Nor fireworks or dancing girls, I suspect. But an ever-growing glow of satisfaction?

Coolness. Mazel tov!

Thanks, Peg!

Greg — Yep, definitely. Also an ever-growing sense of impatience with my level of output (fueled also by McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury). Experimenting with new tactic this week, now that sun is actually up before eight A.M.: leave house at six, jog down hill to coffee shop, write for 45 minutes, jog back. (So far the writing is working, though the jogging is not.) If it survives into Pacific Daylight Time, it’s probably a keeper. We’ll see.

Your regimen would never work for me. The knees, you know.

Congrats, Dave! It's a lovely shade of blue! I can't wait 'till we get our copy!

And, ditto Greg on the knees, man. I can barely walk somedays when my knees act up. This is so wrong; 30 is *not* old!

There’s no excuse for my knees. By all rights I should have completely spavined knees. It’s all in knowing how to coddle them, I think.

Ah, yes, well now that you mention it, it's not so surprising I have awful knees. I took ballet from age 7 to 14 and the last few years I was on pointe. I can't think of any other way to mess up your leg joints than pointe shoes, man. But they were *sooooooOOOooo* pretty and I wanted them *soooooooOOOooo* badly and and and . . .

Sigh.

Hey, David, when you gonna excerpt that Locus review? Substantive journal entries about interface design and the value of ideas in the econosphere are fine, but don't skimp on the crass self-promotion.

I was kind of hoping it would make it to the web site, but here's the short, wholly self-promoting version:

The new authors also display impressive mettle... Full marks... to David Moles for ‘Theo’s Girl’, a powerful alternate history in which the soldiers of an immortal Alexander the Great, still conquering foreign lands after centuries of battle, encounter a goddess lingering in urban ruins... Polyphony 2 will likely be counted among the foremost anthologies of 2003.

Apologies to all the other great writers who really earned that last line. :)

David -- I'm looking forward to getting my copy as well! Excellent review, and your story sounds kick-ass. The greenness that comes with envy is covering my skin...

Well, green is the appropriate skin color for a science fiction writer, after all.