Hurray! The news is finally official, and I can publically rejoice that SarahP has sold her wonderful kids' book to HarperCollins in a really lovely publishing deal. Hooray! Hurray for Sarah and hurray for The Magic Thief, the first book in the series, which is due out in 2009. I love this book, and I'm so glad this has happened.

More good-news-for-friends that's been cheering me up (perfect for a gray windy day like today - damn these English winters!):

• There's now a website just for The No-Shows, the mixed-species rock band (elves, fairies, and more) who star in Justina Robson's Quantom Bomb series. Not only can you read all the usual music PR hyperbole about each band member's abilities, but you can hear one of the band's songs (sounding strangely Icelandic...in a good way!) and even buy band merchandise. Check it out!


• Ben Rosenbaum's story The House Beyond Your Sky has been selected for a 3rd (!) Year's Best anthology. And better yet, it totally deserves it. I just re-read it last week and enjoyed it all over again.

And in nice news for me, I've heard from the editors of The Town Drunk that my story "Crow" will probably be published in May (hurray! and the galleys look great), and it was also nice to see that Rich Horton mentioned my story "Ivy & Thorn" as one of his favorites in the first issue of Grendelsong.

In other news, I just finished reading Wild Mary: A Life of Mary Wesley, by Patrick Marnham, which is an absolutely fascinating biography. Mary Wesley partied with Nancy Mitford, was in turn the wealthy Lady Swinfen and a very poor shop-worker, and became a bestselling novelist in her 70s. The upperclass lifestyle described is so weird and alien and funny all at once - in one episode, there's a big society wedding that turns out to be a hilarious screw-up on both parts - the groom thought he was marrying an heiress, the bride thought she was marrying the heir to a shipping dynasty, it turned out they were both absolutely broke fortune-hunters who had picked exactly the wrong victims (and only found out too late)!

And just to show how different things were not-very-long-ago, here's a slice of life from Cornwall in the 30s:

The rise [in pay for one of the servants] was welcome since she was trying to save £5 to pay a dentist to repair her teeth. When she had asked her father to pay he had said, 'You shouldn't have teeth. I've brought you up not to ask for what you can't pay for.' He was referring to the fact that in St Buryan it was the custom for girls to have a total extraction before marriage to save their husbands from having to pay the dentist; the local soft water rotted people's teeth.

Just imagine all the implications....!