apologies for lack of posting here. last night was finishing editing the review columns for the next issue of the big magazine. the night before was trying, and occasionally screwing up, porting data from the old computer systems to the new one. somewhere in there we’ve all had the flu, gotten very interrupted sleep, and generally struggled to be the best we can be. more of that soon.

we took the girls to their first ever real movie on sunday. packed them up and went to see pooh’s heffalump adventure. sophie was enraptured and sat there stunned by it all, and jessica was thrilled (she could barely contain herself at times). it was way cool.

what else? i didn’t get to watch live8, but such is life. i read some stories, and really mean to buy some. submissions for the starry rift are suddenly pouring in, which is way cool. some i love, some i wonder about. the main thing on my mind is what exactly is ‘young adult SF’, and what can you reasonably put in a book with that label on it? i’m also finding it interesting to work with some of the writers involved, all of whom have been terrific, but very different. if all goes well, i should have a final line-up within two weeks. i plan to take a print out of all of the stories to re-read in melbourne next week, and will then close the whole thing out.

as i write this, it’s wednesday morning. it’s been a quite cold night. yesterday i found out that a friend had a heart attack on the weekend. it looks like he’ll be fine, but it’s pretty sobering stuff.

well, after three years of complaining, we’ve finally upgraded here at chez coode street. the two old 133mhz pentiums are offline, and replaced with a snazzy new wifi lan on a brand new adsl connection. things are swell, though nothing runs completely smoothly. while we desperately need to, we have yet to find a simple, efficient way to extract the 10 gig of data from the old machines, which includes email addresses, paperwork dating from saturday to about three years ago. it looks like it might take most of this week to get access, so until then, we ask for your patience while we reorganise everything. we should be up, moving more efficiently than ever, soon, but not yet.

i’m slowly getting round to reading for all of the various projects i’m supposed to be working on. i’ve spent the last couple nights picking through deborah layne & jay lake’s polyphony 5, neil williamson & andrew J. wilson’s nova scotia: an anthology of scottish speculative fiction, browsing some magazines, and reading new submissions for the starry rift and eidolon. while it’s been a very idiosyncratic meandering, it’s been fun and each anthology has already turned up some great stuff.

i’ve been enjoying jeff vandermeer’s short fiction more and more these days, and his ‘the farmer’s cat’ in p5 is a delight. it’s so early in the piece, with the book not due for months, that i don’t want to give too much detail about the stories, but ‘the farmer’s cat’ is apparently the first in a sequence of twisted fairytales, and i really loved it on first reading. the other story i liked, so far, is heather shaw’s ‘single white farmhouse’, with is a … how do you describe it? a surreal tale of the search for love and how it impacts on those around you. i haven’t read much of heather’s stuff, but from this one, i can see why her story opens the book. i’d wondered whether deborah and jay could match the quality of p4, but so far, so good.

i’ve taken a look at a couple stories from nova scotia, which i think should be out for the scottish worldcon. jane yolen has a really top-notch fantasy novelette in the book, “a knot of toads”, which has a really wonderful and dark sense of place, all built around what feels like a fairytale kind of story, while charlie stross has a funny encounter with the devil story, “snowball’s chance” that isn’t his absolute best work, but is fun. neither writer is, of course, actually scots, so i’m pushing on with the book to see what scottish speculative fiction is.

as to the anthology reading, i received new subs over the past week from ken macleod, walter jon williams, and jeff ford for the starry rift. on days when those kind of things show up in your email box you know that life is richer and more interesting than you ever could have expected. the book continues to grow and change, and if it’s not quite what i envisaged, it is coming together. i need to get some acceptances out shortly, and some contracts to people, and send out a few more follow-ups, and i think i should make the deadline fairly easily. eidolon is coming together too, though more slowly. i’ve already got one story ear-marked for my year’s best fantasy, which is a good sign. need more stories though. hmmm.

So, the car is back among the living, with new timing chains and such, which is cool. It looks like everything is going to work out, with even the possiblity of the iPod suddenly back on the agenda. Life is a funny thing, and I get stressed way to easily. Depending on things, this weekend is build bookcases, install new pc network, and do some reading time. I also need to sort out some contracts and write a proposal for a new book project, which I’m pretty excited about. Busy busy.

Sean is in Nagoya, worrying about tsunamis and enjoying being a giant. He’s set up a journal to talk about it. Maybe he can hook up with American SF writer Chris Barzak, who’s also doing the living in Japan thing.