Topping the list of things that are totally awesome this morning, "How Many Miles to Babylon?" appears in io9. Every month, io9 will publish a story from Lightspeed's current issue; you'll be able to find those stories on io9 here.

Also, "Lessons from a Clockwork Queen" is included in the Lightspeed ebook sampler, which is pretty cool.

I'm flattered to see that "Lessons from a Clockwork Queen" appears (with three stars!) on Tangent Online's Recommended Reading list for 2011.

Also, Lois Tilton gave "The Gardens of Landler Abbey" a "recommended" rating, which is wonderful and unexpected.

My story "How Many Miles to Babylon?" appears in this week's issue of Lightspeed (along with an author spotlight).

As you're probably aware, Lightspeed and Fantasy Magazine have now merged into one super-fantastic magazine, which means Lightspeed publishes two stories this week. And the other one in this issue is "Blue Lace Agate" by the indescribably awesome Sarah Monette. Pardon me while I fangirl in the corner.

*fangirls*

Hope your New Year is a safe and happy one.

The Winter 2011 issue of Mirror Dance came out this morning. We have some lovely retold fairy tales, surprising takes on folklore, entirely original pieces, and an insightful interview with Mike Phillips. I'm particularly pleased with the poetry in this issue, so be sure you check it out!

My pseudo-Jamesian secondary-world ghost story "The Gardens of Landler Abbey" appears in today's issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and the very queer "Portrait of a Courtesan" appears in Crossed Genre's final issue. As a bibliographic note, "Landler Abbey" is my most recently finished story, having been drafted, edited, and submitted this September. Make of that what you will.

In other news, please think positive thoughts for my mother and aunt, who lost their beloved mother (my wonderful and elegant grandmother) on Saturday.

This is something in the character of a memo-to-self, so please excuse my self-indulgence.

I thought no longer of kind mellow evening hours of rest, and scents of flowers and woods on evening air; and of how someone on a farm a mile or two off would be saying ‘How clear Betton bell sounds tonight after the rain!’; but instead images came to me of dusty beams and creeping spiders and savage owls up in the tower, and forgotten graves and their ugly contents below, and of flying Time and all it had taken out of my life.

From M. R. James, "A Neighbor's Landmark." So far as I can recall, this is the only time one of James's characters experiences anything like a tragic past. And, okay, a brief sentence in one short story hardly counts as a past, but no where else does a Jamesian protagonist's encounter with the supernatural make him think about anything in his life. Graves and spiders and rot and dust, yes, but not all that Time takes--friendship, companions, lovers. This passage starts out being too cliche to be effectively terrifying, but then that last phrase--"of flying Time and all that it had taken out of my life"--that's Terror with a capital T.

Well done, Mr. James. Well done indeed.

I know it looks like it, but honest to goodness, I don't live under a rock. I'm just really slow on announcing things sometimes.

Lessons from a Clockwork Queen appears in Fantasy Magazine this week (which, by now, is almost last week). There's also an Author Spotlight where I talk about clockworks, lessons, and trolls.

In other news, I'm revamping the guidelines for both Mirror Dance and Lacuna. No major changes, but I'll be making my fiction philosophy a bit more explicit (so when I say "this isn't quite what I'm looking for" in a rejection letter, the author doesn't scream in frustration). Stay tuned.

A number of my older (read: prehistoric) stories are vanishing from their graves on the internet, so I'm archiving them on this blog. Mostly, this is so I have a solid page to link to on my bibliography page. If it please you to browse, gentle sirs and dames, be my guests, though I have to warn you that some of them are embarassingly bad.

Anyway, that's why there's all these new posts. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.