Late-Night Reading/Afternoon Reading/24

I should have been able to sleep last night. Cindy and I spent the day spackling and sanding the new room in the basement, then went to Home Depot to buy primer, paint and other fun stuff. Then we tried to figure out how our Murphy Bed is assembled. (No instructions.) Plus I worked on a story. (That's the strenuous part.)

Anyway, I couldn't sleep. So I got Gregory Frost's new collection Attack of the Jazz Giants off the bookshelf and read the first story, "The Girlfriends of Dorian Gray," a wonderful twist on the Dorian Gray tale and a commentary on dieting, weight, relationships and more. Good stuff.

But I eventually drifted off to sleep. Until my greyhound Bullet got me up at 5:15 to go to his "area." Was wide awake, so I tried a story from the new Hartwell/Cramer Year's Best Fantasy 5, John Kessel's hilarious "The Baum Plan for Financial Independence." Great characters, small-time thieves who stumble on a secret passageway while robbing a house. Kessel has a lot to say about our comfort zones. The story especially resonated with me as it seems to partially address the way we sometimes think too small. Wonderful story.

This afternoon I got to read the first part of one of my new stories at a Writer's Way reading at Malcolm X Park in DC. It was fairly well received for an audience that usually does not consist of any spec fic readers. I also met a couple of people who are interested in signing up for the workshop I'll be leading on Capitol Hill this fall, which should be a lot of fun.

Received The Year's Best Fantasy and SF for Teens (Hayden and Yolen, eds) and Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners, which I've already begun to devour. The title story, "Magic for Beginners" is pure Link: a wonderful, un-put-downable story that works its own magic as a story, but demands to be read multiple times for the depth and richness she's so good at. Plus it's fun.

Cindy and I also started watching the first season of 24 last night. (Okay, so we're a little bit behind.) With two episodes down, so far it's pretty good. It's good to be back with Netflix.

Now Playing = Elephant – White Stripes