Leland and I had a grand old time at this month’s KGB reading, featuring Judith Berman and Joe Hill. We’d met Judith at World Fantasy, and Terri loved her new (first!) novel, BEAR DAUGHTER (I’ve got my copy here, waiting patiently for some love, or at least a few free minutes), so we didn’t want to miss this chance to hear her read. Meanwhile, I’ve been anxiously awaiting my copy of Joe’s much ballyhooed first fiction collection, 20th Century Ghosts; I’ve heard nothing but good things about it (and it’s a book of ghost stories, go figure), so his presence only sweetened the deal. I even picked up a second copy of said book, since I’m quite tired of waiting for the first to show up in the mail. Any day now, my keister.

Liz was in the house, and reminded me that fellow Endicotter Helen Pilinovsky has a talk at MoCCA next week, so we’ll be at that. We also ran into writer Avi Bar-Zeev, whom I haven’t seen in a while; it was good to catch up with him and watch he and Leland have a conversation.

Lastly, we met Stephen Segal, editor of the upcoming Earthling, a mainstream magazine aimed at all us slightly-but-not-too-much-off-kilter speculative and genre fiction fans. It’s designed to fill the gaping hole in current genre coverage (including specifically targeting the lassies), and believe me, cats and kittens, it looks great. Color me excited. Nothing much on the website yet, but Stephen promises that there will be teaser content before their launch in early 2006.

In other less exciting news, my holiday soldering iron arrived. Time to make the gifties. Good thing, too, as I feel like getting my hands dirty this weekend.