Lookit! If you'll be near the Pasadena Public Library on Monday (Santa Catalina branch), there'll be a reading where you'll receive a copy of Sci Fi Fan 2. The line-up includes a number of names I recognize from other sf/f publications, among them Ruth Berman, Denise Dumars, Jo Gerrard, Samantha Henderson, Deborah P Kolodji, David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Geoffrey A. Landis, Ruth Nolan, Terrie Leigh Relf, Ann K. Schwader, and Marge Simon.

And if (like me, alas), you can't be there, you can order a copy from Don Kingfisher Campbell ($12 paypal to sensitive@earthlink.net).

*bounce*

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I am captivated anew by the conclusion of Shenandoah's FAQ:

How would you describe the mission of Shenandoah?

Shenandoah's mission is to bring the most accomplished and stimulating writers and writing to the Washington and Lee University community and to our wider audience.

We want to publish work which has its sources in acutely observed personal experience but which also aims to bear witness to something larger than the individual. Miller Williams said that a poem must begin as the writer's but end up as the reader's, or it is a failure. We concur. Regarding fiction, we are not drawn to stories whose interest in particular topics overwhelms an interest in the language. Stories are, after all, made of words, not emotions, ambitions or ideals, and the words must do the work. Former Shenandoah contributing editor James Dickey once said he wanted to say things in a such a way that they could not easily be unsaid. We'll stand by that.

Do you have any principles or creeds to guide your selection?

No schools of thought, really, though lately that we are more interested in experiments in fiction than in "experimental poetry." The Book of Isaiah says, "Butter and honey shall he eat that he may refuse the evil and choose the good." That claim provides some comfort, though we find a mouthful of briars now and then keeps our view balanced.

(The editor quotes Isaiah on his website as well (scroll down), and also Flannery O'Connor on being choosy: "...if I can stop reading without a sense of loss, I do, and I go on to something else.")

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Why rejectomancy is pointless.

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Good things:

* Rode a bike for the first time in, oh, twenty-odd years. Didn't harm myself or anyone else. The BYM deserves a medal.
* Retro cocktail party. The Manhattans were very good. Showing up in an MGB was fun. (To fit three people into it, I squished myself into the back compartment. Didn't harm myself or anyone else. I deserve a medal.)
* Was up until 4 a.m. yesterday writing and revising. Got up a bit after 4 a.m. today to deal with desk debris, since its existence was cluttering up my head. I could wish that my brain would recalibrate its hamster-wheeling to 4 p.m. instead 4 a.m., but I'm not displeased with the results, and I'm going to deal with one more stack of receipts before going back to the counting of ovines.
* W.S. Merwin's "Before a Departure in Spring", which brought you this morning's subject line.