I am in the habit now of not announcing things until they’re definitely announced by the publisher, but I have some publishing news that’s definitely out of the bag, and I’m pleased about it, so here it is:

First off, my Clarkesworld story “Of Melei, of Ulthar” is going to be reprinted in The Book of Cthulhu II, from Nightshade books. Checking out the Table of Contents, I am frankly bowled over to find myself in the company of the likes of Fritz Leiber and William Browning Spencer, two authors I’ve been reading since I rediscovered speculative fiction as an undergrad. (Neil Gaiman, Caitlin Kiernan, Michael Chabon,  and the rest ain’t chopped liver, neither.)

And secondly, for those who read the magazines, my poem in last month’s Asimov’s was only a warm-up: my short story “The Bernoulli War” is appearing in the next issue of the magazine. It was essentially accepted except that the names of the characters, originally, were to be printed using a bunch of unusual scripts, from Khmer to Chinese characters and Korean to hieroglyphics. My solution to this problem ended up getting me inadvertently blacklisted by the Asimov’s SF email server, but I’ll save the whole story for my story notes, as it’s funny.

Theodora Goss posted an image of the cover, which I reproduce here, and hey… my
name’s finally on the cover! Whee! I feel, once again, like I’ve leveled up a tiny bit. Which is one of those interesting things about writing: it seems at first like you would level up if only you could get published. Then you get published, and realize there are endless levels in the game. Which isn’t a bad thing at all.

Again, the TOC there is pretty flattering. Seems I get to be in good company, which is a wonderful thing. If only I could make it to a con sometime, and actually sit down with these good folk and be in their company that way, too.

As for leveling up, I wish I could say I’m off to write something new, but revisions and grading await me for now… but first, we’re taking an actor out to dinner for donating his time to the parody video we’re shooting this weekend. Poor guy had to say some pretty ridiculous things without laughing, and did a great job of it, so he deserves a solid meal.

Update: The irrepressible Jason Sanford has uploaded a scan (I think?) of the cover, and here it is:

One of those things about living so far from where most of your stuff is published is waiting to receive your contributors’ copies, and reading all the excited blog posts of those who’ve already gotten them. Not so painful or unbearable, just an unexpected detail, is all…