (he's becoming a pro at going up and down steps on his own). Then he shared a dish of stracciatella gelato with me, making the most adorable "Mmmm" noises with each bite. (He fed himself with his own spoon with minimal spillage, too.)

The whole family went to the farmer's market, and with the deliciousness acquired there I cooked chicken marsala for the second time in as many weeks. I could drink that sauce, really I could. I shouldn't, but I could.

I wrote a Marla Mason short story -- "Little Better than a Beast" -- about 6,000 words. I think it came out really well. (It's the Marla vs. the Beast of Felport story.) It's one of three Marla stories I've been meaning to write for ages, set during the space between the novels Poison Sleep and Dead Reign. Now I just need to write "Marla vs. the Interdimensional Hedonists" (AKA "Marla vs. the Faeries"), and "Marla vs. the Crazy Woman Who Thinks She's a Superhero".

A nice balance of food and fun and family and fiction, all in all.

Some linkages:

Here's an Interesting essay by Nick Mamatas on finding (or failing to find, or still looking for) your niche as a writer: "A Career In Thrashing Around All Night".

(That reminds me, Nick and I are doing a reading together at Borderlands Books in San Francisco, Saturday April 11, at 3 o'clock. Be there or miss the majesty and wonder of our combined majestic wondrousness.)

My story "Her Voice in a Bottle" from Subterranean is reviewed at the latest Internet Review of Science Fiction. Lois Tilton says:

This is a very fine story, told in clear and luminous prose, about the effect that a woman of magic has on a man's life, about the fragile region of the mind where perception, memory and invention meet. The fantastic element is unambiguous, even if the narrator sometimes doubts it.

and declares it "highly recommended." This makes me happy, as it's one of the most honest, personal stories I've ever written. (And has one of my favorite endings I've ever written; and as longtime readers know, I think good endings are the hardest thing.)