I'm really excited to see this (not just because I have a story in it, either!):

Descant's Speculative Fiction Issue

Today I turn twenty-eight years old. I celebrated my birthday on Saturday with some friends here in town, though, rather than waiting till a Monday when everyone was caught up with work schedules. What we did is, we went to Cedars, which is this great place in downtown Youngstown that takes up the first floors of two buildings that stand next to each other. On one side is the bar, in the other building is the restaurant, and in the corner they create between them is an outside patio they open in the summer. The patio is my favorite place in summer because its surround by a wrought iron fence and has all sorts of trees and plants growing inside it, and you can look up on the hillside and see the university buildings alongside a museum and a catholic church. On the walls of the buildings above Cedars, they've hung two different reproduced paintings as if they were billboards. There was an accoustic band playing that night, too, and they sang happy birthday to me, and a couple of my friends got up and sang American Pie with them, too. It was much fun. On the Cedar's patio, you're in the center of Youngstown, but it doesn't feel like you're in Youngstown at all.

After Cedars, we came back to the professor's house where I'm housesitting and we drank a bit and danced a bit and talked and played silly games. We talked about the old TV show My So-Called Life, and debated whether or not Jordan Catalano actually was a deep person or not. I think he and Angela had a sort of poetry between them, but ultimately he didn't have much beneath that angsty murk of an ultra-cool exterior. This opinion disturbed a couple of people, who felt Jordan had more to him. I think this means they would have got caught up in his little love-trap like Angela did too. That's okay, though! I would have gotten caught up as well! It's a good front he had going.

Now it's Monday, my birthday, and it's raining outside, but in this nice drizzly sort of way. The street here at the professor's house is made of red brick, and the rainwater rushes down it, carrying away little bits of grass and leaves and whatever else is down there. In an hour, the ice cream man's truck will tool down the street, if it's stopped raining by then, and all the neighborhood kids will run out into the street to scream their heads off with shrieks of joy. Later, my parents are going to come and take me out to dinner. I'll be twenty-eight and I still feel like some strange hybrid between a kid and an adult. I suppose this is better than feeling like a kid only, which I've felt on birthdays past. Just think. Only a couple more years and maybe I'll feel like a grownup altogether. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, though. Maybe I'll have to revise my idea of being grownup is all.

Hello again. Long time, no blog. I've been traveling a bit for the past few weeks, and have been caught up writing in my novel as well, which has moved out of the what-the-hell-am-I-doing phase and into the this-is-fun phase. I'm sure there are future tortorous phases to encounter as well.

Not much to report here. If you haven't ordered it already, you need to buy Trampoline, an anthology of mostly original short fiction edited by Kelly Link. It has great stories in it by the likes of Christopher Rowe, Richard Butner, Maureen McHugh, Karen Joy Fowler, Alan DeNiro, myself, Shelley Jackson, and lots more.

I'm just back from Readercon, which was a great time. Got to meet some cool people, like William Shunn and his really cool wife, Laura. Got to visit a bit with Dora Goss and her husband, Kendrick, who is also cool, like Laura. I wish I lived in the same vicinity of all these cool people. Alas, I live in Youngstown, Ohio. There are cool people here, too, but that's on a spectrum, understand.

I'm listening to Aimee Mann's Lost in Space album, and also The Flaming Lips, who I love love love. I've also been listening to The Dead Boys and The Pixies, who are listened to quite a bit by a couple of my characters in the novel I'm writing.

I started reading The Grapes of Wrath recently, too. It's actually really amazing. Boy that Steinbeck was pretty rowdy, some of the stuff he wrote in its period is pretty eyebrow-raising. Heck even today it is, I'm sure, in some circles.

If you've never read her before, everyone should go read Karin Lowachee's Warchild. It's amazing. The next book in the series is going to be released in a couple of months or so, and I for one will be ready to get my greedy hands on it. Aargh. Go team! (Sorry, inside joke.)

That's about it. Other than these items, I've mainly been working out with Jackie, and can feel Ms. Bond's pain with her personal trainer. But picture your trainer practically living with you, Ms. Bond. What do you think about that?? I was put through such a tortorous workout the other day that I almost broke up with her on the spot.

Now it's time for me to disappear again. If anything of much interest occurs, I'll make sure to make note of it here. But so far it's been a lazy, lovely summer. Not too hot, not too cold. And a general feeling of happiness and well-being prevails more often than not. I cannot complain too much at all. Finally. Finally.