Suppose they published a story, and nobody said

My second SF short story for Nature magazine, When Johnny Comes Marching Home, was published back at the beginning of July. Apparently.

Alas, they neglected to tell me, or send me a contributor's copy. Or a cheque.

We are in pursuit.

In the meantime, if anyone would like a pdf of the story as it appeared, just let me know. As it's way too late to get hold of the magazine...

In other news: it's three o'clock in the afternoon, and I haven't had lunch yet. How did that happen? (Oh yes, I've been working...)

*starves*

Convalescence? It's like adolescence: painful, and slow

I hope we all learned something today.

For me, I have learned this: that damage recovery takes longer than I'm ready for. If I had put in this much keyboard-time a month ago, I'd have had two thousand words or more behind me by now, and I'd be happy and charging forward.

Today? I don't believe I've achieved half that. And I am sullen, because almost all of me believes that I should have done; and I am still dragging myself onward, and it's all grim and lightless and without tone or form.

Also, if I were to believe anything my hand tells me today, I would believe that it's gone backwards. Today I cannot reach into my pocket without yelling. And the idiot cat has attempted his favourite idiot leap to the top of a bookcase that is already piled high with boxes; he does this regularly, with always the same result, that all those boxes come tumbling down alongside of him, and then he has to run away while I shout and put all the boxes back. And this time he pulled a boxful of paperclips off a shelf as he fell, and they are now glitteringly strewn all over the floor, and something else I cannot do is reach down to pick up paperclips. I could get down on my knees and scrabble, I suppose, but - well. Tomorrow.

Reprint!

Forgot to mention, in among all the ouchie:

The good news is, that nice Steve Berman at Lethe Press wants to reprint my story "In the Night Street Baths" (from Lace and Blade, edited by Deborah J Ross) in the next edition of Wilde Stories. Which according to its own rubric collects the best of the previous year's gay spec fic shorts. We are chuffed, so we are. And properly humble (Rick Bowes! Craig Gidney! Me!), and so forth.