John Clute has responded to Paula Guran’s article (see ref. below) about Locus‘s comments on print on demand publishing. Clute makes reference to an ongoing discussion with Guran, which he intends to put on his message board. You can read about it here.

Following on from my earlier post about princesses, I thought I should point anyone interested to Will Shetterly’s perfectly titled “The Princess Who Kicked Butt“, which you can read in its entirety. It’s covered by all of that copyright wassname, but you’re allowed to read it. Do.

Sophie, now aged three and a half, is a princess. In fact, she is Sleeping Beauty Princess, and is reluctant to answer to any other name. I’m thinking of editing an anthology for her. I don’t know if it’d be a collection of stories for princesses, or about princesses.

The Locus poll has now closed. I know there’ll be an announcement somewhere else but, as part of the team, thank you for voting. Tabulation by a respected team of accountants (hi Mark!) is now underway, and results should be out shortly.

The Nebula Awards winners have now been announced. Congratulations (and commiserations) to one and all.

Edit (3 May): Just to clarify, by ‘results out shortly’, I mean in July at Westerncon.

I received an email on Friday. Nothing unusual about that. It had an attachment – also pretty standard. Less typically, the attachment was a novel. Not, you understand, four hundred odd pages of wood pulp somehow niftily pushed through the cybercracks, but the essence of it, what the ’80s media types would have called the ‘content’. It ran to about a hundred thousand words and sounded pretty good.

I was busy Friday, though, and did not read it. I did not read it on Saturday morning or afternoon either. Sometime early Saturday evening I began to read, intrigued by the notion laid out in the opening that a story would begin with a song, and end up ruining someone’s life. The story went on, as stories do, to tell of the death of a father, a journey by his disaffected son to attend his funeral, some old (frankly rather dubious) women, unexpected discoveries about family, love (or the search for it), and, handily, a trip to the Caribbean.

The first third of the book is about the funniest thing I’ve read, the second third isn’t quite so funny but I was hooked by then (possibly because I’d developed a crush on one of the characters who seemed, to me at least, to be the sort of which Keith Roberts might have approved). The final third did what good final thirds do – rush you toward a climax, run the story and all of its participants through the wringer, and then tie everything up at the end (not too neatly, just enough to make you feel like you know what went on).

The name of the novel is Anansi Boys. It’s due out in September pretty much everywhere. No, I can’t send you a copy, but I can tell you it’s wonderful and funny and will make you do that thing you used to do when you were younger that involved snuggling down in bed on a cold, rainy night with a really good book, so happy to be reading that story at that moment that it made your toes curl.