So, I sat down on the bed for a moment this afternoon. The family had been off at the Hyde Park Family Fair, had had a pretty good time, then we came home. I thought I’d read and maybe listen to the new Nick Cave album, which was a fine idea. However, after maybe half an hour Jessica (aged 7) came in. She wanted to know what I was doing with that iPod thing, so I let her put the headphones on. I began picking out some music for her to listen to: a little of the new Shelby Lynne cd, Abba, the Bangles, a little Elvis. It was pretty cute. Then Marianne came in, followed by Sophie. Not long after Marianne had brought in her iPod Touch and was surfing the net looking for Looney Toons videos, and I was blogging on the MacBook. And so it goes: a family moment, in a technical age. What pleased me the most was that while all of these products individually isolate us, for a while they brought us together.

Dear blog,

I am supposed to be reading everything else, so when a friend emailed me his novel to read I thought I’d never get to it. And then I thought, I’ll read the first chapter. I like his stuff, and I’ll enjoy it.  That was yesterday.  I finished reading it today, and I really liked it. I think you will really like it.  I’m going to email him back and thank him for sending it and tell him that he got me with it. I considered saying all sorts of other stuff, and maybe I will, but it’s a good book.  I’m not going to tell you what it is now, because I’m not sure that’s fair, but I definitely will soon. Oh, and should you wonder, it’s going to be published this year, so I’ll make a point of shouting about it when I can.

Best,

J

Since I’ve blogged more than a little about this, I thought I’d move the summary on the Eclipse submission period up here out of comments to the main journal. I opened Eclipse to submissions on Friday, 1 February (the first actually came in just before that), and accepted submissions through till midnight on Friday, 29 February. During that period, I received 445 story submissions from about 400 different people (there were some eager folk who submitted second stories after getting responses to their first submissions). The writers came from everywhere – Israel to Ireland, Australia to Amsterdam – and the type and length of stories was just as diverse. I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who submitted a story, regardless of how overwhelmed I may have seemed here. So, now what next?

Well, I have been reading during the submission period. I’ve sent out two rounds of responses so far, and expect to send out another during the next week. If you’ve not heard from me by about 15 March, it means your submission is getting down to the final batch. From there, I’m not really sure how long things will take. I expect to have considered every submission by the end of March. I then have a solicited material deadline, and will make my final decisions then. Either way, I’ll keep everyone in the loop.

Since some of you are probably wondering about next year (given that this is an anthology series), I am doing both Eclipse Two and Eclipse Three, and the publisher and I remain open to future volumes depending on how the books go each year, however this was almost certainly the only open reading period for the series. I will make an appropriate announcement should that change. Many thanks again to everyone who submitted work to Eclipse. It was appreciated.

Many thanks to those who submitted to Eclipse. I’ll try to get back to everyone as promptly as possible.