This is the annual convention to honor Phil. No, wait, it's a convention held in Philadelphia. I'll be attending, as will several members of the Codex Writers.

I got my contract from Analog today for the story I sold them a couple of months ago. I'm glad to see it, because I had this paranoid fear that the sale would fall apart somehow. This is technically my third professional sale -- I've been given the prize for my 2nd-place Writers of the Future story, but I haven't... read more »

Apparently emails sent to me have been vanishing into a black hole in cyberspace caused by some problems related to a change in where this site is being hosted. If you sent me anything since December 6, I didn't get it.

But you must think in Russian!

I'm extremely annoyed right now -- some spammer is using my Yahoo e-mail address as the return address for spam. That means I'm getting all the bouncebacks from the e-mail. It probably also means my e-mail address will end up on some blacklists. Fortunately, I use that e-mail address mainly for receiving mail from businesses, not sending. But it's still... read more »

Spec-fic writer Scott Roberts is one of my classmates from Orson Scott Card's Literary Boot Camp in 2003. Scott was clearly the most talented writer in our class, and we've all been wondering why he hadn't been published yet. Well, now he will be: he just won second place in the third-quarter 2004 Writers of the Future Contest. That means... read more »

Part of the problem I have with picking "good" SF movies or TV shows is that there are some where the SF premise is good but the execution is flawed, and there are some with great execution where the premise is flawed. Trying to get both right for a two-hour movie (let alone for every episode of a TV series)... read more »

Lst weekend, I went down to San Diego to see my sister Carolyn in a play at the Old Globe Theater. The play was "Sir Patient Fancy," a Restoration comedy by Aphra Behn. Behn is generally considered to be the first professional female writer. "Sir Patient Fancy" involves two neighboring noble families: the Fancys, headed by the hypochondriac (and cuckold)... read more »