Journal

Thursday, November 22, 2001

Happy Thanksgiving!

Lots of writing news, hmm, let's see. Many people I like are selling their stories, which makes me happy. My Clarion West classmates Kiini and Ibi sold stories to Dark Matter 2, the sequel to the groundbreaking and well-received Dark Matter anthology of speculative fiction by writers of African descent. Kiini was in the first one, too, and man, was I jealous of her getting anthologized alongside Samuel R. Delany, Jr. and Octavia Butler, two of my favorite writers (not to mention Nalo Hopkinson and W.E.B. DuBois!). Both those stories were written at our Clarion. Michael also sold a story written at CW2k1, to the Agog! anthology. I loved all three stories, and you should buy those anthologies when they come out.

So basically our Clarion is kicking ass already.  Woo hoo!

Also, the talented and wonderfully-named Web Rat Hilary Moon Murphy sold her story "The Run of the Fiery Horse" (which we critiqued in RMCrit, so she owes us a beer) to Realms of Fantasy. I believe that's her first pro sale. Hopefully this will motivate her to start her journal again, so I can read about Gapati-Baba. And I notice that Charlie Finlay sold yet another damn story to F&SF -- his fifth this year or something. Jeez, ease up, guy, leave some room for the rest of us, all right? But I must forgive him this, because it is titled "A Democracy of Trolls" and he has promised me that he will base upon it a Broadway musical, "Trolls!"

(You know, this just occurred to me: I love that I know all these writers now. It's like a fringe benefit of writing, one I hadn't ever really thought about. Writers are clever and fun to talk to. When I read people's work that I like I write them and say, " hey! I like your stuff!" and they write back and say "Thanks!" and occasionally also "Hey! I like your stuff too!" and this is very neat. Programmers, for instance, don't do this. Well probably serious Larry-Wall-level Open Source geeks do, but not programmers like me.)

Anyway, I also have writing news about me:
 

Ellen rejected "Baby Love": "a little too sweet, with no edges." Quick response, which I'm grateful for. I think "Baby Love" is retiring for a while with "Corporate Anthropology", etc., to the pile of short stories to revise thoroughly some day in the future when I'm blocked about new stuff. I got an acceptance for "The Orange" from Quarterly West. Cool! My first publication in a print lit mag. I think me and Jed Hartman are finally done with the revisions for "Other Cities" (yes, it's been running for three months, but we were still revising it. Jed is great -- he and I can have a very serious cycle of four or five emails about a single semicolon. Sometimes the process has been frustrating, but I really love that someone else cares that much about my semicolons.) The third piece in the "Other Cities", "Ahavah", is up. "A Gardener Betrayed By Roses" was selected for the "Best of Strange Horizons 2000" print-on-demand anthology. Best SF reviewed "The Ant King". Tangent Online reviewed Bellur and Ponge. I've been boingboinged again.

I think that's it. Whew!

First the old ones: I finally got the camera connection working, so I was able to finally download all the pictures from the camera. 

This is Aviva at four months old:                       1    2    3

About that time Ethan came to visit:                  1    2    3    4    5    6   

And we all went away over easter vacation with 
Esther's gang the Come Back Glöbb:               1    2    3    4    5    6   

Then Jamey came to visit:                                1

Here is Aviva with Amire from next door:        1     2   

Here are a few more recent pictures:               1     2    3    4    5    6

And here is Aviva playing with her plastic suitcase.
 
 

We're not doing anything for Thanksgiving.

Except giving thanks. 

Man, do we have a lot to be thankful for. Especially for Aviva. What a different world it was last Thanksgiving, without her in it!  Thanks, God, in all your alien Otherness, for this gift.