So we’re heading up to Santa Barbara in a few weeks for the summer solstice, and I’m feeling reflective about the spring that’s coming to a close.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies has purchased “When Averly Fell From the Sky”, my third piece set within the Instrumentality.  They also acquired reprint and audio rights for “Time and Engines”.  I’ve been paid now three times for the same story, to which I certainly didn’t say no.  At my publisher’s suggestion I submitted “Time and Engines” to a steampunk anthology edited by Ann VanderMeer.  In the end I didn’t make the final cut, but I’m fine with that.  It’s a market I wouldn’t have considered otherwise, so all is well.  

Our plans to head up north for BayCon fell through at the last minute (boo!), but that’s been nicely counterbalanced by my acceptance to Comic-Con International as a pro writer (yea!), which is a huge deal for this skinny high school kid with the long hair and silly stories about spacemen and superheroes.

I’m left with very conflicted emotions about it, though.  With Comic-Con having become the monster it is now, and a registration system so convoluted that a quantum entanglement specialist couldn’t figure it out, I’ve been repeatedly unsuccessful in securing a ticket for my wife.  We’ve always gone together.  I can’t imagine attending without her; Kelly’s support was singularly responsible for getting me there as a writer in the first place.  Irony, thy name is bitch.  The black market is looking pretty good right about now.  Yes, there really is a black market for Comic-Con tickets.  Who’da thunk?  The geeks have inherited the earth.