Niall Harrison, over at Coalescent, is reviewing Lucius Shepard’s enormous new 300,000 word short story collection Trujillo, story by story, here. Also, Ellen Datlow has just published Howard Waldrop’s latest story “The Wolf-Man of Alcatraz“, which you should check out.

This morning has been a bit of a blue morning. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been listening to a cd of acoustic reworkings of old Stephen Cummings songs and some old Elvis Costello country music, or because colliding deadlines are leaving me a bit out of sorts.

It’s probably not a good thing, but I find that when I get towards the end of a project I start second-guessing a lot of my decisions. Suddenly something that looked perfect three months ago looks decidedly dodgy. I get through it, and things look fine once I’m done, but right at the end-point it’s not much fun. I’m guessing that’s where I’m at with the annual anthologies today. As I posted yesterday, we’re reaching the endgame and suddenly I’m wondering did I miss something, and was that piece I liked in February really as good as I thought it was? For me, I think this is a natural part of the process, but it can be a bit hard on my unfortunate collaborators, and I almost always end up very happy with what we’ve done (for example, I went through this last year, and I think we ended up doing a good job on last year’s ‘year’s best SF’).

I’m hoping I’ll be feeling a little perkier though. It’s a beautiful day outside – cool and sunny – and I’m meeting up with my friend Russell for lunch, so things should pick up in the afternoon. I just have to learn not to brood.

In the meantime, let me direct your attention to the estimable John Klima’s latest issue of Electric Velocipede. I picked up issue 7 of the ‘Pede in Boston and it features cool stories by Liz Williams, Christopher Rowe, Chris Roberson and Steve Nagy. I think it costs about the price of a cup of a coffee and a couple staples, so don’t hesitate. It’s a neat ‘zine.