Not one, not two, but

three short story acceptances to announce:

• 'Living Curiosities' will appear in Deb Wayshak's August 2009 A Case of Curiosities, which promises to 'invite readers to peek into the shadowy world of sideshow spectacle, where deception and sleight of hand are the rule, and the curiously strange beckons.' I haven't read The Restless Dead, the anthology that fell between Gothic and this one, but Gothic was wonderful, so being in this one is cool.


• 'A Dark Red Love-Knot', the Tom-the-Ostler story, is going into Michael Cart's GBLTQ anthology for teens—I'm not sure of the publication date of that one


• And today, before dawn, I finished 'Machine Maid', my contribution to Nick Gevers's steampunk anthology, Extraordinary Engines: The Definitive Steampunk Anthology, which is a bit of a hoot, being definitive with my first-ever steampunk story. Anyway, that's coming out at the end of September 2008.

Speaking of short stories, I read aloud to the South Island Children's Librarians the story 'Ferry-Man', which Sharyn November has taken for her Firebirds Soaring anthology (October 2008, same as Tender Morsels, woot!) and discovered that, even though it isn't as guaranteed to undo me in public as 'Singing My Sister Down', it's still got some pretty voice-wobbling moments.

Ah, short stories. So much juicier than, say, manual duplicate trading bank statements. But it's Friday tomorrow. And I have the cheque in my hand (from delivery of the novel to Knopf) that will pay off our smaller mortgage. And it's because I'm working at the bank that I can devote it all to that. So I've no real reason to complain.