I ended my crappy day by watching a movie. As it happened, it was  a very good movie called Stranger Than Fiction. It stars Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhall and Emma Thompson, and is about…well, it’s about life and living it, but it’s the story of what happens when an author meets her character and has to reconsider everything she knows about him. You should watch it.

As to the day, well days go like that. No use whining. I am seriously – very seriously – reconsidering staying home this spring, giving Saratoga Springs a miss. Perhaps spend the time taking the kids on a holiday instead, or cleaning out the front room we’ve not occupied since we moved into the house four years ago.  Traveling to the US doesn’t have to be a thing I do every year. I could go twice next year instead. Who knows. Just, suddenly, it sounds less like fun than it did a while ago, though that may change. Who knows?

I am having a deeply annoying and bitterly frustrating day, on a broad range of fronts. Phooey.

I am incredibly disturbed to note that, at age 43,:

• the voice in music that seems most to speak to me is Billy Bragg’s;
• becoming a curmudgeon seems like a good idea; and
• I’m seriously considering going back to vinyl.

Hmm. Time to get serious about planning my trip to New York. Yay. Oh, and I’ve got a damned catalog to do too. I keep forgetting. Must start.

Although I’m still (!) struggling with the flu, I wanted to post the cover for The Starry Rift by the devastatingly talented Stephan Martiniere. I feel like rubbing my hands together and cackling ‘It’s alive!’. This book has been in progress for so long, and the writers have been so patient with it, but at last we’re making real, concrete steps towards publication. We have an approx publication date (February 2008), we have a format (hardcover), we have a beautiful cover and, before you know it, we’ll have galleys. Galleys filled with marvellous stories by Garth Nix and Ian McDonald, Neil Gaiman and Walter Jon Williams, Ann Halam and Alastair Reynolds. And many more. I cannot wait. In fact, I think I’m going to have to dream up some kind of competition to give away a few galleys. This book is going to rock, and I want people to have a chance to read it as soon as possible. Hmm. See? Even through the flu, this book gets me excited. It’s something special.

Dear blog,

Another quick note from the State of Congestion. This morning my beloved editor Sharyn November emailed me the final cover for The Starry Rift. It’s by Stephan Martiniere. I know you’ve been following the amazing run of art I’ve been having from Stephan recently with the covers for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Best Short Novels: 2007, and The New Space Opera. All of those covers rocked, but this one really kicks ass. It’s schweeeet. I don’t know when I can post the art, but I will when I can. The book, so long in gestation, is going to be the best damned-looking anthology of 2008, a beeyootiful new hardcover from Viking in February or so. What a joy it’ll be to see it at last. I literally cannot wait.

Best,

Jonathan