Jason Erik Lundberg culls names from the Table of Contents and Honorable Mentions in the current Year's Best Science Fiction, which apparently includes:

 

"Live from the Volgograd Blackout!"  (Honorable Mention)

 

 

Thank you, Jason. I hadn't heard yet.

 

 

My editor at Bantam has at last sent me her editorial notes on Patron Saint of Plagues, and it was worth the wait. At Wiscon, Kelly Link called Juliet Ulman one of the smartest editors in the genre right now, and I'd have to agree. It's one thing to receive pertinent ideas and exacting line edits, but it's another thing entirely to feel like your editor has peered inside your skull and read the book in your brain, the book you meant to write. I'd say half of her edits/suggestions were mind-bogglingly accurate, and it will be a better book for them. The other half were at least spot on, and probably more spot on than I really know. Even the places where we may tangle, it might turn out to be a tango instead, and I'm totally willing and eager to find a way to make her suggestions work - even the ones that rub me the wrong way at the moment.

 

On a side note, the editorial letter and marked-up manuscript came this weekend while my mom was in town. So even though I'd waited quite a bit longer than originally planned, it was worth it to impress Mom during her visit (I read her all the nice things Juliet said about me and mumbled through the rest).

 

On a more important note, it's my brother Mark's birthday this week (we celebrate by the week in my family). Happy Birthday, Marcos! Sorry I'm not there to graffiti your car with the words "kissy boy"  all over it, so you'll have to get Aeron to do that for me. Mwah!

 

 

 

Diane, my spy at the CDC, writes to say that she's hesitant about my new blog:

 

I'm sure this blog will still be available via Google's cache, Diane. Besides, it's like yesterday's bath water. You don't save that, do you??

 

Don't answer.

 

Meanwhile, I notice that there a few folks coming to this site from servers in Mexico. Drop me a line if you care to - I'd love to know how you came by my blog. barth anderson at earthlink dot net.

 

OK. My writing day is over. Time to pack up and become a worker again.

 

 

 

A good writing week, in which I finished an article on Fair Trade conducted through a local importer, another on bamboo, and two more chapters on the tarot novel.

 

I would have gotten a third chapter typed out, but we had a surprise visit from Lisa's ex-step-father (actually, let's do the math: he's the ex-stepmother's new husband - but "ex-step-father" is a pretty good descriptor of the relationship). Lew was bringing his son Sam, a great kid, fourteen (who's reading Ovid in the original!), to camp in northern Wisconsin.

 

Lew is the one who, out of the blue, sent me a copy of The Iron Dream by Spinrad. He's one of two or three people in my extended/expanded family to whom I don't have to explain what I write or why I write it, so it's always a pleasure to see him and let conversation unreel. We talked a lot about the new crop of sf/f writers that I know, and I sent him home with a copy of Move Under Ground by Nick Mamatas. I kind of think Lew misses writerly talk. Lew's best friend was Glenn Savan who wrote White Palace. Glenn died two years ago of Parkinson's which was rough on Lew because they were very close. Lew even helped him write the novel that Glenn was working on before he died. He put up butcher paper on the walls and Glenn wrote what he could, or Lew wrote for him, or he transcribed on to computer what Glenn had put up on the butcher paper. I got to meet Glenn at one of Lew and Melanie's riotous Passover celebrations many years ago, but never got to talk to him about writing. Very cool to talk to Lew about Glenn's career and what it was like for Glenn to sell the novel after years of struggle, consult on the film version of White Palace (Glenn apears in the movie, actually), and be a writer who was perceived as having "arrived" after one damn book.

 

Anyway, sometimes it's a struggle to explain writing (let alone writing sf and fantasy) to one's loved ones. Writer friends are important for this very reason, but how gratifying to talk to someone in my own family about it all.