Well, I’ve done exactly one of the things I’d intended to do since I got back from the States. This morning I emailed out the first draft of the Locus Short Fiction Recommended Reading List. Lest you think that I simply make this list up, it starts with a large list of stories sourced from a variety of recommenders (the most important, at this stage, being the monthly recommendations published in Locus selected by our two short fiction reviewers, Nick Gevers and Rich Horton). The draft list then goes through a number of iterations, with comments and recommendations sought from our reviewers, experts in the field and so on. By the time it’s done it will probably have been through eight or ten iterations, and had input from most of the major short fiction people in the field.  It will, of course, still overlook a story or two, but I think it ends up being the best source of short fiction recommendations in the field.  I’ll keep you up to date on progress with it in the coming months, as we lead up to the February 2008 issue of the magazine.

Other than that, the main thing here is that my mother is in hospital.  This was long scheduled, but still is a difficult thing.  She’s almost seventy and needed surgery, and both she and her doctor’s were very concerned about complications arising from medication and so on. I spoke to her last night and this morning, and she sounded okay but very weak.  Today’s main thing, apart from getting ready for the return to work tomorrow, is visiting her in hospital.  I have my fingers crossed that she’ll be home by this coming weekend and on the mend.

What else? I’ve been watching the cricket, faithfully not reading, and keeping my eyes peeled for Iain Banks’s Matter popping through the mailbox. What else can you do? More soon…