as Craig Clevenger posted: check Facebook for me. Always forgetting to check/update in here lately.

One of my favorite Bowie songs, sure, but, too, the name of a story of mine up over at Everyday Genius today.

and, though MySpace only kicks back errors when I try to post this in the right place, reading that Beautiful Boy book. Absolutely destroying me.

Chapter one's up, over at the very cool Plots With Guns.

Readercon report: got to sit down with Ellen Datlow, got to shake hands with Peter Straub, got to listen to Samuel Delaney and Gene Wolf talk, got to be on a panel with John Crowley, got to hang with friends new and old -- Paul Tremblay, Laird Barron, Michael Cisco -- bought so many Weird Tales and excellent books, nabbed too many Underland Press stickers, met Sean Wallace, my new editor, slept very little, got lots of cool links that maybe I'll post in here later, ate club sandwich after club sandwich, hold the pickles very far away, please. Pics of a lot of it here.

Most important, though, I got to move among people who read and write what I love to read and write, people who live in those same textual spaces, have the same dreams, those same necessary suspicions about the world.

Which is to say, three new stories, "Piano Theif" and "Because My Therapist Asked Me to Tell a Story Using Hamsters," each over at the July Hobart, and "Close Encounters," up now at 365 Tomorrows. Also, "Endless Buffets" is in the current Western Humanities Review. And, hitting the shelves at Readercon in a week here, in New Genre 6, "Lonegan's Luck," a zombie western -- or, a western with zombies. Too, though it's still a ways away, I've got a horror story, "Till the Morning Comes," to be included in Rare and Different Fictions of the Grateful Dead, and then a science fiction piece, "Heaven," forthcoming in, of all places, English Language Notes, their "Literature and Pseudoscience" issue. I dig both those stories. In addition, I'm guessing that "Little Lambs" is either current or a day or two away from being current in Iron Horse -- "Little Lambs" being one of my favorite stories that I've written. Another of my favorites, the title piece from my October 2010 Prime collection The Ones That Almost Got Away (well, cut the 'almost' and it's the title story), it's in Phantom, from Prime Books (though that site's being rebuilt right now). Not sure about how available that is yet, though; I have it already, but, I don't know, maybe I got special treatment there or something. Notice at Prime, though, that Sean Wallace acquired an Ellen Datlow collection. Very excited about this. Too, that "Raphael" story of mine, it's in Prime's Horror: the Best of the Year.

And and: Readercon. I'm there, in Boston. My panel's Friday night at 9:30, looks like, "Exceptions to the Rule," I think, right before the "Meet the Pro(se)" event, leaving me all day Saturday to hit panels, then Sunday to hit the Shirley Jackson Awards, see how bad I got beat (which, I read all the books in my weight class there, and, yeah, impressed, though of course none of them had giant time-travelling caterpillars, which I consider a prereq for just a lot of things, when you get right down to it).

Too, the studious among you may have noticed: with that ELN story publication, I've now got a story in a journal covering every letter of the alphabet. Even Q and X and Z (Quarterly West, X-Connect, Zygote in my Coffee). Haven't run the letters, either, but I'd guess I've got stories published beginning with all the letters too (even Z: "Zombie Sharks with Metal Teeth"). So, I don't know, maybe now's the time to go cyrillic, see if I can jam through that character set as well.

Anyway, on the non-story front, I've got an essay in a forthcoming photographic book on the Llano Estacado, but, while all the funding's in place, the four or five other writers tapped, I think the title may still be tentative, so I'll wait to announce it all the way, along with another anthology thing happening.

And, reading-wise, I can only remember about a week and a half back, but in that time I've burned through all but about forty pages of the Twilight books. Reading them at stoplights, in line at the bank, everywhere; pretty hooked. Soon as they're put away, though, it's on to Lansdale's Vanilla Ride and CJ Box's Below Zero. Very excited about each of them (too, got CJ Box, at a reading at Tattered Cover the other day, to sign my book "To the President of the Miller's Weasel Fan Club." which'll mean something to Box fans). Also have all these big plans for Let the Right One In, which I've had sitting by my monitor now for a while. However, it either just went Kindle or I'm just noticing it having went Kindle, so, yeah: I can finally get at it. Happiness^*.

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* ( which song, it only brings me back to Alias days. Probably the most fun I've ever had watching television, save Arrested Development. and Firefly. and X-Files. Sledgehammer. STNG )

First story, "Monsters," with Niteblade. A nice little 'What I did this summer'-story. Or, 'What I did this summer and who-all died,' kind of, I suppose.

Second story, in the "Broken Clocks" issue of ColoredChalk, "Good Times." It goes maybe three hunrdred words? Not even that, likely. Things take a pretty sharp turn down some hill, though. One nobody should ever really ever even look down.

Third story, "Rendezvous with Sula Prime" (yep, I've read a lot of Clarke), at the brand-new shiny happy Trailer Park Quarterly.

And, the interview, at the Shirley Jackson Awards Blog, here. A three-question trick (for which I should have answered "blue" for one of them, I know).

Looks like The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti's up for a Shirley Jackson award (!, yep). Here's the field:

NOVELLA

• Disquiet, Julia Leigh, (Penguin/ Hamish Hamilton)
  
• “Dormitory,” Yoko Ogawa (The Diving Pool, Picador)
  
• Living With the Dead, Darrell Schweitzer (PS Publishing)
  
• The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti, Stephen Graham Jones (Chiasmus Press)
  
• “N,” Stephen King, (Just After Sunset, Scribner)
  

My take on the Kindle2, over at Slushpile. Click here to get there.

Got a new story up over there, "How Billy Hansen Destroyed the Planet Earth, and Everyone on It." A happy little piece. Only six or seven billion people die, I mean.

So, click here to get there.

Looks like that Popmatters article posted Friday. "We've Come a Long Way, Baby." Back from Chicago. Fun.