Heh. I’d totally forgotten that I’d done this. In my new short at Apex all of the names,¹ except Cody,² have something in common.

First person to correctly identify the commonality gets an unpublished short story direct to their inbox.

Edited to add: Through a joint effort, Mike F and Nathaniel Payne correctly identified the names as coming from subway stops. I often write on the train. I’ve sent them both a copy of “Home Safety” which is a spin on Hansel and Gretel.

1. Just to clarify Martian soil and Zeta Epsilon longgrass are not names. [↩]
2. Cody is named after a real dog. I did try to use the same naming convention with her, but Cody was a better name [↩]

Just a reminder, or a head’s up for those who don’t know, the official Campbell site will begin displaying the 2009 eligible authors in September. If your first pro-sale has appeared in print this year, make sure you contact them to get included on that list.

Here’s a bit of wine-maker jargon for you. Our friend Wayne is in town for a couple of days. He and Rob have been talking wine and wine making like they’ve both been starving. I’ve been listening and mostly staying out of their way. But this, this I had to share.

We were at dinner and they were talking about this new winery that Rob has started working at¹ and he said something about how all the grapes were going to be delivered in FYBs.

I said, “What’s an FYB?”

Wayne looked at the table next to us and then said, “Well. F stands for something that’s not polite to say at a restaurant.”

I stare at him for a second before I get it. “Really?”

“Yes. With an -ing. Then the other two are Yellow Bin.”

Rob confirmed. Apparently the F***ing Yellow Bins are so universally reviled for being hard to work with that this is an industry standard term. Everyone calls them FYBs.

1. Did I forget to mention that? [↩]