No idea what’s up, but it looks like some of my email isn’t getting out, and some of *your* email isn’t getting in. I’m looking into it, but in the meantime can you please send any email to my main address and copy it to my back up at strahan(dot)jonathan(at)gmail(dot)com. Sorry for the inconvenience.

If you’re going to dress in pink as a fairy, you have to COMMIT. Sophie had a fancy dress party to go to not so long ago, and dressed herself as a pink fairy. She’s five. Time does fly.

Ok. People actually asked for whining and stuff. I don’t get it. Still. Last week was an insanely busy time at Casa del Madness. Jessica and Sophie were both involved in a particularly full-on dance recital, which ran for two nights with an enormous audience. Sophie had one performance, dressed as a little clown girl, and Jessica had two, one as a bear and the other as a rain girl. It was incredibly cute. This is one of the rare photos their terrible parents. We have video, but you *don’t* want to be downloading that

A lot of people are giving Peter Watt’s new novel Blindsight the nod as best SF novel of 2006. I’ve not read it yet, but you can. It’s available under a Creative Commons license here for free. Go read it and, if you like it, pick up a dead-tree version for yourself or a friend.

I like a good blog post as much as the next person, which is why I’ve not been inflicting any of the one’s I’ve drafted over the past week or so on you to read. There are the whiney ones (I’m sick, I’m sick, I’ve got the flu/virus), the complaining ones (I’m too busy, too busy etc), the boring to anyone but me ones (my kids were so cute at their dance recital thing), and the possibly ill-advised ones (I’ve actually done a complete set of Coode Street Awards, but I’m not sure if it’s a good idea), and so on.

So, what did I do instead? Memes. Pfeh on memes. I’ve sold two new books. This is cool. One is one that you expected, but I didn’t. After a very rocky genesis, I’m about to start sending out contracts for the fourth volume in the SF Book Club Best Short Novels anthology series. I’d really, really thought this one wasn’t going to happen, but it is, which is good. So, major thanks to Andy, Howard, and Sean for getting behind the book, and to Charles for his determination that it should happen.   The other book is also for Andy at the Book Club. I’m editing an anthology of six original science fiction novellas, tentatively called Godlike Machines, on the theme of ‘big dumb objects’. I think this one should be a lot of fun to do, and am about to send out invitations to writers. Should be fun. I’m also going to get clearance to announce the other project I’ve got going on. All good stuff.