This is also a great time to note that the audio version of Eighth Eye is up, too!

Rad artist C S Inman is selling lost zoo animals to fund his trip to the Viable Paradise workshop this fall. If you’re at all interested in the world’s cutest (and occasionally sick) art, click through, and help him out. (You can’t have the spider cow. I already bought it. Muahaha!)

got money from my Greek publication in the mail

saw this month’s Locus with Paul and I’s wedding photos in it

and sold a story!

I’m really tickled about the Locus photos, heehee .

It’ll be up in audio next week, too!

***
Hi. I just read “Cruciger” (and by “just” I mean I finished it probably ten minutes ago) and as soon as I finished I had to get online and search your name. I was hoping for a novel.

I’m naturally long-winded. I’m trying not to be. So I apologize if that makes me nonsensical.

I’ve entered Writers of the Future once before, and now I know why my story didn’t measure up. “Cruciger” is amazing. It’s been a long time since a short story made me cry, but this story did, more than once. It’s beautiful and tragic and still full of hope. You made me relate to octopi-aliens! And to Duxa, of course.

It’s something that I find difficult to find when reading science fiction—relating on so deep an emotional level. Oh, I love much sci-fi, but mainly for other reasons. There are a few that spark this same depth of raw emotion, but they are rare. (Most times, the emotion I feel is based on the loveliness of the ideas, rather than relation to characters.)

Not to say the ideas here weren’t lovely, because they were. The moral dilemma—the God dilemma. Magnificent.

I’m sorry—I’m still a little surprised that I’m actually messaging you all this.

Anyway, since I found that I had a way to tell you, I had to tell you how much I loved your story. It really makes me wish you had a novel I could buy. Takes longer for those to end, and that’s what I’m wishing for.

Thank you for this wonderful story!

Chy

***

How awesome is that? So awesome I want to frame it! Hee

(I emailed them back to let them know they’d made my day/week/month! and to ask if I could reprint it here )

Apparently I should leave town more often . I can’t wait to frame the illustration from Ennea — once I have a room with more than four walls for it to go on, ha!

I’m off to a writing retreat in Washington state for the weekend. It’ll be a great trip — I’ll see my parents for a day, then stay with a friend in Portland, and then drive in for three days on the Washington coast, and then repeat everything on the way back. I expect my net access to be spotty till next Tues, and from Thurs – Sunday to not have cell phone service at all.

I’ll holler when i get back on the 27th — don’t do anything exciting without me!

Chinvat Bridge is live at Abyss and Apex now!

We’re traversing the whole store at grandma-speed, when what do I see in the bookrack? A copy of Writers of the Future XXIV, with yours truly in it. So I show it to her, and she thinks I’m kidding that I’m in there, but I’m not, so she gets a copy…and now my Uncle’s going to read my story. (I sort of know he’s on the genre side already, seeing as there’s a Lord of the Rings pinball machine in his basement.)

I have a hard time telling my family about my successes, and I doubt any of them have ever gone out of their way to read my stuff — I’ve always been the one responsible for buying and mailing books out to assorted parents. (I must admit I mostly like this method, because it’s hard enough writing without thinking your mother’s going to care.) (And as I have noticed in the past that the people who pester you the most and that you tell to google you are the least likely to actually do so, now I tell people to google me with impunity.)

Anyhow…it was a very small piece of synchronicity, and a pleasant one at that. I fly out of here at 8 AM tomorrow, and it’s back to work tomorrow night. I actually get 4th of July off this year (wellllll, technically I’m working its morning, but the night is what counts) — here’s to hoping it’s slow at the burn ward — because I’ll be bummed if I miss something cool after working the 4th for two years now and not a single firework related burn .