Whateverville

Wow, I can't believe it's been a whole month since I last posted anything on this blog. I was off-line for about a week because of my harddrive crash, and once I got back onto my computer I was so far behind, in so many areas, that I never got close to this blog. The good news is that I did manage to recover nearly everything. The bad news is that "nearly everything" isn't quite the same as "everything," and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason that what got lost and what did not.

I now have a new laptop and a new external harddrive and have become, at least for the moment, the mayor of Backup Town. Hopefully I won't ever need to be prepared for such an event again, but in case I do I now have a 250 GB insurance policy.

Issue seven of IGMS will be out in about four weeks and I'm pretty excited. I think it's one of the best issues we've ever published. If the cover story, "Silent As Dust," by James Maxey doesn't end up in a bunch of Year's Best anthologies, there's something wrong with the anthologists of the world. It's a ghost story unlike any you've ever read before. We also have "Unrhymed Couplets of the Universe," by Sharon Shinn, author of the mega-popular series of books, The Alleluia Chronicles, as well as the conclusion of the novelette begun last issue, "The Price of Love," by Alan Schoolcraft. Add in "The Braiding," by Pat Esden, "The Smell of the Earth," by Joan Savage, "After This Life," by Janna Silverstein, and "Lost Soul," by Marie Brennan, and you've got one heck of a pile of great stories.

Speaking of James Maxey, James has been writing some excellent posts over on his blog, Whateverville, about things he's learned about writing over the years. If you're a writer, or even someone with an interest in the writing process, do yourself a favor and pop over there to check them out. When you're done reading them, you'll notice that James has tagged me to write a series of my own essays on the same subject. In a brief but all-to-common flash of insanity I accepted his challenge and plan to have the first one posted here on Side-Show Freaks by the end of this week. Tune in then for some of my wisdom for the ages (and whole lot of other fertilizer that smells suspiciously like cow manure...)