Parents are boring folk. They have little else to do but boil cabbage, scrub floors and dote on their beloved charges. For that reason, if no other, we at Coode Street have allowed the original web pages for Jessica and Sophie to lapse into disuse. To correct this situation, and to perhaps help get some information to loving grandparents and others, a new site has been set up at The Ministry of Little People. It is the official new site and will eventually contain photos, information on comings and goings etc. At the very least, it will have a full report on Sophie’s upcoming third birthday party, and whatever else we can fit.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was posting information about the reading period for Science Fiction: Best of 2004 and Fantasy: Best of 2004. Well, we’re done and dusted. It’s over. Karen and I have closed the reading period for the two books and contracts for stories should be winging their way to a couple dozen people very shortly. It’s way, way too early to post lists – we may not be able to get some stories and these things change – but I will when I can. Now all I have to do is get those introductions and story notes done and we should get the books finished for the end of the month. Busy times.

I’m continuing to play with the blog. At the moment I’ve turned on the blogger comments just to try them out. Don’t know if they suck or not, but we’ll find out. In the meantime, the Quicktopic comments are still in place.

Hmmm. Don’t know if this new look is going to work out, but I’m going to try it for a little while. I’ve temporarily knocked out the comment links, but will put them back shortly, and have deleted the email contact info. That wil be fixed soon, too.

Finally…!

… a sensible solution on how to stop Locus dominating the Hugos. Cheryl Morgan, in the latest Emerald City, suggests that we should “get 1,000 of your friends to go out and subscribe to Locus so that Charles goes above the 10,000 limit. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind too much.” I suspect not, either, though I haven’t asked him. Anyone up for the challenge?

Oh, and this is probably a good time to add a slightly more public ‘Congratulations and well deserved’ to Cheryl for her Hugo win at Noreascon. I’ve enjoyed reading Emerald City since first stumbling across it a year or two ago, and look forward to every issue. What more could anyone ask for from a ‘zine? Which brings us, briefly, to another question raised by Cheryl. Should she remove herself from the Hugo race next year because she’s doing some work on the convention? My view, for what it’s worth, is no. The SF community is just too small to avoid such situations, and you need to find ways to work around them. In this case, it doesn’t seem like there’s a conflict of interest, so I hope to have the chance to vote for EC again in 2005.