Monthly Archives: January 2006

Not much time to talk; my partner will be home in a few minutes, and then I’ll have to stop. This month is looking very busy, what with three best-of-year essays due (including one from Matthew Cheney, already received), the new Locus Poll Ballot and Survey form to set up by the end of the month, trying to finish updating the Locus Index to SF Awards (in progress, penciled in to complete this weekend, when my partner will be out of town), and new orders-from-headquarters about posting a vintage Gaiman/Pratchett interview to promote the upcoming February issue of The Magazine. And there’s a pending Lawrence Person review awaiting some clarification from him before I can post. And Cindy’s due to submit a season 2 Battlestar Galactica update. And I need to update numerous ‘special’ subscription pages with the new rates. And I’m probably forgetting some things. I did manage to complete the final 2005 Monitor page, for end-of-December magazines, this evening. I’d meant to post opinions about recent films, but I haven’t found the time. This website could easily be a full-time job, but it’s not. I wish it could be.

I spent a couple three hours this afternoon going through e-mails from the past (ahem) several months with suggestions or referrals to websites to add to Locus Online’s links pages. I’ve added a few new blogs, some Swedish websites on the Worlds Links pages, a couple small press publishers, etc. Some suggestions I didn’t take; amateur writers who’ve posted their unpublished novels on their personal websites, for example.

The matter of blogs is difficult. Without my having tried very hard or been especially proactive in searching them out, the Links Portal page already has a quite lengthy list of blogs. If I tried, I could easily double it. The list would quickly become unmanageable. The judicious use of bold tags helps a bit, for my own use — those are the ones I check pretty much every day — but aren’t necessarily helpful to others. If not already, soon everyone will have a blog. What then?

To update, the southern California storm has after all lasted through the night, despite which the Rose Parade went on as scheduled. In my area, about 20 miles west of Pasadena, it’s been quite gusty, with tree limbs in the streets; apparently the wind wasn’t that bad along Colorado Blvd, or those floats might have been torn apart.

Happy New Year everyone.

It’s raining in Southern California, the first really big set of storms this year, and settling-into-middle-age curmudgeon that I’m becoming, I’m perversely happy to see the likelihood of rain on the Rose Parade tomorrow morning, bah humbug, as a fitting response to those local folklorists who perceive some divine favor in the lack of rain on the Rose Parades for lo these past 50 years. That said, the second forecast storm seemed to arrive earlier than expected this afternoon, so that I’d be surprised if the storm did in fact persist through tomorrow morning…

I’ve lived almost my entire life in southern California, and never been to a Rose Parade…

More tomorrow.