A 'Fifth Star' thumbs-up from Trent

Okay, I'm home, and concentrating on cheerful things first:

• Friend and fellow RORette Trent Jamieson has enjoyed my story in Jack Dann's Dreaming Again anthology, 'The Fifth Star in the Southern Cross':

  this just grabbed me, held my head down in its slop bucket of imagery, and didn't let go until it was done. It's dense, brief (though it contains a whole world within that brevity) and visceral. It may well be the best short story I read this year. It's certainly one of the bleakest. I often think of Margo as a fantasist, but this story has reminded me that she can write damn fine unflinching and utterly unsentimental science fiction.

  Aww, thanks, Trent!
  
• The OF Blog has chosen Ellen's Del Rey Book as a Half-Year Notable Book, despite all the child porn in it.
  
• Comments are still trickling through on Gooslegate (Steven's term for the kerfuffle about 'The Goosle'), and I haven't yet read one that is supportive of Dave Truesdale's stance on the story, but he does seem to have encouraged people to seek out the story and have a read and a think about it, bless him.

I've had two weeks of writing-and-walking time and family time up in the desert and Darwin, and now I've got a weekend to settle back in and mull over it all. Words and pictures soon.