It’s a strange day here in Los Angeles. It’s cloudy and gray, and if you looked out a window you’d think there was a chill in the air.

But it’s 78 degrees in my back yard right now, and tonight? It’s forecast to get as low as 46, just in case anyone was delusional enough to think that Los Angeles is not in the middle of a desert.

Anyway, if you’re in the 300, I thought you’d like to know that all the domestic hardbacks — except a couple of eChecks that found their way into the wrong box and will ship tomorrow — have just been dropped off at the post office.

International orders will start shipping ASAP. I’d hoped to have everything done by today, but with my writing deadline being moved up from mid-January to Tuesday, I sort of need to put as much of my time and energy as I can into finishing the story. Please accept my deepest apologies on the delays. I wish there was a simpler way to get the goddamn customs and postage done, but unless I’m willing to charge international customers an outrageous amount of shipping, this is the best I can do.

I love SF novels, and count stories like The Forever War and The Ghost Brigades among my all-time favorites, but in the last year, I’ve grown very fond of the SF short story. Since an SF short story is what I hope to scrape out of my brains as my next writing project, I’ve been reading as many short stories as I can get my hands on, in places like Subterranean online, the Subterranean magazine, and in various anthologies.

I recently finished a great anthology called the Nebula Awards Showcase 2007, edited by Mike Resnick. In addition to some great SF from established writers, it included some fantasy (Kelly Link’s Magic for Beginners was wonderful), some poetry, and a novellette from Harlan Ellison that, while not SF or Fantasy, was probably my favorite tale in the book.

Now that I’m done with it, I’m looking for a new SF anthology. I’ve spent some time in the bookstore and on the googles trying to pick out a new one, but it’s tricky. Most anthologies are, by their nature, uneven, and some are downright garbage. I haven’t red enough to know if there’s one editor who I can rely upon more than another, of if there’s one publisher who puts out books with pretty covers and not much else.

While I wait for my sample issues of F&SF to arrive, I’m looking for a new anthology that’s not huge (some are over 800 pages, which is just too big for me to schlep around town) that focuses on speculative fiction.

Any suggestions?

I promise this isn’t going to turn into "The Happiest Days Reviews: in Exile." It’s just that I needed to come up for air for a minute, and saw this review of Happiest Days at Tech Universe:

Reading the well-written Happiest Days
was a fun experience, and you can’t help but feel like Wheaton is
telling you these stories himself . . .and these really are some happy and fun stories,
including one about his love of Star Wars action figures, or his family
run for the Susan G. Komen foundation, or his great poker game . . . or even his return to the stages
that once housed Star Trek: The Next Generation, where he played Wesley Crusher.

I
have to hand it to Wil, he brought back my own memories. I think he’s
around three years older than I am, and I fell in love with Star Wars
figures at the same time; I was stuck wearing corduroys in the late
70s/early 80s (thank God they went out of style by the time my family
moved to South Florida in 1984), and more.

Two themes are emerging in reviews and reader comments and e-mails: it feels like we’re sitting together (possibly in a nice pub, having a few pints) while I tell you these stories myself, and the stories I tell are awakening shared memories from readers who, like me, are in Generation X.

Last night, I packaged the remaining hardcover book orders. I’ll take all the domestic orders to the post office a little later today, and Anne and I will get started on the customs forms for the international orders just as soon as I get this writing assignment finished so I make my deadline a week from now. It’s a cool fiction project that I should be able to talk about relatively soon, but at the moment I’m in a serious panic over it. Once again, I wish I could stop time, or at least slow it down.

(Speaking of stopping time, is anyone else totally over Heroes this season? I haven’t been this disappointed by a series since the third season of Lost.)