FogCon was fun! Great programming and great people. I was delighted to make some new friends and connect with some old ones. I think we’re going to add it to our list of annual must-go cons.

If you haven’t heard, John is once again up for two Hugos this year–one as Himself, for Best Editor, Short Form, and once for Best Semiprozine, as the man behind the entity that is Lightspeed. He’s in good company. It’s a great ballot this year, with many people doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling up on it.

On my end, “This Rough Magic” went to Daily SF subscribers last week, and should be available on the website soon. “Temperance” will make its appearance in Fireside Issue 1, which goes out to Kickstarter backers in electronic form tomorrow, and will be available for all to buy on April 17. You can read excerpts of all five stories and check out the artwork at Firesidemag.com.

And finally, it looks like a very busy summer for us, because we have bought a house! I should say “almost,” because you know how tricky house-buying can be, and this one is even trickier because it’s undergoing a complete renovation before we can officially enter escrow, but nobody has detected any red flags and we are proceeding accordingly. We went by today to take measurements and figure out what we can actually take with us, since the common areas are quite a bit smaller than our current house. But I like that, I like not being too spread out and away from my family–though one big bonus to this house is that John and I will each have our own offices. Also the number of edibles on the property makes me happy: lemons, apples, apricots, artichokes, rosemary, mint, and grapes have been discovered so far. And the roses! My gods, the roses.

The writing hadn’t been going so well for most of March and the first week of April, but as stuff like housing resolved I think I turned a corner. Making things up doesn’t seem quite so hard now. I’d better get as much done as I can before life strikes again!