So I’m nearly halfway done with a novel revision.  And I find that I’m changing quite a bit from the first draft.  It’s more than polishing.  It’s making the thing flow.  It’s fleshing out characters and making sure they are not caricatures.  I’m adding words, somehow, even though I feel like I’m cutting a lot of stuff.  I’ve added 9K words already, and I’m only halfway through.  It’s up to about 119K and growing.  It’s a fantasy novel.  Based on a Jewish myth, so hopefully non-traditional, even though it’s epic.  …

Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have officially released the cover and table of contents for After, their young-adult dystopian anthology coming out in October of this year.  The anthology contains my story, “The Great Game at the End of the World,” a story which I’m very proud of (and got to read a part of at the last World Fantasy Convention).  I’m also floored by the many talented people I’ll be sharing the table of contents with.  Check it out! The Segment by Genevieve Valentine After the Cure by Carrie Ryan Valedictorian by …

2011 was a pretty good year for me.  When I began writing this post I felt as if I hadn’t done all that much in the past twelve months.  But after listing everything I’ve done I see now that I have accomplished quite a bit.  Before time carves these events permanently out of my brain, I thought I’d document them here. Early in the year, my story “The History Within Us” was reprinted in The People of the Book.  An excellent anthology of Jewish-themed science fiction & fantasy, I was pretty …

I’m a writer, so I indulge in fantasy.  One of these fantasies is one day owning a bar-slash-coffee shop, a place where people would come in and hang.  And I’ve gone so far as to craft a playlist for it.  The bar would be themed “retro-future,” that is it would be themed in the way the 80s envisioned our collective (and sometimes dystopian) future.  You know what I’m talking about.  In the 80s, when it was becoming apparent that the computer age would soon be rushing upon us, we got …

I know I’m back in New York by the sounds.  This morning I heard in no particular order a garbage truck, jack hammer, saw, helicopter, airplane, car horn and siren.  In San Diego, home of the World Fantasy Convention, my mornings were filled with the sounds of trickling fountains, buzzing hummingbirds, and a delicate wind.  The Town and Country resort was set up like a maze.  You literally had to walk through various gardens and gates, around pools and through courtyards to get anywhere.  It was beautiful and bewildering, and …