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Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
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7:25 am - Obligatory Nebula Post Part II
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This is where I tell you what I'm nominating. I don't actually have the full list just yet, and will post when I do, but.
Everyone should read Carolyn Ives Gilman's "Arkfall," which is awesome and was published in the September 2008 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Or, if you have trouble finding that, it also appeared in Years Best SF 14. I stink at summing things up, but it's adventury and wonderful, and you should read it.
I'll post the rest of my list when I have it, I am still pondering and reading.
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| Monday, November 16th, 2009
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4:47 pm - Obligatory Nebula Post
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I have no expectations of being nominated for a Nebula, honestly, and didn't plan to post. But I've found that I'm glad to read other writers lists of what's eligible for Nebula nomination--it's hard for me to remember what I read this year--year and a half?--let alone what I've read and liked that's eligible, and at this point I can recc things, so it's really helpful for me to have the lists people are making. And also it lets me check out cool stories I haven't seen yet.
So. Things I've written that appear to be eligible for nomination:
"Marsh Gods", at Strange Horizons (July 7, 2008)
"The Nalendar" in ASIM #36 (August, 2008) This is available as a podcast as well.
"The Endangered Camp" in Clockwork Phoenix 2
If you haven't checked any of those out, by all means do.
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| Friday, November 6th, 2009
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1:55 pm - Oh, Long Awaited
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So, back a while ago I sold a story to Realms of Fantasy. And then, before my story could be published, Realms folded.
I bided my time. I knew that either I'd be notified that my story was released or else the reversion clause would kick in. It was only a matter of which came first. I'd already been paid, which was a plus, but really what I had wanted was that publication! Ah, well, that's life.
Then, much to my delighted surprise, Realms was resurrected! So my time-biding became much more satisfying.
And now the end of my wait is in sight!
My story "The Unknown God" will be in the February issue of Realms of Fantasy, available in fine bookstores starting, Mr. Cohen says, sometime in December.
current mood:  pleased
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| Thursday, November 5th, 2009
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11:03 am
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Well, I wrote a while, and now my brain is crying, “Break time!” So the next logical thing to do is mop the kitchen floor and scrub the toilet.
Uh huh.
So, instead, I’m going to peeve mildly. This is not inspired by any one particular event, it’s a piling up thing. Because I hear it all the time. In the cafeteria kitchen a co-worker will start singing, and someone else will pretend distress at the horrible sound. Or someone will start singing along with the radio and then stop, and say something like, “Oh, how terrible I sound, I can't sing at all.” Or it comes time to sing something, like Happy Birthday or a holiday song, and people feel the need to apologize for their horrible singing voices.
Maybe it’s a product of my own musical interests--I don’t think it is, I think my interests are more a product of my already existing experiences and attitudes--but this just bugs me. It’s pleasant to hear someone sing happily while they work. It’s a very natural thing to do, and it makes me smile. Even back in college, when Jerry the Dishwasher had a tendency to get a single line stuck in his head and would sing it over and over as he swept the kitchen. “Down in the West Texas town of El Paso, duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh.” Brief pause. “Down in the West Texas town of El Paso..." Or the radio ad jingles. "For a hole in your roof or a whole new roof...for a hole in your roof or a..." Not a great intellect, Jerry, and not a great singer. But it was hard to be too critical. You knew when he was singing that he was in a sunny mood, and it's easier to have a good day when the people around you are in a good mood themselves.
And all those people who say, "Oh, I can't sing"? Ninety-nine point nine percent of them are just flat out wrong. Sure, most people won't be onstage singing opera any time soon, but nearly everyone I've heard sing can at least carry a tune. Most of us aren't virtuosic chefs, and yet, when it comes time to make dinner, we don't say "Oh, I can't cook" and avoid cooking, or apologize for burdening the world with food. No, we fix our supper and by and large enjoy it. It ain't cordon bleu, but it tastes pleasant and it's filling and nutritious and no one is hung up about it. The rare person who feels compelled to apologize for the imperfections of a perfectly good meal to the folks sitting around the table are generally regarded as insecure or perhaps eccentric perfectionists. I know one person who does this, and I've never heard anyone chime in with a "You're right, this is horrible, for pete's sake stop cooking!"
But I routinely hear that sort of comment about singing.
Now, there are times when singing is inappropriate. Not all workplaces are like industrial kitchens, and some folks work jobs that require a sort of concentration and quiet that lots of spontaneous song would disrupt--but even then, I'd bet that it's more a matter of staying away from the top-of-the-lungs, we-can-hear-you-two-offices-away range. I'm not advocating loud public singing in every single setting no matter what. But singing is, I wholeheartedly believe, good for you. Please, when someone near you begins to sing (assuming it's not an inappropriate occasion for it), don't give them the reflexive "Aargh, stop!" When you sing, don't apologize! Don't tell the world that your voice is horrible, because it almost certainly isn't. Sing! The world can always use more singing.
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| Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
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10:42 am - Things that made me smile today
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| Saturday, September 12th, 2009
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4:01 pm
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| Monday, August 31st, 2009
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3:33 pm - Change of Topc
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So I've been going to the library every day, because there's some semi-construction stuff going on at home. Every day I walk past a shelf full of art history books, and say to myself sternly, "You're here to write, not read."
Today I decided I needed to read. Biology. Got off the elevator, walked past the art history books, saw the book that had been whispering to me each day as I passed it. The Art of the Hittites.
I'm only human!
I spent four hours reading about the Hittites. You know the Hittites! Ramses II fought a big battle with them, the Battle of Kadesh. He snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and commemorated the event in a bucketload of sculpture in his Ramasseum. Except, what he really did was snatch defeat from the jaws of an utter freaking rout--you can't tell from the carvings in the Ramasseum, but the Hittites won that battle. For a long time people assumed Ramses' spin was historical fact, until they found the Hittite copy of the ensuing treaty.
I knew about that before I started reading. But I did learn all kinds of interesting new things. I am not (mostly) going to write about them just now. Instead, I'm going to mention some weird stuff about this book.
It doesn't have a copyright or publication date on it that I can find, but an old slip in the front for stamping due dates has a single date stamped on it. The year is 1969. It says it was translated, though not when, and for various reasons, I presume it was translated from German, though I could easily be wrong about that. There was a lot of really cool information, interspersed with very weird assumptions. Hittite written in heiroglyphs (it was also sometimes written in a cuneiform script) must have been popular with illiterate Hittites, because it was pictures! (It sounds slightly less boneheaded in the original, but that's the implication, no matter how you slice it.) After the battle of Kadesh, Ramases married the daughter of the Hittite king and made her his principal wife (inspired of course by her beauty and the goodness of his heart, not because he had to or anything!) and Egyptian sources talk about how beautiful she was, and so maybe she was blond! The Hittites had a lot of contacts with the East but they were really Westerners, because duh, they were Indo-Europeans, and they weren't all savage and decadent like those freaking Assyrians! (Me: Book, you don't really mean that, do you? Book: Here, let me say the same thing again in the next paragraph, in slightly different words!)
And this, which was a combination of cool and odd. Hattusili (I did not note down his number, there were several Hittite kings of that name, but wikipedia tells me he was Hattusili I) had appointed his nephew Labarna his heir, but changed his mind and made his grandson Mursili the crown prince.
As he [Hattusili] is trying to justify himself before the Assembly of Nobles he describes the conditions in his family in great detail. From these frank and unrestrained words...
Frank and unrestrained? Hello? No king worth the name ever spoke frankly and unrestrainedly to the Assembly of Nobles, most especially not while he was trying to justify himself. Most especially not while trying to justify disinheriting the heir the same Assembly had likely approved of earlier. Each bit of speech might be strictly true, the quotes might be verbatim, but frank and unrestrained? I don't think so.
And I'd lay money the quotes are verbatim, they have that ring of truth to them. Here's the text as I found it in Art of the Hittites.
The young Labarna I had proclaimed to you, saying, "He shall sit upon the throne." I, the king, called him by son, embraced him, exalted him, and cared for him continually. But he showed himself a youth not fit to be seen; he shed no tears, he showed no pity, he was cold and heartless. I, the king, summoned him to my couch and said, "Well. No one will in future bring up the child of his sister as his foster son." The word of the king he has not laid to heart, but the word of his mother, the serpent, he has laid to heart....Enough! He is my son no more! Then his mother bellowed like an ox. "They have torn asunder the womb in my living body! They have ruined him and you will kill him!" But have I, the king, done him any evil? ... Behold, I have given my son Labarna a house! I have given him arable land in plenty, sheep in plenty I have given him. Let him now eat and drink. So long as he is good he may come up to the city but if he come forward as a troublemaker then he shall not come up but shall remain in his house.
Frank and unrestrained? That speech is carefully planned, even when he's accurately quoting. That serpent, his sister? She's playing the distressed mother card, oh yes, and Hattusili knows it. Which is why he doesn't just report what she says (and I bet she did say what he says she says, likely lots of other people heard it and it has, as I said, a ring of reality to it), he makes sure to mention she bellowed like an ox rather, than, say, something a trifle more flattering or sympathetic. Hattusili is playing the betrayed uncle and wringing every bit out of it he can--he and his sister are two peas in a pod, they are. "Mean to him? I've given him lots of presents! Of course, if he starts trouble I might be forced to exile him or something....I'm just a good-hearted old man! Wouldn't hurt a fly!" Uh huh.
"Frank and unrestrained" my Aunt Fanny.
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| Friday, August 28th, 2009
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8:41 pm
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Go read this: The Joy of English Grammar
Speaking of joy. Not!
So, this project I'm working on came to a point where I said to myself, "Self," I said, "at this point, this project would be greatly facilitated if you had a better grounding in, among other things, human physiology." And I agreed, and responded, "Good point, self, and you know what? The library has probably got some books you can read to bone up on the subject." So I hit my library's website and requested a few things, including Physiology Demystified: A Self-Teaching Guide by Dr. Dale Layman.
I'm in an odd place with biology. I grew up in a household where glycogen synthesis was a routine topic of dinner conversation. To this day, when someone cuts into a steak and says, "Look at all that blood!" I have to exert effort to avoid saying, "That's not blood, it's myoglobin." I have an odd store of bits and pieces of knowledge. But I have forgotten just as much basic high school biology as the next person. And besides, it's not glycogen synthesis I need to read about.
So I got my email today that the books had reached my branch, and I went to pick them up. Got home, made a cup of tea, sat down on the couch, and opened Physiology Demystified. Here's how it starts:
Hello there! Who am I? Why, I am your host. They call me Professor Joe, the Talking Skeleton! I have been selected as your guide for this book, PHYSIOLOGY DEMYSTIFIED. I am here to give you a basic, "bare bones" introduction to what happens in The Place Below Your Skin!
Right. I close the book, look at the call number. No J in front, so it's not a juvenile. I look at the back copy. It insists that this book will be a fun and painless way to learn about physiology. I note to myself that those first few sentences were neither fun nor painless. Of course, I don't find studying such things painful or dull, frankly, but I know a lot of people do find science of various sorts intimidating, and take no offense at attempts to persuade them otherwise.
I made another attempt to co-exist with Professor Joe, but found it too painful to get past that first paragraph. I started opening the book randomly to see if maybe it was worth skipping ahead, or forging through and offering the pain up for the souls in Purgatory.
"So, what's the big deal about maintaining homeostasis of blood calcium ion concentration, Professor Joe?", the untutored mind may be prodded to ask.
That punctuation is not a typo, btw. Or, you know, not my typo.
A stimulus (STIM-you-lus) is literally "prod" or "goad." (Picture a long stick that pokes or prods the body.) In general, a stimulus is a detectable change in the body's internal or external environment. "What detects this change?" the curious reader may well ask. The answer is: a sensory receptor (ree-SEP-ter).
The only reason he doesn't give you pronunciation for internal or external is, he provided that helpful information ten pages back. I am not joking. I wish I were. Paging through, I do see that there's a lot of information there, including two whole chapters that address the particular issues I'm interested in. But I just can't read this book. I'd rather bang my head against a wall for a day or two.
Time to try the next book.
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| Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
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6:42 am - In Which I Am Interviewed
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| Friday, June 19th, 2009
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3:28 pm
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Been a while since I posted!
Wiscon was fabulous, even more fabulous than usual and therefore insanely exhausting. Met zillions of people I wanted to meet, and met zillions of people I hadn't known I wanted to meet until I met them, talked to zillions of people I had met before but wanted to see again. Bought the rest of the Marq'ssan Cycle from Aqueduct, along with a stack of other books. Sang Sacred Harp and had free, second-hand clothes thrust upon me. Did panels. Ate at the fabulous Tibetan place twice. Rode the magical gold elevator to that sacred precinct that is the Governor's Club. Finally kept a two year old promise to take Paidhi Girl to the noodle place. Walked down to the lake so my traveling companions could watch boats and throw stones in the water. Talked to more people. Sunday after supper I went up to my room intending to rest a few moments and essentially collapsed until Monday morning. Drove home. Got up and went to work the next day. Boy was I glad when the school year was done.
In other news, Clockwork Phoenix 2 will be officially out July 1. But Amazon and Barnes and Noble say they have it in stock. Publishers Weekly gave Clockwork Phoenix 2 a starred review recently. One of those "16 wonderfully evocative, well-written tales" is my story "The Endangered Camp."
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| Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
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2:34 pm - Wiscon Schedule
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I can haz panels at Wiscon!
TYRANNOSAURS IN F–14S!!!! Fri 9:00 - 10:15PM Conference 5
Vicki Rosenzweig, E. Cabell Hankinson Gathman, Keffy R.M. Kehrli, Ann Leckie
"This is so cool!" "This is so stupid." How can a book or a show or a movie be incredibly awesome to half of the audience and incredibly dumb to the other half? Does turning everything up to eleven automatically mean risking total failure? What separates the gleefully over–the–top fun of, say, Hot Fuzz, from the cliche–ridden kitsch of Snakes on a Plane? And how can you tell if something you're working on is only awesome to you? Is it all just subjective, or can awesomeness be deconstructed and quantified?
So You Want to Be Published? Are You Your Own Biggest Roadblock? Sat 8:30 - 9:45AM Wisconsin
Liz L. Gorinsky, Lori Devoti, Ann Leckie, Jack McDevitt, Jordan Castillo Price
Is it possible you are doing something to keep yourself from selling? Come discuss what we do that keeps us from writing, submitting and ultimately selling—or selling again.
What Gender Is Your Roomba? Sat 10:30 - 11:45PM Assembly
Heidi Waterhouse, Hari Mirchi, Ann Leckie, Madeleine Robins
Why do so many robots and androids have a gender? Is this phenomenon more prevalent in fiction or reality? Was this always the case, or has it changed since the appearance of the first real and fictional robots? Is it all about the name, the voice, the looks, the attachments? Is it different across cultures? Does an otherwise genderless robot 'default' to male? Find out what pronoun you should be using to talk about your Roomba.
The SignOut Mon 11:30AM - 12:45PM Capitol/Wisconsin
*****
This is the first year I've been able to stay for the Sign Out. Every year previously I'm up with the sun and on the bus back home.
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| Friday, April 24th, 2009
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8:03 am - Happy Belated IPSTP Day!
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Whoops, missed the day.
I haven't got anything new, but I do have "Footprints." I sold it to Postcards From Hell: The First Thirteen a while back. It's one of my few very short pieces.
Footprints
by Ann Leckie
( Read more... )
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| Friday, March 6th, 2009
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7:25 am
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I'm a very small fish, in the SF world. I don't expect my opinion to mean much. For that reason, I've delayed commenting on the drama that keeps lurching up out of its shallow grave. For that reason, and partly because my non-internet life has been...stressful.
I've seen a few people say things like, "Well, there was bad behavior on all sides, so my position is the morally unassailable refusal to take a position, because I'm so above that." I say--screw that crap. It makes me think of people who say things like, "Well, the left is no better than the right! I mean, there's Michael Moore!" As though one Michael Moore equaled Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin and...
And as if a few bad actors outweighed the rightness of an argument. As if a few lost tempers in comments--I have seen no actual flames in original posts by, say, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) coffeeandink--was the moral equivalent of institutionalized racism. Or outing someone and exposing them to danger, despite being told what it is you're doing. Or deliberately directing readers to malware instead of the actual evidence of your behavior.
And as if that's not just one more variant of the tone argument. "You're not being nice enough. If you were, then I'd deign to listen to what you're saying." Like the school bully telling you he'll stop slugging you if you ask him politely. Somehow, it always turns out that he won't believe he's really hurting you if you're not yelling. And when you yell, why, he'd listen to your request to not be beaten ever so much more attentively if you were only polite about it.
Folks, racism is wrong. Which these days everyone knows, or at least says. But if you're saying to yourself, "But I'm not racist!" then you are part of the problem. If you are speaking or acting in a racist manner, the purity of your intentions is meaningless. The purity of your intentions becomes malice, when you refuse to acknowledge even the possibility that you've done wrong. Whether you meant to do wrong or not. And when I say "you" I also mean "I." Because I'm a white girl raised in this culture, and I fuck up sometimes.
The current iteration of The Undead has left me disheartened. The astonishingly malicious behavior exhibited by a few professionals in this field is appalling. I find such behavior entirely unacceptable, and am horrified to be even tangentially associated with it.
Sol Invictus, people, a little introspection! A pause to consider the mere possibility of your possibly being in the wrong, here.
current mood:  angry
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| Saturday, December 20th, 2008
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12:02 pm
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| Monday, December 15th, 2008
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4:24 pm - Sale
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For reasons that are probably obvious to regular readers of this journal, "The Endangered Camp" (my postapocalyptic dinosaur story from week 5 of Clarion West) never ran on Helix.
I just got an email informing me that it's been accepted for Clockwork Phoenix 2. I'm very pleased. The first Clockwork Phoenix was pretty cool, and I'm kind of excited to be in the next one.
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| Thursday, December 4th, 2008
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10:58 am - Squeeage!
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So, yesterday I got an email saying Rich Horton would like to put my story "The God of Au" in Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2009 Edition.
Woohoo! And surfing around in the past day or so, I see I'm in good company--Jay Lake, Beth Bernobich, and Mary Robinette Kowal are in the TOC as well. Awesome.
Then today, I read Mr. Horton's review of "Needle and Thread," a story Rachel Swirsky and I wrote together and that was published in last quarter's Lone Star Stories:
I also enjoyed Ann Leckie and Rachel Swirsky's "Needle and Thread", about a dressmaker charged to make a gown to turn a princess beautiful--but such magic is illegal. And, perhaps, wasted--the prince is not so interested in beauty. The characters are well done, the idea clever, but it flattens into a somewhat conventional morality fairy tale; not quite what I've come to expect from either of these excellent new writers. Still, it does what it aims to do quite well.
Excellent new writers! Did ya catch that part?
As for the "conventional morality tale" part, well, all I can say is, it's a fair cop.
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| Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
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9:02 pm - !!!!!!!
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6:52 am - Voted!
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Just got back. The household's voters arrived twenty minutes before the polls opened, and there was already a very respectable line. It was still long when we left.
My vote is cast, now it's just waiting.
Vote!
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| Friday, October 31st, 2008
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2:26 pm - All the Cool Kids AreDoing It
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Copy this sentence into your livejournal if you're in a non-same-sex marriage, and you don't want it "protected" by those who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.
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| Monday, September 29th, 2008
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7:11 pm - How dense is Ann?
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Very dense.
Yesterday, and this morning, I kept reading folks on my f-list talking about their YBFH honorable mentions. "Wow, cool!" I thought. "My f-list rocks! But how do they know? The book doesn't come out until Tuesday."
Then I saw jimhines mention amazon's "Search Inside" function.
D'oh!
I only had one story published last year. It was "The Snake's Wife." It got an honorable mention.
Hooray!
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