Well, Marianne and I rushed the kids out the door this morning, and headed into the city. She’s off getting her ‘colors done’, whatever that entails, while I’m sitting at an outdoor cafe, not getting much done. I did do a little shopping, though, and scored my own first sighting of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, right here in Perth. Woot! Itch scratched. Over it now. On to the next book.  I’m still reading, and enjoying The Coyote Road. It’s prompting a lot of thoughs about anthologies, though. About structure, about theme, about how you manage them. Before I overstate it: editing anthologies isn’t rocket science.  To do it really well, though, you need to work on developing the finer points. I’m proud of all of the books I’ve done, but I’d like to think the next ones I do will be better than the ones I’ve already done. Without that, I’m not learning much from the process.

What else? Watched the series closer for Life on Mars? last night. I’m really not sure about it at all. I won’t go into details because I know there are a lot of people who’ve still not seen it, but I’m not entirely convinced. I will watch Ashes to Ashes, though.

The kids are back at school, Marianne is out shopping, and I’m having a Firebirds morning. I’m reading the upcoming Viking/Firebirds anthology The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, faithfully keeping my place using a Firebirds bookmark that came in the latest issue of Realms of Fantasy, while avoiding doing the editing/rewriting necessary to complete the introduction for my own Firebirds anthology, The Starry Rift, or working on the proposal for next one. The only thing I’m missing is Sharyn, who it’d be fun to talk to about all of this stuff. Manhattan later this year, though.

Dear readers,

I have this other journal, and I’ve not been good to it. It’s supposed to be the sexy wonderful site for all things year’s best, but I’ve never quite committed to it. It lives over at www.yearsbests.com. I’m going to tinker with it over the next few weeks: get the RSS feed working, make sure the site links are right, maybe play with the look. Mostly, though, I’m going to blog about reading for the years bests. I’ve not done much of that here, but I’m about to do quite a bit of it there (I think). I admit I have no self-discipline, so this might not happen, but it’s what I intended to do. Check it out if you think it might be of interest.

One of the stories that’s missing from my Best Short Novels: 2007 is Charles Stross’s Missile Gap. It was originally published in Gardner Dozois’s One Million A.D., and then reprinted in a specialty press edition. In honor of Technopeasant Day and the Locus Awards nomination, you can now read it here. Go read it. It’s a story that I’m pretty confident saying would have been in every year’s best SF this year, if we could have just gotten permission, so this is a real bonus for everyone.

Anyone out there using the Sony Book Reader? I have had someone recommend it to me, and am looking for other views.