Of the publishing variety. "Whatever Shall Grow There, Dear" is now live in the current issue of Lone Star Stories, along with other excellent fiction and poetry that you should imbibe immediately. Take a look at sovay's "Firework-Makers", and the poems of papersky and seajules. Everyone seems to be on LJ these days. ;)

While you're at it, head over to Schezerezade's Bequest, the online edition of Cabinet des Fees, and check out sovay's lovely "Bonny Fisher Boy". And before you conclude that I am stalking sovay, I say this as segue to the update that SB has recently accepted my poem "The Fall of Fairy Castle" for their September issue.

When you're done doing that, you should hie yourself out and purchase a copy of the first issue of Tales of Moreauvia, containing as it does jsridler's very excellent "Engine of Desolation", as well as a story by the habitually skillful and entertaining Rita Oakes. Can't lose.

Last but certainly not least, feast your eyes upon the snazzy page that is Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which will be debuting this Fall under the steady hand of Scott H. Andrews.

Being that I've been in Albany and New York City in the last week, I was in range of the Kindle's Whispernet, and boy did I use it. The Kindle can in fact be used to surf the web and check email, but what got me in trouble was the ease with which I could download free book samples. I've also downloaded books from Project Gutenberg and piped them onto the Kindle; I have not yet attempted boonofdoom's clever notion of reading slush on it, but plan to soon. It has already caused me to purchase three books I would not have otherwise, and sampled over a dozen I likely would not have picked up anytime soon. I suppose I should be lucky I was only temporarily exposed to Whispernet. In preliminary conclusion, the Kindle is not quite the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer, but it is clearly Australopithecus to that line, and I remain both impressed and frightened.

Since he's already announced it, I gather that it is safe to mention here that Eric "lightning draw" Marin has accepted "Whatever Shall Grow There, Dear" for the June 2008 edition of Lone Star Stories.

"Whatever Shall Grow There, Dear" is one of three themed stories using lines from John Donne's "Lovers' Infiniteness", stories that wound up cutting pretty deep for me (not all of them do) and so each of which has a special place in mah heart. So I'm very pleased to see this one find such a good home. I sent it to Lone Star after reading and thoroughly enjoying Sarah Prineas's "Dragon Hunt" in the site archives, a story that will also be reappearing in The Lone Star Stories Reader this year. Check it out!

I'm again very behind on updating due to the move, work, and chaos with the Fish & Wildlife Department, but last week or perhaps the week before I also received my contributor's copy of Not One of Us #39, containing "Theoria". Another just excellently composed magazine, and though I haven't finished it yet, very much enjoying the stories therein. It's deeply satisfying when you find a magazine that regularly provides fiction you know you'll enjoy, at least for me, since I seem to jump between so many.

Also received my contributor's copy of the Spring 08 issue of Illumen, which surprised me both with its thickness (especially since it's 100% poetry) and its high production values (glossy color cover, etc) -- my fault for not having picked up a copy of the magazine before. It's a nice piece of work, though, and also unique to see a print magazine devoted entirely to speculative poetry. This one has my "The Flight of Alecto" in it, written/finished for the 2006 TNEO Slam.

More later! Uh, though no promises. Things are going to be batty again until I get back from Ion in a few weeks. But for now the do fu hua quest continues -- two years after posting that recipe I finally found actual do hua in a Chinese market in Kingston. Now I just have to see if I can remember the 'second gen' attempt I made at the ginger syrup, which came out much better last year than the brown sugar edition (I used palm sugar).

In more of the rollercoaster that this week has turned into, I give you:

Cyberpunked: The Fall of Black9

Note that the Escapist server seems to be having some indigestion; I can only intermittently get to all of the pages. They should have it worked out soon, though, they tend to be pretty quick on stuff like that.

This was by far the most difficult piece I've ever written for them, the one I had the most apprehension about having published and the one I angsted over getting just right. I still don't know if I did. With everything that happened over the last couple of days, I actually forgot that it was going up today until I got the alert in my email, but there it is. The opportunity to write it rose up out of nowhere a few months ago; the calendar went out and I saw that they had planned a postmortem issue, and I knew it was finally time to get all of this out. Some of you were reading my LJ when all of it went down, so you know the story, but now it's all in the open air. We'll see what happens.

Happy birthday to nalroth! May his vivacity and zest for life be eternal.

Since some of you (caerbannog, I'm looking at you) might be interested in this, the Escapist has my "Hail to the Kitty" article up this week, a retrospective on my disturbing affinity for the Kitty. Stay tuned next week for the next phase in my game industry troublemaking...

I am making travel plans for Ion, where I will be speaking next month on BetterEULA stuff and all that jazz. Let me know if you're in the Seattle area and would like to catch up!

I just found the announcement that Renard's Menagerie #5 is now available for ordering, and with it my whimsical short story about the evolution of parrots, "A Matter of Scale".

This was an older story and one that was pure fun to write. I wrote it back in 2005 as an application story for Odyssey, and so also thanks go to the famously wise Jeanne Cavelos for her critique of the story. Many of her points were echoed by justinhowe of its scribe_fu posting, so thanks there also.

I was particularly excited about the fantastic artwork that Amber Hill created for this story. I first contacted Jennifer Miller (nambroth) to see if she might be available, and she suggested Amber (vantid), whose work I also have greatly admired for years. Amber put a tremendous amount of work into this. After I connected her with Fox I didn't even realize they were actually going ahead with commissioning her for the magazine, so I just sent a couple of emails and several months later this is what she showed me! Not only is this a fantastic piece of art (I can't wait for the prints to become available), she also put in a couple of specific birds -- Smeagol is there in the bottom right, and nambroth's Khu is perched on the dragon's shoulder.

The story is very lighthearted and full of inside jokes for parrot owners. I don't generally talk about my actual writing process in blog-space -- I certainly understand the drive of writers who do, but for me it's a bit too under-the-hood. However, I will say that this one was, no pun intended, a "pet" story of mine and I'm both glad for it to have found the home it did and of course ecstatic about the artwork.

In other publication news, I heard a few days ago that my short poem "Theoria" has been accepted by John Benson for a future issue of Not One of Us. It is another outside-my-usual-milieu work dear to my heart for its peculiarities, so good stuff there. It must be that kind of week.