Well, we’re back from the Worldcon and Chester, Liverpool, and London afterwards. Had a great time. Proper trip report is forthcoming. We gave out a new issue of Bento at the con, and it will be in the mail soon to those who weren’t there. I did not win the Aeon Award, though everyone involved made sure to tell me just how close the competition was between my story and the winner. Oh well. At least the story will be published in Albedo One, some time before the end of this year. Upon my return I found a surprise in my mailbox: author copies of the October 2005 Realms of Fantasy, including my story “The Ecology of Faerie” with an excellent illustration by artist Andrea Wicklund. I hadn’t known when this story was going to be published. I also surprised to find, upon reading the printed story, that it actually gave me chills. It was written back in 2002, spent a couple of years at markets with very long response times, and I never got galleys for it, so I hadn’t read it in years. I’m very pleased with it. I also got a couple of rejections, and news that another story had gotten lost in the slush pile and was only now, five months later, being sent to the editor (an editor reknowned for taking a long time to decide). Oh well. One of the rejected stories has already gone back in the mail. The other… it’s been to all of the pro markets I can think of that might be appropriate for it, and it’s been a near-miss at just about all of them. I feel strongly about this story and want it to succeed. I may take a hard look at the editors’ comments, rewrite it (possibly with a different main character), and send it out again to the same markets. I really should write a new story or two too, and revise some of the ones that have never been submitted. One other bit of news is that I have decided to attend World Fantasy Con rather than OryCon this year. It was a hard, hard choice (I’m really going to miss a lot of the OryCon people, including Kate) but by then I expect that I will have either a sold novel to publicize or a rejected novel to resubmit, and the people I should talk to in either case will all be there (including my agent). Oh, and my infected toe cleared up within the first couple of days of the trip. Thanks to all who expressed their concern (and raspberries to those who suggested amputation).