Drowning Nor Waving

A few very nice things fell into my inbox in the past few days. I show you them.

1) Via the eagle eyes of wistling, the Spring 2010 issue of On Spec is due to drop sometime soon. It has some fantastic cover art:



It contains "A Thousand," which is a story about Vancouver, cranes both paper and living, some of the problems of cultural miscommunication, and people being drastically unfair to each other. It also has fiction by that selfsame wistling (as his alter ego, Campbell nominee Tony Pi) and tinaconnolly, who are both cool people whose work I admire.

2) slushmaster informs me that the illustration artist Gary Lippincott did for "Mister Oak", which appeared in the February 2010 issue of Realms of Fantasy (and was probably one of the nicest illustrations I've ever had) is going to be reprinted in Spectrum 17, which will be out in November. It is a fantastic painting and totally deserves to be petted and made much of. Congrats, Gary!

3) Ian Tregillis, OWW alumnus and awesome dude extraordinare, had his first novel, Bitter Seeds, come out this week from Tor Books. You should read it.

4) Ted Kosmatka, whom we have published in Ideomancer and who is likewise an awesome dude, sold his first novel, The Helix Game, to Del Rey this week. Sight unseen, I can tell you that eventually, when it comes out? You should read it.

5) I had high tea last night. Nom.

I have Good Things today. So I am going to catalogue them, in an effort to fill the pot for the next time someone needs to be told Good Things (It's like leave a penny, take a penny, see?):

1) The lettuce seeds I planted a mere two days ago are already sprouting merrily. There's a pea sprouting too, but it's just getting started. I may take pictures.

2) I had a mango, an avocado, and a handful of giant mutant strawberries for lunch today and the Nice Pasta (garlic, tomatoes, oyster mushrooms, bit of white wine, cream sauce) for dinner just now. Both were fully satisfactory foods.

3) I have my first two loaves of Shoggoth Bread in the oven. This is the culmination of a two-day affair, with the making Lucinda ready for the baking and eating and several instances of "now let it rise one hour". It is still very soothing to knead things.

Tangential to that, if anyone would like to give a shoggoth a loving home, I actually have a Child of Lucinda separated in a container right now. If not, I'll make pretzels with it, but speak up if you want it.

4) My toenails are blue.

5) Despite TTC shenanigans yesterday, a good 2/3 of the Federation of Girly Drink Drinkers managed to meet for snacky things and improbable martinis. The last improbable martini had Baileys and coffee liqueur in it. After three of them and a good solid few hours with my friends, things were good once again.

6) My slush and support mail are both caught up.

7) I have books to read again (Little Brother and A Song of Stone on the pile, Silk half-finished already) and am no longer in a sad and disreputable state of booklessness.

8) I have apparently won a month's free gym membership up the street, due to filling in a ballot at the juice place on a whim. Tomorrow I go to find out about this.

9) The leaves are coming out on the trees out back. They look all yellow-green and tiny and soft. In a few weeks we'll get to the state it was in that made me want this apartment -- we walked through the door for the showing, and all I saw was that huge window and the wall of green and sunlight outside it.

10) I still have enough hours in the day to write some fiction, clean my bathroom, and veg.

So all is well and all manner of things are well. If you need a Good Thing, feel free to take the one of your choice. If you have one, feel free to toss it in the pot.

This morning, we come to praise...


The Government of Canada, who decided for some reason they hadn't given me enough of an income tax return this spring and sent me a cheque. With interest. Thank you, O my gummint. A small portion of this money will go towards a half-hour massage in the next hour, so I can get my neck and right shoulder fixed. They have been hurting me for days.

matociquala, who dedicated a book one-quarter to me. I found that out last night. That? Was really nice. It's a good book, too.

novel_in_90, for turning from a slightly complicated joke into...well, a real, breathing, self-sustaining community, and lasting for a year. Given the attention span of the internets, that's pretty awesome. Go team. :)

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I will do the year-end wrap up stuff when I have come back from the backrub appointment, hopefully able to turn my head the whole way once more. :p