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It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon – well, for me at least – and so, a quiet post. Jessica and Sophie went to a party yesterday, and were delightful. It’s Jessica’s seventh(!) birthday tomorrow. I can’t believe it. I’m older, fatter, balder, and much, much tireder than I was seven years ago, but it’s been quite something.

Since I packed everyone out the door this morning at 11.30am I’ve baked some chocolate muffins, done a few loads of laundry, listened to some Van Morrison, spoken to a couple friends on the phone, done some ironing, and basically taken it fairly easy. It’s been very pleasant. I’m now listening to The Decemberists (one of the few things I’d thank rock critics for of late – along with Sufjan Stevens) . I did notice, btw, that all of the Van Morrison albums from the 70s that I was playing contained less than ten tracks apiece. He was no progrock maniac either. That’s about 35 minutes per album. Brevity can be fine.

Speaking of brevity, I’ve been reading John Klima’s Logorrhea. Put simply, there are some spectacularly good stories in this book. I figure, if you buy all of the year’s bests next year you should end up with about a third of the stories in the book. It’s just easier to buy Logorrhea. You’ll thank me if you do. The Daniel Abraham, Tim Pratt, and Dora Goss stories are well worth the price of admission alone.

Oh, and I’m just about over the flu. This week I’ve got a birthday to celebrate, a party to help run, and an anthology to, like Frankenstein’s monster, stitch together again. It should be fine. I will be at World Fantasy. Come too. We can grab a drink.

I ended my crappy day by watching a movie. As it happened, it was  a very good movie called Stranger Than Fiction. It stars Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhall and Emma Thompson, and is about…well, it’s about life and living it, but it’s the story of what happens when an author meets her character and has to reconsider everything she knows about him. You should watch it.

As to the day, well days go like that. No use whining. I am seriously – very seriously – reconsidering staying home this spring, giving Saratoga Springs a miss. Perhaps spend the time taking the kids on a holiday instead, or cleaning out the front room we’ve not occupied since we moved into the house four years ago.  Traveling to the US doesn’t have to be a thing I do every year. I could go twice next year instead. Who knows. Just, suddenly, it sounds less like fun than it did a while ago, though that may change. Who knows?

I am having a deeply annoying and bitterly frustrating day, on a broad range of fronts. Phooey.

I am incredibly disturbed to note that, at age 43,:

• the voice in music that seems most to speak to me is Billy Bragg’s;
• becoming a curmudgeon seems like a good idea; and
• I’m seriously considering going back to vinyl.

Hmm. Time to get serious about planning my trip to New York. Yay. Oh, and I’ve got a damned catalog to do too. I keep forgetting. Must start.

Although I’m still (!) struggling with the flu, I wanted to post the cover for The Starry Rift by the devastatingly talented Stephan Martiniere. I feel like rubbing my hands together and cackling ‘It’s alive!’. This book has been in progress for so long, and the writers have been so patient with it, but at last we’re making real, concrete steps towards publication. We have an approx publication date (February 2008), we have a format (hardcover), we have a beautiful cover and, before you know it, we’ll have galleys. Galleys filled with marvellous stories by Garth Nix and Ian McDonald, Neil Gaiman and Walter Jon Williams, Ann Halam and Alastair Reynolds. And many more. I cannot wait. In fact, I think I’m going to have to dream up some kind of competition to give away a few galleys. This book is going to rock, and I want people to have a chance to read it as soon as possible. Hmm. See? Even through the flu, this book gets me excited. It’s something special.