I’ve been home 15 minutes. Everyone else is asleep. Me too, soon. Good to be back amongst the chaos. Normal comms will resume over the next 24 hrs. Sorry if I’ve missed you. The year’s best is closed. Story note time. Wish me luck.

The reviews are starting to come in for Eclipse, which will be in stores in the next couple weeks. PW have given it the following starred review. Good taste prevents me from mentioning how many consecutive stars that is . I’m very proud of the book, and hope you’ll check it out. As always, many thanks to the authors and the publisher for their amazing work on the book.

Eclipse One: New Fantasy and Science Fiction Edited by
Jonathan Strahan. Nightshade (www.nightshadebooks.com), $14.95 paper (263p) ISBN 978-1-59780-117-1
Each of the 16 selections in Strahan’s superb anthology (the launch of an annual series) does a disturbing take on a premise that genre fans may find familiar from more mundane examples of science fiction, fantasy or horror. Paul Brandon and Jack Dann’s “The Transformation of Targ” and Ysabeau S. Wilce’s “Quartermaster Returns,” both horror stories, simultaneously unsettle and amuse. Jeffrey Ford’s metaphorical “The Drowned Life” explores a debtor’s despair. Peter S. Beagle’s “The Last and Only or, Mr. Moscowitz Becomes French” veers all too close to contemporary reality, while Terry Dowling’s “Toother” is as much about the grim realities of the Napoleonic and American Civil Wars as it is about the horror of serial killers. Ellen Klages’s “Mrs. Zeno’s Paradox” plays a delightful twist on the classical thought experiment. Gwyneth Jones’s “In the Forest of the Queen” is at once hauntingly ethereal and an arresting reinterpretation of humans wandering into faerie. Every selection both defines and challenges our genre expectations. (Nov.)

You can order it here.

I had a great time in Canberra (many thanks to Nicole and her committee for making me so welcome), but today I’m sort of anxious and on edge and ready to go home. While I’ll probably settle down and be fine (and certainly won’t make any decisions till Monday or so), I’m thinking about either cancelling my trip to the US or significantly shorten it. I find I really just want to stay home.