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Minimal writing yesterday (50 or so words), but that was intentional. While I’m still behind, I now feel like a rational human being who lives in a nice flat in which things are clean, rather than an angst-written PhD student who lives in a hovel in which dishes pile up in the sink.

Some random stuff, not really thesis-related, from the last few days:

-  New review of Dreaming Again in Locus (Jan ’09), courtesy of Gardner Dozois; I actually scored a short mention among the discussion: Straightforward fantasy (as opposed to horror, although sometimes the line is hard to draw) is best represented by “Twilight in Caeli-Amur” by Rjurik Davidson, “The Last Great House of Isla Tortuga” by Peter A. Ball (another zombie story, but a considerably more subtle and elegant one), and ”Manannan’s Children” By Russel Blackford…

-  The Fantasy Magazine best story of 2008 poll/comment contest is still running – have you voted yet? They’ve named the top five stories in the lead after a week of voting, which includes the remarkable Watermark by Clarion peep Michael Greenhut. (On the Finding of Photographs of My Former Loves isn’t, but it’s such a strange and introspective little story that I would have been surprised if it was – I heartily endorse voting for Michael; his story is damned good). Also on Fantasy week, a non-fiction article from yet another Clarion peep, Ben Francisco, on the portrayal of 2009 in popular SF media.

-  Downloaded and read the latest issue of Kobold Quarterly; they had book reviews in there, including a quite spiffy review of Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels, which resulted in a moment of pure wtfbbq? level of cognitive dissonance followed by a pang of pure adoration for Wolfgang Bauer and his crew for reminding me of why I continued to subscribe to what’s (ostensibly) a d20/DnD gaming magazine despite the fact that I’ve played but a handful of DnD games in the last year or so (and run only two session). Kobold Quarterly continues to be class act, and saddens me that fantasy fiction and DnD have become so separated in my head over the years that this is actually something I feel surprised to see. 

 -  If you ask how the PhD is going and I twitch, it’s probably because I’m trying to think up some suitable lie that will make me feel better more than anything else.

Tonight Clarion South instructor Sean Williams delivered a reading at Avid Reader in West End, which seemed as good a reason as any to bugger the thesis and go listen to Sean read (awesome) and have dinner with a bunch of writer folks in the aftermath (ditto). This is tag-teamed with a trip into the city to pick up my ticket for the Aurealis Awards earlier today, which meant going to Pulp Fiction (at which point, because I was there and breathing, I bought books). In terms of swag, it was a good day to be at Pulp – Cherie Priest’s Not Flesh or Feathers was waiting for me, and will now sit on top of my to-read pile until the exegesis draft is done.

All in all, given that today was meant to get me away from the angst of the thesis, I’m not sure it gets much better than that. But after loading up on fiction and writer-talk, it’s taking every fibre of my being not to start tinkering with a story right now.