Spent the day touristing around Albuquerque, including the Petroglyph National Monument (fun scramble up into the rocks to see ancient carvings), Coronado State Monument (site of an ancient pueblo and some interesting old murals), the town of Corrales (which lacked a center), and lunch at the Range Cafe in Bernalillo. Dinner was at Rudy’s BBQ, which was not so much a restaurant as a place that sells smoked meats by the pound, and side dishes, and has tables you can eat your food at. Totally without frills but excellent BBQ. In the evening, dancing started.

I also got a bunch of writing-related emails, some good news and some bad.

• My story “horrorhouse” will be published on October 30 at DayBreak Magazine, the online companion to Shine, Jetse de Vries’s print anthology of optimistic near-future SF.
• I got my program schedule for World Fantasy Convention. I’ll be joining Jay Lake and Mary Robinette Kowal in Improv Storytelling on Saturday at 8pm.
• I also got a draft program schedule from OryCon, about which more later.
• After waiting more than a year for a response to a submission of my first novel, I got this: “Sadly, the manuscript wasn’t for me. I am not engaging with the writing style as much as I want to. Also, I fear the market for debut SF has continued to shrink. I get much smaller orders for my SF than I do for my fantasy, and so I am buying less of it, and as I buy less of it, I’m getting pickier and pickier about the SF I do take on board. I hope you understand.” This makes me sad.

Tomorrow: more square dancing.