Plans.  I’m an increasingly fussy and overconcerned traveler, I think.  Where I used to be happy to rock up to the departure gate and see what happened, now I worry and tinker and plan.  The plan for yesterday and today was take nice little sleeping pill, go to bed early, get a good night’s sleep, get cab, get to airport and go.  Well, I took the little sleeping pill and went to bed. I fell asleep and slept for maybe three hours. Then I tossed and turned until it was time to get up.  I had left all kinds of contingency time in the plan so I wouldn’t be late.  I ended up sitting here in the Qantas terminal more than an hour before departure.  Yay.  The plane to Sydney is completely full (no surprise), so I don’t know if I’ll sleep.  Still, apparently the plane to San Francisco is not too full.  Right now I have an aisle seat with an empty middle and window beside it. If that holds true, I’ll be very happy indeed.

I’m off to World Fantasy in the morning. A 5.45am flight (shudder!).  Up at 3.30am, shower, dress and to the airport. Then 20-odd hours of transit and I get to emerge into the cool fall air of San Francisco.  I have two days with Charles and the gang, which I’m greatly looking forward to, before heading on to Calgary and World Fantasy. It should be enormous fun.  I’m there five days, then back to SF for a day and home again. I’m gone all told for about 10 days.  A whirlwind lightning visit.  I’ll keep you up to date on it if I can.  I usually don’t, but we’ll see.  In the meantime, be well and take care of yourselves.

Well, I’ve finished selecting all of the stories for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 3 and am hard at work on story notes, introductions etc.  As promised earlier, I’ll publish the table of contents here once all the permissions are finalised.

I have a verbal agreement with the publisher for volumes four and five of the series, so it seems likely that I’ll be doing this again for 2009.  Just as soon as the agreement is formalised I’ll put out a general announcement and call for stories, recommendations etc, but there is one thing I can do regardless.  I’d like to invite anyone who is editing an anthology, publishing an anthology, or who has a story in an original anthology to drop me an email and let me know about the book.  I’d like to do more to promote these books, and am pondering various options.  At the very least I’ll be repeating the list I ran last year.  And, on that, my sincere apologies to anyone who’s books didn’t get on to the 2008 list.  It was an oversight on my part.   I’ll be endeavouring to do better in 2009!

The cover for Eclipse Two is out, and it’s a really lovely piece by Donato Giancola.  Given that this volume of the Eclipse series is definitely a science fiction instalment it’s particularly appropriate.  The book is due out from Night Shade in November. You can see a full table of contents here and order it here.  I can’t wait to hear what everyone thinks about the book.

Well, dear readers, progress!  I have now selected my preferred contents for this year’s annual: twenty eight stories from a wide range of anthologies, collections, magazines, and websites.  I’ve sent out all of the invitations to writers, and am waiting to hear back from them.  Once I have, I’ll publish the table of contents here.  I think one or two people may not be able to be involved, so we’ll see.  In the meantime I’m moving on to working on the main volume introduction (my least favorite part of editing a year’s best) and the individual author story notes.  If I can get those done, I’ll deliver the book to the good folk at Night Shade a few days after getting back from Calgary, and then the book will move into production for it’s scheduled March 2009 publication.

I should also mention that I’ll be sitting down with the good folks from Night Shade when I get to California to discuss volumes 4 and 5 of the year’s best series.  With a little luck, I’ll be editing this series for them for a good time to come – something that makes me inordinately happy.