Received some good news this morning in a roundabout way.

My e-mail provider sent me a message a few days ago letting me know that they were moving servers, or doing an upgrade, or something, and I would be without access to my primary account until Monday. That’s a pretty long time to be without e-mail, but I didn’t really care. It’s the weeknd, I have my bachelor party today, and most people write to me during the week anyway.

So, I got up this morning, caught up on my RSS feeds, cruised a few websites, and happened upon the site for Naked Snake Press. They had posted the line-up for Salt, an anthology to which I had submitted my Newfoundland ghost story, "Twillingate." I was more than a little surprised to see my name on the list. I started jumping up and down, woohoo!-ing and wishing Kathryn was here (she’s at Head of the Trent today, some big to-do at the university).

Salt is a collection of ocean-themed stories to benefit the Surfrider Foundation. It’s coming out next month, which is really soon, and since I didn’t get an actual acceptance e-mail (probably because of the untimely outage mentioned above), it all comes as even bigger surprise. If I didn’t happen to check their website this morning, I probably wouldn’t have found out until Monday.

In an unusual coincidence, my future brother-in-law, Glenn, is on his way down from Ottawa this morning for my bachelor brouhaha, and "Twillingate" was inspired by the trip we all took to Newfoundland last year – where I asked Kathryn to marry me. This’ll be the first time I’ve seen the guy in months, and I owe him some thanks since he is obviously bringing some good luck with him today.

I guess timing really is everything. But who cares! Another acceptance, baby! And it’s going to be in an anthology! To save the oceans!

I’m like an ecological hero now, right? Like Steven Segal in On Deadly Ground.

Yeah, that is happening, baby.

Update: Just received an e-mail from the editor of the anthology, and she informed me that she did send out an acceptance e-mail a few days ago. Which means it got queued because of my e-mail maintenance and I’ll get it on Monday, or it’s been lost in cyberspace because of some e-mail troubles she herself has been having lately. Damn technology.

• Currently reading: Every Dead Thing, by John Connolly

Some belated congrats to Elder Signs Press, publishers of Dark Wisdom magazine and the Horrors Beyond anthology series, for receiving 11 honorable mentions from The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror 2006, edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, and Gavin J. Grant.

Like most best-of collections, the stories gathered for the book were published in the previous year, which means my story, "The Tattletail," will be in consideration for The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror 2007.

I don’t know about my forthcoming stories, but I have no doubt that the editors consider stories in Cemetery Dance and All Hallows, since both mags are well known in the field.

Something to look forward to, at any rate.

• Currently reading: Every Dead Thing by John Connolly

My parents came over for dinner today because they wanted to give Kat and I our wedding present early. We were told to go for a walk while they set it up, so we left, somewhat confused, and came back about twenty minutes later.

They told us to close our eyes, and led us into the living room and presented us with a huge 46-inch Sony widescreen television. To say it was a surprise would be a very large understatement. Kat and I don’t watch much TV, opting to watch our favorite shows when they come out on DVD, but we watch a lot of movies, and I’ve had the same 19-inch TV for over ten years. It was old and the picture tube was starting to degrade, and we figured we’d get a new one once we get a house. Nice to be able to cross that one off the list. Our first wedding present. Woo!

I should have gotten married years ago!

• Currently reading: Every Dead Thing, by John Connolly

Soooo… guess what I’m doing this fall?

You thought I was gonna say I was writing a novel? Well, I’m doing that, too. But first thing’s first, folks.

• Currently reading: "Flaw," by John D. MacDonald

Finished a new story today.

"Psong"

3,232 / 3,232 (100.0%)

This one is about a political assassin who also happens to be psychic. In a scary coincidence, a man apparently acting alone (police are still looking for suspects) shot sixteen people at a college in Montreal today. Even more disturbing is the fact that Canada’s worst school shooting, which took place back in 1989, happened not even a mile away from today’s attack. Fortunately, despite the number of injuries, the gunman didn’t actually kill anyone. That doesn’t make it any better, but it’s still something to be thankful for.

On a lighter note, I recently finished reading Silk, the first novel by Caitlin R. Kiernan. I’ve had it for a while, but never got around to reading it until now. I was a bit weary at first, thinking it was going to be a "goth novel" about a bunch of whiny GenX-ers wallowing in self-pity. I had read a few of Kiernan’s short stories and been quite impressed, but the pictures of her I had seen as the unsmiling goth princess turned me off to reading one of her novels. (Let this be a lesson that one should never judge a book by its cover, and never, ever, ever judge it by a picture of the author.) I was worried that it would be artsy and annoyingly abstract and full of the sort of angsty yearning that speaks to me not at all. Simply put: I thought Silk would read like an Anne Rice novel for young adults.

Thankfully, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Silk is a truly great piece of work — even more impressive for the fact that it’s a first novel — with strong characters and an enticing plot that kept me turning the pages long into the night. And scary! I can’t remember the last time a horror novel actually got under my skin. It probably has something to do with my own deep fear of spiders, because Silk has plenty of creepy crawlers skittering through dark alleys and spinning razor-wire webs. I found myself staying awake long after I turned out the light, listening for scratching sounds on the floor, or tapping at the windows. Once or twice I even found myself thinking I had woken up in Spyder Baxter’s house, voices floating up from a trapdoor in the living room, my hands slapping spasmodically at imagined spiders with red hourglasses on their backs. Kiernan lays on just the right amount of mystery; nothing is left too ambiguous, and the ending, I felt, was satisfying.

I picked up a couple of Kiernan’s short story collections, and, coincidentally, my copy of Alabaster (a series of interconnected tales concerning a female monster-hunter who receives her orders from an angel) arrived today. I’ve been told this character was introduced in Kiernan’s sophomore novel, Threshold, so that will be the one I read next.

Until then, I recommend you check out Silk. And if you’re as afraid of spiders as I am, read it with a can of Raid close at hand.

• Currently reading: "Passline," S.J. Rozan

Got a response from one of the editors of Way Out West giving me the go-ahead to send them Deadstock. Very exciting stuff since it was their call for submissions that kicked-started the idea for the novella in the first place. Not a big deal if they don’t take it, I’ve found a few other markets for novellas, but it sure would be great if they did, I won’t lie.

This brings me up to 25 stories in slush pile limbo. I still have "The Four Cowboys of the Apocalypse" waiting in the queue, but I’m going to wait and see what happens to Deadstock before I send it out. Then I’ll be up to 26. (I’m currently working on two new stories, but more about those later.)

Of course, it’s not a contest, and the number of stories I have out is no reflection on my writing ability or the quality of the stories themselves. But it’s still a pretty good feeling. A sense of progress. Booya.

• Currently reading: Silk, by Caitlin R. Kiernan

Finished another story today.

"The Hero Must Die"

1,858 / 1,858 (100.0%)

This one is about heroes, if the title didn’t give it away. Can you make one or are they born that way? You’ll have to read the story to find out.

In other news, I finally got my rejection from Fantasy & Science Fiction. Just another form letter, nothing special. I sent a query to the editors of Way Out West to find out if they’ll consider a 16,000-word novella for their anthology. If not, I’ll send it on to Butcher Shop Quartet. And the world keeps on spinning.

There’s no doubt rejection sucks the big one, but I finished a new story today and I just ate a very delicious apple-and-cinnamon pork tenderloin, so it’s all good, folks. A-okay. Five-by-five. Just jiggy.

• Currently reading: Silk, by Caitlin R. Kiernan

Finished a story I’ve been picking away at over the summer, ever since I finished the outline of the novel I’ll be writing this fall. I didn’t plan to write it. Like so many ideas, it sort of fell into my lap and said Pay attention to me!

"The Luminous Veil"

4,408 / 4,408 (100.0%)

"The Luminous Veil" is a prequel to the novel, the title of which I am going to keep to myself for the time being. (I’ll tell you more once I’m actually working on it; no sense in teasing you now.) Like almost every good tie-in story, it exists as an entertaining yarn on its own, and you certainly don’t need to read it to enjoy the novel.

It’s a morbid little tale about… well, about 4,400 words long. Yeah, I’m a laff riot. But seriously, folks, I really can’t tell you very much about this one, because I don’t want to give away plot details of the novel. But if it gets published (the short story, that is), you’re more than welcome to drop me a line and ask me whatever you’d like to know.

But for here, on the website, all I can say is that "The Luminous Veil" is a real place. It’s what they call the suicide barrier that spans the Bloor Street Viaduct in Toronto. You might have seen it in the film Resident Evil: Apocalypse, in the scene where all of the citizens are trying to escape Raccoon City. That tall, slanted fence on either side of the bridge is the Veil, baby.

• Currently reading: Silk, by Caitlin R. Kiernan