Waiting for the world to change

No letter of suck yet from Polyphony 7. I'll take that as a sign that I've maybe, perhaps, who in all of mighty Arda knows, survived the first round of readings. I could be totally jinxing myself here.

More stuff pertaining to the mail

Yes, another grand post about...mail! Settle down, settle down!

• Received my contributor copy and check (mmm money) for the beach-themed anthology Strange Stories of Sand and Sea, which contains my short story "Birds, Gods, and the Naming of Things"...and boy is it a big book. Over 300 pages. Lots of stories in here and I'm looking forward to sitting down with it and checking the others out. I don't re-read my work. But if I was to I'd probably describe the piece as an in-and-out hallucination trip under the boards of Atlantic City where an angry boy learns a mighty lesson from a talking seagull. Yup.
  
• Received my review copy of the latest issue of the urban horror magazine City Slab, #12, which I'll be handling for The Fix Online sometime in the near future.
• I mailed out my latest entry into the Writers of the Future contest this weekend. Go, little story, go! Shine on you crazy diamond! Er, I'll keep my fingers crossed that it makes it to California safely.

And that's that for now. I suspect I'll be getting a few more interesting items this week, but most of them will be bills. Ah, the bane of my existence! Bills! And CVS ads!

Mail has arrived

So, I've gotten a few things in the mail lately.

The first is from J. Kathleen Cheney, a nice hardback copy of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. This one is for my Hugo-awarding winning books project and is much appreciated. But dang. 'Tis a big book. Might save it for summertime, considering everything else I want to get through at the moment.

Next, Paul Jessup sent me the animated version of Nausicaa in exchange for the graphic novel which I did not enjoy. Haven't watched the anime version yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I suspect I'll like it more, only because of my deep love with Spirited Away and the likes.

Lastly, I received K.D. Wentworth's critique of my semi-finalist entry for the fourth quarter 2007 of Writers of the Future contest. Of "The Lady of Jeweled Dreams," Kathy says many nice things and makes a damn good amount of sense. She picked up on some things that need to be clear, offered some suggestions of where sections could be stronger, and even believes there's novel-potential in the worldbuilding. This was my first attempt at writing sword-and-sorcery so I'm pleased at that. I look forward to editing this sucker up into something better.

Thanks, mail. You've been nice lately. Also, no bills yet. So that's good as well.