I want to complain and whine, I do. It’s been a long, stressful week and things aren’t going to settle down for a week or two, is my guess. I’d intended to whine, but in an amazing feat of self-control, I’ve decided instead to tell you what’s good right now. First, three weeks ago my eldest daughter Jessica started school. She has an intellectual disability, and this was her first start in a mainstream school. As you can imagine, we were damn nervous about it, but determined to give her the best chance we could, and so far it’s working. With minor hiccups, she’s settling in, making friends and doing ok. Not much else that’s happening could blemish that. Second, I delivered Best Short Novels: 2006. I think it’s a good book, though I have no distance on these things. I do know that Andrew Wheeler and the team at the Book Club are a pleasure to deal with. Professional, on the ball, and good in most every way. Third, I received the dvds of the first half of season 2 of Battlestar Galactica, which was so cool I actually learned how to download the next seven eps by bit torrent. Fourth, I’m reading Justina Robson’s very cool and very good fun new novel. Fourth, despite a major hiccup, The Starry Rift, my young adult SF anthology should be delivered mid-week (if I can get the intro done) and it rocks. Fifth, a new Eels cd was released last week, and it’s swell. Sixth, some very cool people have decided to put their faith in me to do some more work, more on which later.
There is another thing that I’ve come to appreciate this past week. I fell into editing anthologies, almost by chance it seemed. I was disappointed when the first set I did, in Australia, weren’t renewed. I was grateful to Bob Silverberg, Karen Haber, Byron Preiss, and Marty Greenberg for letting me get involved with their year’s best SF and year’s best fantasy, and insanely happy when the Book Club let me do Best Short Novels. Now what I realise is this: I love it. I love editing a year’s best volume. It can be a royal pain in the ass at times, and the deadlines should be for short order cooks, not editors, but it’s a beautiful thing. You read millions of words of fiction, some shitty, some some golden, and you sift out the gold, assemble it in a book, and give it to readers. It’s a very personal thing. I’m very lucky.