My brain has turned to goo and drizzled away, clearly as a result of trying to finish revamping these things in time. But they're done, with a little time to spare, so perhaps it was worthwile. Did I really need the brain anyway? Probably not.
Although it might be useful for what I'll be working on tomorrow -- the actual proposal for the Melcher book I can't talk about yet. They approved my preliminary proposal, which means that they'll now pay me a little money to do a formal proposal that they can ship around to various publishers. I'd really like to tell y'all about it in more detail, but I just can't, so I hope you enjoy cryptic.
In other news...I wasn't sure if I could talk about this either, but the more I think about it, the more I can't come with a reason why not. So -- I've been invited to serve on the Tiptree jury. I can't tell you how excited and honored I was when I got that e-mail -- I was talking to Jed at the time and I about bounced out of my seat and squealed into the phone like a stuck pig...well, not really much like a stuck pig, and I'm pretty sure they don't bounce much, but anyway. Umm... never mind. The point being, that I'm delighted and honored and I really hope I don't have to turn it down. I might have to -- there's definitely a potential conflict of interest with short fiction, given Strange Horizons. They're going to look into it and see if a) they think it's a problem and b) if it is, whether there's a workaround. (Maybe having me just judge novels or some such? Or being sure I don't make any final decisions on short fiction, or short fiction from SH or something like that? We'll see what they decide -- I trust their judgement.) Anyway -- the Tiptree is about my favorite award in SF, so I'm really really pleased.
Though you should still go vote for the Hugos, of course. :-)
I'd best toddle off; a few more things to do before going to campus, like actually washing my face and such. Chapstick would be good. Did I mention that I hate the dryness here? With a fine passion, I assure you...