A couple of nice things that have made me very happy today. Firstly, Josh Rountree emailed me to tell me that my story When the Dragon Falls is in the August issue of Realms of Fantasy. Yay for that! Realms is still my favourite of the print magazines (closely followed by The Third Alternative), and I'm really pleased to be in it again. Josh also has a story in that issue, The Queen's Wood.

(I'm assuming it's When the Dragon Falls, but my story Uncle Vernon's Lie is also waiting to be published in Realms, so it's just conceivable, although unlikely, that that's the one being published.)

Which links neatly to the second nice thing. I also got an email yesterday from JK Potter, the artist who is illustrating Uncle Vernon's Lie for Realms. He sent me a jpeg of the illustration, which is great, as well as saying nice things about the story.

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Today is also Nika's birthday. She's six years old. When Steph adopted her, when she (Nika, that is) was eight months old, she (Nika again) was malnourished, underweight and exhausted. Now she is healthy (with the exception of the occasional stomach problem which is the result of being a malnourished street dog as a puppy) and happy, and very used to a comfortable life. She is also the most wonderful dog in the world.

Sadly, she's still not quite well enough to be given all of the treats we should all get on our birthdays, but she'll get those next week.

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I'm on holiday in a couple of weeks, and I can't wait.

Oh yeah, and so far I'm coming up with lots of ideas for the new novel. At some point, I'll have to make them make sense, but for now it's fun.