The weekend before last Ian Nichols and I met up to discuss Legends of Australian Fantasy, editing, science fiction, and the upcoming Hugo Awards. The article ran in The West Australian this morning and I’m grateful to Ian (if a little embarrassed, to be honest) for making me seem at least semi-literate.

I love Planet Books, but I also am coming to pretty much adore bookdepository.co.uk, which is the cheapest book outlet I know.  I was over at Planet on Sunday and bought a copy of Lou Ander’s Masked. I have a PDF of it somewhere, but I really can’t be bothered reading that and (a) I really wanted to support Lou and (b) I really wanted to read Ian McDonald’s story in the book.  So, nice new book sitting on the couch beside me as I type for the win!

I also stopped at the post office this afternoon and there were packages from bookdepository.co.uk. Since I stopped reviewing in 2002 the number of ARCs etc I receive has dropped and dropped to the point where, even for the year’s best, I pretty much have to buy a book if I want to read it (which is understandable I guess, if a bit disappointing). Still, today brought my copies of Gwyneth Jones’ essay collection, Imagination/Space, and Eleanor Arnason’s Mammoths of the Great Plains. Jones has become one of my very favorite critics in the field, and picking up this book from Aqueduct seemed a great way to both get some wonderful reading and support a terrific press. Arnason, on the other hand, is one of the genuinely undervalued writers in our field, so I’m eager to catch up on this novella (which Gardner just said great things about).  So, post office for the win too!

What else? Well, this morning I listened to my first episode of Grant Watson’s Bad Film Diaries podcast. I’d meant to listen to it before, but then I’d always meant to get to the convention panels he was doing and somehow never had because I was in the bar drinking with friends, so it really was time I stopped and listened. It was a terrific decision. In the podcast I downloaded  Grant discusses Alien 3 and is just incredibly interesting and informed. I’m hooked and am not exaggerating when I say that if the rest of the series matches up to this he’s got my vote for the Hugo next year, definitely. One of the best genre podcasts going.

Eldest child is screaming and shouting, youngest child is upset because we may have to decide to stop her reading the book she’s reading, we may need to change travel plans, there’s a crack in the kitchen wall (not new, not big or serious, but *maybe* a little bigger), and everything is stress and misery. I want to run away from home today.

Welcome to Tuesday.  No notes from Monday, mostly because it was a day at work, and not much more. I woke at 2.30am and couldn’t get back to sleep, so the whole day was less than completely functional. I did, however, get the best piece of mail EVER when the wonderful folk at HarperUS (thank you Kim!) sent me an ARC of Terry Pratchett’s I Shall Wear Midnight. This makes me happier than I can possibly explain, so I won’t attempt to other than to say I’m very happy indeed.

The weekend itself was a mixed bag, to be honest. I was to meet a friend who does some work for The West Australian newspaper so he could interview me about the Hugos, but we missed one another and had to reschedule.   When we did meet up it was fun, though the day was a bit thrown off-balance by it all. We then watched Nanny McPhee: The Big Bang for family movie night, which went down well.  Sunday was very quiet. Both girls have bugs of some kind, so we kept things low key, heading out to see Toy Story 3 in the afternoon (which was loved, in different ways, by one and all).

I did spent a lot of time talking to Gary over the weekend, too. We chatted in a non-podcasty way on Saturday, the recorded podcast #11 on Sunday.  I’ve been really enjoying doing these and appreciate all of the kind comments we’ve been receiving. It’s an interesting experience. A friend, Tansy, made a very perceptive comment about the podcast that I’m grateful for – she pointed out the importance of Charles to the podcast and how it’s like this part of Gary and my grieving process, as we try to figure out SF in a post-Charles world.  I think she’s right.  Hopefully it’s not always on the surface of the podcast, but it’s there.  Interesting…