Megapost

Two weeks and no posting. Wish somebody could have told me how tricky it is to keep an up-to-date blog. Not like a lot hasn't been happening, but I've had a couple of people tell me they do keep up on me here, so I feel like it's my duty to send a smoke signal every now and then.

Anyway, my wife and I hit the Stratford Festival, which is now become an annual thing, and we are finding we're having even more fun just hanging around the town and being together than just doing the plays. For the record, if anybody stumbles across this, we saw three plays, and I won't say which ones exactly because I don't want to spoil anything for anybody if they're going, but the production of Sondheim's "Into the Woods" is first-rate and a must-see. The other two we saw we're OK but not up to previous standards.

Then I had to head to Albany for some work-related stuff, and along the way found something called the Albany Pump Station, had a decent burger and some damn decent beer, always a fine thing.

This is the Spotlight Review's blog, so here's some forthcoming stuff. Playlist as always resides
here and I got to sit in on New Wave Wednesday this week with Jen V. and had a blast, with playlist right here (I make an entrance right around the Naked Eyes song). In the weeks to come, we have:
6/13: The Wedding Present, The National, Stephen Malkmus
6/20: Joanna Newsom, Kirsty Maccoll (I previewed some of this on NWW, a top-notch and long overdue compilation)
6/27: magazines and singles
7/4: off, happy 4th!
7/11: Mid-year review, best of 2005 so far
7/18: Magnolia Electric Co, St. Etienne, Bob Mould?

I'm leaving myself a little wiggle room because something always seems to slip in at the last second or so.

Reading lots of little things, mostly short stories/novellas. The "Transgressions" anthology that's out right now has a couple of fine things in it, I didn't bother to read the whole 800-page tome. I got very much into the Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, and John Farris contributions. I suspect that's the beauty of this thing, a little something for everybody to kind of dip into.

Also read the short nominees for the Aurora Award, the Canadian SF awards. Abetter crop this year for sure as opposed to recent years. My money's on Nalo, but this is one I've never been able to predict accurately.

And way back when this blog first started, my first entry noted a forthcoming story that was about me, written by Jeff Vandermeer as part of his Secret Lives project. Well, that story is finally here, and you can head over to Tim Pratt's site to order it. My copy is on it's way, and there is plenty here that would be on my must-read list even if I wasn't in it, so I'm watching the mailbox.

Stay tuned for more, hopefully soon.