The Mythopoeic Society has announced the 2006 finalists for the various Mythopoeic Awards. I was delighted, but unsurprised, to see Locus colleague Tim Pratt nominated for his novel The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl and Neil Gaiman for his novel Anansi Boys in the Adult Literature category, and very chuffed to see Holly Black’s fine novel Valiant shortlisted in the Children’s Literature category. Good luck, one and all.

Over the coming months I’m going to be doing a number of things here to help promote work that I think is worthwhile, noteworthy, or just neat in some way. Sometimes I’ll be promoting a project that I’ve had something to do with, sometimes it’ll be something done by a friend, and sometimes it’ll simply be something that I know about and think is worth taking up some of your time to talk about. While I’m still sketching out a few details, there’ll be reviews, interviews, excerpts and podcasts of stuff.

The Coode Street Podcast No.1

I’m starting things off with a podcast of a brand new story by Deborah Biancotti. You can find out all about it over on the Coode Street Podcast page.

While I will post a longer note on Talking Squid, I did provide a comment to Gary Kemble at ABC’s Articulate blog about the upcoming Orbit Australia line.

Well, about two minutes ago I sent off an email containing the submission manuscript for my young adult science fiction anthology, The Starry Rift. I’m really happy with the book, but am so close to it that I don’t entirely know what to think. I’m enormously happy and relieved to get the book to the publisher at long, long last — and begin the next phase of bringing the book to publication in mid-2007 — but I’m also incredibly nervous. This is the first original anthology I’ve done, the first where I’ve edited the stories. I don’t think I’ve ever been more invested in a book. Will my editor, the fabulous Sharyn, like it? Will it be good enough? Will all be well? I’ve done all I can, and now it’s out of my hands. I have my fingers crossed.

PS: Once I know that the book has been accepted for publication I’ll post the table of contents here. It’s something of a doozy.

I get stressed way too easily. My mum always used to say that my family was of a nervous disposition, which I always rubbished. And yet, as I’ve gotten older I’ve gotten twitchier and twitchier. I’m sure this is partly a byproduct of physical fitness, partly of poor organisation, but it’s there nonetheless. We’ve been trying to organise things for my mum’s birthday on Thursday and my daughter Jessica’s sixth birthday next week, and that got me a bit twitchy. Then this morning I got an email that plunged me into mild chaos. I’ve got a tick under my left eye as I type. The email was perfectly fine, it just asked where I was at with something. Now, I thought I’d replied last August to this query already (an email seems to have gone astray), and suddenly was going ‘oh shit, oh shit, oh shit’. I’ve now responded to the email and wouldn’t blame my correspondent for being both disappointed and angry with me. I hope it’ll work out, but it both added to the stress of the morning and left me thinking I get stressed way too easily. And way too easily to be this disorganised.