Corrections and Friday Reads

Good Friday! This will be a brief post, but I will fill it with links to make it worth your time.

First, a correction: I know I said in my upcoming schedule that I would be going to Odyssey Con this weekend, but I'm not going to be there due to a need to reallocate my time. I'll miss going, but nobody would want me coughing in the con's airspace, anyway. This recent respiratory ailment has been way too tenacious.

And now for the fun stuff. Books! On Twitter there's a tradition of posting #fridayreads, and I'm bringing it to my blog. I'm currently reading Paper Cities, edited by Ekaterina Sedia (whose website is beautiful. Click!). I have a thing about fantasy set in cities, but not necessarily always the Urban Fantasy category as we know it today with the vampires and the werewolves, so what I am saying is that this anthology is very good for me, so far. I'm not even halfway through it, but I want to recommend three outstanding stories: "The Bumblety's Marble," by Cat Rambo, "Promises: A Tale of the City Imperishable," by Jay Lake, and my favorite so far, "Ghost Market," by Greg van Eekhout. The book is worth its cover price for just these three stories, as far as I'm concerned, but I'm looking forward to reading the rest, because there are amazing writers all over the table of contents.

The other book I just started to read is Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories, edited by James Thomas, Denise Thomas, and Tom Hazuka. I have to admit that I've never paid much attention to flash fiction before, but recently I've read several excellent stories under 1,000 words long, and I've become nearly what one might call "obsessed" with the category. I've developed the ambition to write some, which by all accounts is not easy to do, especially when you're writing a genre story that might need a few words to go toward how the story world is fantastical or science-fictional.

That's it for now. I hope you have whatever kind of weekend you want to have!

Coming soon: Five Important Reasons to Worry about Divination

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