The Good News --

First, pitchers and catchers report today. Baseball is back, even if they're only doing their physicals today.

Damned funny game, baseball. The defense controls the ball, and the offense only gets to do anything when the defense messes up. You have no clock, but you have time-outs. And defense can dominate a game and completely alter a player's statistics. An example: putting Ichiro! in right field against a line-up of left-handed pull-hitters will lower the pitcher's Earned Run Average because of Ichiro!'s defensive skills (and that arm of his).

But baseball season gets underway today, at least the Spring Training portion where players practice and sharpen their skills in large, climate controlled environments like Florida and Arizona.

Second, www.crossedgenre.com will be carrying one of my dryad stories, The Eyes That Catch! This garners an official "Woo-Hoo!" The story will be in the March 1 release of the e-magazine. They also have a print version that will appear on April 1. Detective and urban fantasy. Interesting combination.

Third, www.beyondthefarhorizon.com, also known as BTFH, or Gina Wylie's site, is about 35 chapters into Kalliste, having previously done Counterfeit Line (which will soon go back in the shop for some maintenance). Kalliste was my "practice novel", the first one that I actually did all the way through to the end. From it I extracted Kalliste's Storytime, which certainly garnered all sorts of feedback (including from archaeologists and other professionals in the field). The story certainly needs some rewriting, especially knowing what I know now. But as an example of organic plotting (plot as you go), it was certainly educational.

Fourth, Setosha is nearly rewritten, and I got enthused, sort of, for Firestar again. Have I done anything new? Firestar, with a different starting point, and a different conflict. We'll see how it goes.

Other things (Fifth): I entered Kassandra's Song in Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award contest, and I'm submitting both Crosstime Cop and In the Heart of the Woods for PNWA's literary contest this year. I have to get cracking, only one weeks to go on those.

So, yeah, so far this year it's been pretty good.