I seem to be in danger of becoming a weekend journaller. Sorry. I'll try not to let it happen, but entries may be sporadic for a couple of months. There's so much to do!

Starting a new job always eats incredible amounts of mental energy. What's interesting is that this is apparently true even when you've already been doing the job for several months. A surprising amount of this week was taken up by making the transfer to permanent employee status. I've got a bunch of decisions to make, like what kind of health insurance I want. And there's a subtle shift in attitude, too. It now makes sense for me to try to answer the question, "Where do I want to be in a year/two years?" with something more than, "Employed."

The other work excitement of the week is that we moved into our newly renovated cubicles. Yep, I am now the master of my very own 8 x 8 foot gray box. With bookshelves and desk drawers, so I now once again have someplace to park my style guide and my Post-It flags. And it has a placard with my name on it outside. (Spelled incorrectly, alas. The family curse strikes again! But they promised to fix it for me real soon.)

Aside from that, I've been doing a little fiction writing. Mostly thinking about revisions for the story my writers' group critted last weekend - it doesn't need much, I think, in order to be ready to submit, but those last little revisions are tricky. The story needs a light touch.

I've also been doing some reading. The Silver Gryphon is an "anniversary" anthology from Golden Gryphon - it's their 25th book, with short stories from each of the 24 authors who contributed to their previous 24 books. It's an interestingly mixed bag. The author's were apparently asked to contribute the story that "best defines them as a writer." I'm not at all certain how I would respond to that challenge - probably some of the writers whose works appear here weren't sure either. Kage Baker wrote a rollicking Company story set in Gold Rush San Francisco, and R. Garcia y Robertson wrote a funny alternate history piece featuring courtesans, giant flying birds, and a not-overly-bright Scotsman with a claymore. Both were certainly very typical of these writers' works, but I'm not sure if they were definitional. The Waldrop and Shepherd pieces struck me as being very Waldrop and very Shepherd, respectively, but fairly insubstantial compared to other works of theirs I've read. My two favorite stories so far were probably Michael Bishop's "Door Gunner" and Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "Cowboy Grace", and I don't know the work of either of those writers well enough to say whether those stories were "definitional". But never mind whether the writers fulfilled the terms of the homework assignment. The anthology is a good one, although it contains some surprisingly weak pieces by writers whose work I usually like better. (In addition to the Waldrop and Shepherd stories I mentioned, I thought the James Patrick Kelley piece fell flat at the end.)

Not much else to report right now. Later!