Actually… there’s a certain irony to selling that story today, given our travel experiences and that we checked into the “jacuzzi suite” tonight.

Here’s a teaser:

Echoes and steam swirled around Nanna, merging with warm water to ease the tightness in her limbs. God, she had missed spas while she’d been away. The entire state of Wyoming had utterly failed to understand what a spa should be. In fact, the entire country might have failed in that.

Beside her, Eric groaned. “I may never move again.”

“Told you.” Lauger, of all the spas in Reykjavik, was her favorite and the first place she went after a trip abroad. The heat crept into her, peeling off layers of protection that she hadn’t even noticed. She’d been away too long this time. Not that she’d admit it to her grandmother who’d been outraged when she decided to stay at the university over the summer. And following that up by bringing an American boyfriend home had been…interesting.

It’s a reprint anthology and this story was my second sale ever, back in 2004. Funny, but I just realized that my first two sales weren’t spec fiction.  Anyway, here’s a snippet

I was born Rosa Carlotta Silvana Grisanti, but in the mid-Eighties, I legally changed my name to Eve. As you have guessed in your letter, after the shocking affair of the Dutch steamship Friesland, my dear friends Dr. Watson and Mr. Sherlock Holmes suggested that my safest course of action would be to distance myself from my family.

The title, by the way, comes from a story that Watson mentions but never tells.

My story, “For Solo Cello, op. 12″ is in there.

Claude Lalumière, “Three Friends”
Leah Bobet, “Six”
Marie Brennan, “Once a Goddess”
Ian McHugh, “Angel Dust”
Ann Leckie, “The Endangered Camp”
Mary Robinette Kowal, “At the Edge of Dying”
Saladin Ahmed, “Hooves and the Hovel of Abdel Jameela”
Tanith Lee, “The Pain of Glass” (a story of the Flat Earth)
Joanna Galbraith, “The Fish of Al-Kawthar’s Fountain”
Catherynne M. Valente, “The Secret History of Mirrors”
Forrest Aguirre, “Never nor Ever”
Gemma Files and Stephen J. Barringer, “each thing i show you is a piece of my death”
Kelly Barnhill, “Open the Door and the Light Pours Through”
Barbara Krasnoff, “Rosemary, That’s For Remembrance”
Steve Rasnic Tem, “When We Moved On”

However.

This email was much more exciting.

I’m contacting you to inform you that Rich Horton has selected one of your stories, “For Solo Cello, Op. 12,” for Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, scheduled for February release.

To which I can only say, “Merry Christmas!” and then laugh and dance.

Concluding the anthology is Mary Robinette Kowal’s futuristic “Tomorrow and Tomorrow”, the tale of Tuyet, a cleaning woman working on a space station hoping to earn enough money to buy her ailing son a new set of lungs. A tale of the desperate things people do for the sake of others, this story presents a sympathetic character who is sucked into a murder plot after the fact, and is too deeply involved by the time she realizes it to change the outcome. With more than just her own life at stake, Tuyet is tragically doomed by either path she takes.

Date of Publication: December 1st, 2007
Hardcover only available via pre-order
Special TPB pre-order price of $12.95

This is the much anticipated follow up to the Stoker nominated featured writer anthology Aegri Somnia. Gratia Placenti translated means “for the sake of pleasing.” 13 of the most sinister, darkest writers in the horror business were tasked with conveying their take on the theme of gratia placenti.

Table of Contents
“Only Spirits Cry” – R. Thomas Riley
“Crasher” – Debbie Kuhn
“Follow the Canary” – Athena Workman
“Translatio” – Geoffrey Girard
“Party Makers” – Adrienne Jones
“Some Glue Never Dries” – David Niall Wilson
“Some Good Eats” – JA Konrath
“Bright Red Razors” – Teri Jacobs
“Tomorrow and Tomorrow” – Mary Robinette Kowal
“The Listening” – Neil Ayres
“The Cutting Room” – Shane Jiraiya Cummings
“Something Wet” – James Reilly
“Popup Killer” – Bev Vincent

13 stories, 63000 words
Introduction by Jason Sizemore
Cover art by Paul Bielaczyc

Neil says:

The three covers in the poll were presented in chronological order and represent a sampling of our favorites. During the 24 hour period prior to the poll, there was a lot of discussion about color, framing, fonts, and such. I have to admit to being a bit of a troublemaker. As reflected in the poll, there was a lot of support for cover #1. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get past the portal-effect the framing had on the art I had selected, so we pressed onward.

REALMS is now available for preorder at the Wyrm Publishing website and should be listed at Amazon and (hopefully) other bookstores within the next few weeks.

In appreciation for all the input I received, for the next week, I’m running a special 30% off promotion on preorders for this book.

Which one do you most want to read?

Cover 1	Cover 2	Cover 3

After that, we biked down to the farmers market. Oh, my goodness. I’d missed that so much. The produce is just starting to come in and there were some really gorgeous mushrooms. Biking home, we stopped at four or five yardsales (one was a whole street, so there were really more, but it was only one stop) but didn’t find anything until the last one. We got an ice chest for the trip across country, a pair of dress shoes for Rob, and a book from 1856 for me, called The Wedding Guest. It’s an anthology of marriage advice, some of which is presented in dramatic format. Really good stuff.

In the evening, we went down to Laurelhurst to see a 1953 film noir called The Big Heat. It was a very satisfying film.

I’ve sort of kept mum about one of them, I realize. You already know that my story, “Rampion” appears in the anthology. But there’s this other thing I forgot to mention.

After I sold them “Rampion,” I had one of those conversations with the editors, Lawrence Schoen and Michael Livingston, where I foolishly said, “Who’s your art director?”

I need to learn to stop asking this question. This is how I started working with Shimmer , too. Not that I mind, you understand, but it does seem to be a dangerous question because after a little bit of conversation the answer turned out to be, me.

Lawrence and Michael picked out David Ho’s fantastic art, before I came on board as art director, so all I designed was the cover and interior. It just felt a little awkward to mention since I have a story actually in the anthology and all. But, it does give you another reason to want the anthology, right?

Plus! Look at the table of contents:

1. James Maxey, “To The East, A Bright Star”
— from Asimov’s (December 2005)
2. Cat Rambo, “Ticktock Girl”
— from CyberAge Adventures (September 2005)
3. Ken Scholes, “The Man With Great Despair Behind His Eyes”
— from Talebones (Winter 2005)
4. Geoffrey Girard, “Wizards’ Encore”
— from Beyond Centauri (April 2005)
5. Elaine Isaak, “The Disenchantment of Kivron Ox-master”
— from The Worlds of Fantasy (2001)
6. Jim C. Hines, “Sister of the Hedge”
— from Realms of Fantasy (June 2006)
7. Mary Robinette Kowal, “Rampion”
— from The First Line (Spring 2005)
8. Eric James Stone, “Salt of Judas”
— from Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show (March 2006)
9. E. Catherine Tobler, “Button by Button”
— from Would That It Were (April/June 2001)
10. Matthew S. Rotundo, “Black Boxes”
— from Absolute Magnitude (Spring 2001)
11. Tobias Buckell, “Tides”
— from Ideomancer Unbound (December 2002)
12. Tom Pendergrass, “Urban Renewal”
— from Shimmer (Summer 2006)
13. Mike Shultz, “As the Stars of the Sky”
— from Leading Edge (April 2004)
14. Ruth Nestvold, “Rainmakers”
— from Asimov’s (June 2005)
15. David W. Goldman, “Radical Acceptance”
— from Analog (January/February 2007)

You can order your copy of Prime Codex at the Paper Golem website.

The list is final. The decision has been made. We are publishing the following stories in this year’s Best of Apex 2006 collection.

Blood Baby – Jennifer Pelland
The Queen of Stars – Bryn Sparks
That Old Sandlands Fever – Douglas F. Warrick
Cerbo en Vitro ujo – Mary Robinette Kowal
Genesis Six – Shane Jiraiya Cummings
Starfish – Steve Parker
Indigestion – Robby Sparks
How to Raise a Human – Deb Taber

I’m going to London because Steve Savile and Alethea Kontis will be there with their anthology, Elemental.

When I was growing up, the local public TV station carried Dr. Who and I started watching at exactly the right age. I loved the show. The opportunity to write a story with the Doctor is so incredibly exciting that I actually can not find the words to explain it. ’nuff said, eh?