I think this post should probably consist of nothing but exclamation points.

Growing up, I subscribed to Asimov’s and had a shelf full of back issues until I went to college.  It was one of my favorite tickets to other worlds but I never imagined, back then, of actually appearing in its pages.  But my story, “The Consciousness Problem” just Sold! To! Asimov’s!

!!!!! !

Be happy there’s no audio component to this post because the squeel would destroy your eardrums.  This is my first sale to one of the “Big Three” and I’m so pleased that it’s to Asimov’s.  I wrote the story as part of the workshop run by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, with special guest Sheila Williams.  Clearly, I got invaluable feedback from that.

Could this day get any better?  Oh yes, I think it can.  I just have to wait for the polls to close.

I’m delighted that “Ginger Stuyvesant and the Case of the Haunted Nursery” is going to appear in Talebones #38, tentatively scheduled for Spring 2009.  This will be my second time in Talebones, which is one of my favorite magazines. Seriously, if you’re only going to subscribe to one magazine (besides Shimmer) I highly recommend Talebones.

Here’s a teaser:

A liveried manservant waited by the front stairs of Fairbairn Hall as if he expected to take the reins of a horse. Ginger stopped her roadster next to him, shaking her head. These Brits had such queer, old-fashioned ideas.

She hopped out of her car, tossing her cloche on the front seat. With any luck, the hat had controlled the worst of the damage to her hair on the drive up from London.

The front door of the manor house flung open. In a flurry of crepe chiffon, Lucy Rhodes hurried down the stairs. “Ginger, darling! Thank heavens you’ve come.” Even in the daylight, circles of fear rippled through her aura.

I just sold “Jaiden’s Weaver” to Diamonds in the Sky, An Astronomical Anthology edited by Mike Brotherton. I’m extremely pleased by this because I came up with the idea for the setting while at the Launchpad Writer’s Workshop. Jerry Oltion, one of our fabulous instructors, helped me work out what it would be like to live on a planet that had rings.

Many, many thanks to the very kind folks who read the draft of this and offered feedback. You guys rock.

I love, love, love Subterranean Press and am so delighted to have finally landed a sale there. This actually happened a couple of weeks ago, right before Launchpad, but I was sitting on the news until I finished revisions.¹ Which I just did and had accepted today. Hurrah!

Here’s the opening bit as a teaser. I’ll let you know when the story is up.

Mundari Vineyard 2045, Nashik (India), Shiraz
Black cherry, plum, and currant flavors mingle with aromas of sweet tobacco and sage in this dependable offering from India.

The sun peeking through the grapevines felt hotter on Bharat Mundari’s neck than twenty-four degrees. Another perfect day. Bharat scowled and worked his way down the row of vines, thinning the grapes so the remaining Shiraz crop would become fuller and riper.

Not that there was a point in having healthy vines when he couldn’t pay his weather bill. Without rain, the grapevines would weaken under the stress, and stressed grapes made poor wine. No one bought flawed wine.

Just to keep things in balance though, I should tell you that the night I got home from the Campbells, I had a rejection note waiting in my inbox. Doesn’t matter. My life is very, very good right now.

1. There’s a funny story here, which I’ll tell later. [↩]

Yesterday, I sold “Scenting the Dark” to Apex Digest and felt like, given everything, that I should hold onto the news until after April Fool’s was over.

Many thanks to those of you who read a draft of this. Your comments helped me enormously.

Edited to add: The story will be in the next issue of Apex Digest, lucky issue 13 The Table of Contents is:

“Scenting the Dark” (4000 words) - Mary Robinette Kowal
“Blankenjel” (6100 words) - Lavie Tidhar
“In the Seams” (7200 words) - Andrew Porter
“Nature of Blood” (7500 words) - George Mann
“I Know an Old Lady” (500 words) - Nathan Rosen
“The Limb Knitter” (6300 words) - Steven Francis Murphy
“These Days” (5600 words) - Katie Howenstine
“Collecting James” (5500 words) - Geoffrey Girard

I got this from Vylar Kaftan.

I will send a gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment here on my blog.

I don’t know what that gift will be yet, but you will receive it within 365 days (likely sooner than later). This may end up being almost anything. It could be a gift box, a hand made craft, a thrift store/garage sale find, a holiday oriented fascination, a poem, a book, a photo, or something else I find. Anything.

The only thing you have to do in return is “pay it forward” by making a similar agreement on your Journal.

Yesterday, Rob asked me about a box on our curb. It had a towel and a car floor mat in it. I didn’t recognize either, but figured that someone had pulled it out of their car while loading some yardsale item in. Granted, it hadn’t been there the day of the yard sale, but neither of us could think of another reasonable idea.

Today, the towel blew off the box.

There’s been this stray cat hanging around our house for about a month. It’s a poor scrawny thing, with patchy fur. It was in the box. I wanted it to be sleeping, but what cat would sleep inches away from a busy road?

Someone must have hit it with their car and tried to find the owner. I mean, they took the time to stop and put it in the box and cover it with the towel. I wonder if they picked our house because that’s where the cat was headed or because one of our neighbors told them that we have a black cat.

I’ve got this strange mix of sadness and relief. The sadness is easy to understand. But the relief? She never looked happy and she’s not struggling to survive anymore. That’s not it though, not really. I’m relieved that she wasn’t my cat. I’m relieved that I know she was feral and that no one is sitting at home wondering where she is. And then that makes the sadness comes back around.

The county animal control is coming to pick up the body.

Portland has an old tradition of the Rose Festival and the Rose parade. Part of the Rose Parade tradition is that it always rains on the day of the parade. So, what day did we pick for our yard sale? Parade Day! We’ve had some customers, but not as many as we would like. The weather feels like November.

And with an hour left in the yard sale, we still have the cyclops head.

Edited to Add: Evan Nichols stopped by and took this photo of us. Note the grey and Novembery weather.

Today was a really wonderful day. We went to pick up a tansu chest that replaces the dressers we had in our bedroom. Our goal is to only have furniture that we both like. There are a couple of exceptions for sentimental reasons, but very few.

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.

This font emporium that I love, sent out a coupon as part of a celebration of World Book and Copyright Day. That’s today. Did anyone else know this?

The connection between 23 April and books was first made in 1923 by booksellers in Catalonia as a way to honour the author Miguel de Cervantes who died on that day. This became a part of the celebrations of the Saint George’s Day (also 23 April) in the region, where it has been traditional since the mediaeval era for men to give roses to their lovers and since 1925 for the woman to give a book in exchange. Half the yearly sales of books in Catalonia are at this time with over 400,000 sold and exchanged for over 4 million roses.

In 1995, UNESCO decided that the World Book and Copyright day would be celebrated on this date because of the Catalonian festival and because the date is also the anniversary of the birth and death of William Shakespeare, the death of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Josep Pla, the birth of Maurice Druon, Vladimir Nabokov, Manuel Mejía Vallejo and Halldór Laxness

Just to keep you up to date, here’s the website for, Serendib, the show I’ll be building monkeys for.

The Ensemble Studio Theatre

First Light Mainstage Production
Power. Sex. Status.
And that’s just the monkeys
David Zellnik’s SERENDIB is a witty comedy about a group of scientists trying to save the world’s most important monkey study. The scientists invite a team of filmmakers to create a documentary of their work and of the monkeys. But the guests prove to be more unwieldy than their hosts can handle. Combining puppet work and traditional theatre, SERENDIB ponders the line between empathy and anthropomorphism.

March 28 - April 22 , 2007
Tickets will be on sale starting February 1

Emily DeCola is designing the monkeys.

What a fantastic way to start off 2007. Patrick Swenson just emailed me to say that he’d like to buy “Death Comes but Twice” for issue #35 of Talebones. I’m delighted. Talebones is one of my favorite magazines and I’ve been hankering to get in there.

Happy New Year everyone!

Well, I guess the headline about says it all. I don’t know yet when the story will come out, only that they like it and are buying it. Hurrah!

My story Cerbo en Vitra ujo is in this issue of Apex Digest. It just went on sale. I do feel I should warn some of you that it is horror and fairly icky. But, if you enjoy horror, then please pick up a copy.

I just sold Cerbo in Vitra ujo to Apex Digest. It will probably be in Issue 6, which comes out in June, but I’ll post for certain when I know the date. I’m thrilled, although it is an icky, icky story–my first foray into horror. This will be the first sale that I don’t give my parents a copy of.

Mom is disturbed just knowing that I wrote a horror story.

In his notes to me, Jason Sizemore said, “Whoever wrote this has no soul…” Which I think is a compliment, given the circumstances.