I just finished reading Chapter Two of Sean Stewart's Perfect Circle at Salon, and damn, he's good. Can't wait for Chapter Three to come out. Can't wait to own the whole book!

I finished my latest short story, "Stargazing", yesterday afternoon. It makes five stories in a bit more than five weeks, so if I can write one more in the next three days, I'll have made the shadow Clarion challenge this year. Just like back at Clarion, the results are mixed--there's one story I love, so far, one story that sucks and isn't worth revising, and two or three I like but know will need a LOT of work--but just like at Clarion, I'm glad to have written them. And who knows? Even if only one or two of them turn out to be worth marketing, that's still one or two more good stories than I had written before the 6 weeks started. So now to surf for a new idea.... Today I met Patrick at lunchtime for a story-writing session, but ended up writing a new (spec fic) poem instead. Writing a poem is a once-in-two/three-years event for me; I don't bother to even think about trying to sell poetry, but I'm always happy when a poem occurs to me. And in that vein, I really enjoyed reading Tim Pratt's poem at Strange Horizons this week. Much fun.

This is a rambling entry, as you can probably tell, without any significant news to report. The sky is relatively clear, Nika and I are planning on a walk later today, and I managed to get a lot of work done on my thesis this morning. Of course, I also indulged in a major bout of career panic--every minute spent working on my thesis is another building block walling me into an academic career, and God, I'm not at all sure that I want that!!!!--but I managed to get out of that, too, and Patrick and I have mutually decided that I won't let myself try to answer those questions until at least January or February of this coming year. Career panic is too much to add on top of wedding-organizational stress at the moment. And anyway, I've got a thesis to write.