My story "Inside the Tower" is now up at Strange Horizons! You can read it here.

It's been a lovely morning. Before we left for early morning coffeeshopping/writing, Patrick and I checked online to see if "Inside the Tower" was up, and it was! What an amazing feeling. I don't know any thrill that can match seeing a story published. It seems so amazing and bizarre that something I wrote for myself, because an image or character grabbed me--something that I still have, in rough draft, in a notebook sitting hidden in my desk drawer--can be published and read by hundreds of people. I feel really, really lucky.

I wrote about three pages of The Music of the Stars at the coffeeshop, finally finishing Chapter Fourteen. (Otherwise known as The Hell Chapter, because I've been blocking on it ever since early December!) I'm around 21,000 words, and the novel will probably be between 30-40,000 words in total. I'm at that tooth-grinding stage of the process, where it seems like it would be so much easier and more appealing to just give up and move on to a different project...but I've been here before, with every novel I've written so far. Now I'm just trying to push through to the end and not give in to gnawing insecurities. I'm also consoling myself by starting to do research for my next adult historical fantasy novel (the Vienna/Istanbul adventure), Thief of Souls.

In the meantime, I've just finalized my teaching duties for the next academic semester (beginning in February), and I'm about to start working on my next thesis chapter, which is due in 8 days--aack aack aack!!!! Wish me luck. But I'm looking forward to tonight, when, after many delays, we'll finally be having friends round to help pop the cork on the champagne bottle bought to celebrate Patrick's newly-agented status. Many good things to celebrate.

Now if I can just get through that next chapter...