Mari Ness - March 10th, 2008

My annual outcry of: I hate Daylight Savings Time. Look, daylight is daylight; its length and quality is set by forces mostly far beyond our control -- the sun's rotation, the earth's rotation, where we've decided to live and so on. It can't be "saved." It can only be treasured, or, if you're me, utterly hated in the morning hours. It's a dumb, dumb, name.

But surely, you argue, we must be saving something, because surely, you note, our kindly efficient federal government wouldn't be torturing me like this if it weren't in a really, really good cause, right?

Wrong.

Also wrong, and incidentally, bad for the environment.

Also, on a minor note, nobody on Daylight Savings Time is saving money on their coffee bill. I'm just saying.

So my author's copies of Desolate Places arrived over the weekend, featuring my little story, "End of Time."

Desolate Places features speculative fiction stories set in, you guessed it, desolate places, and also marks the first time that will_couvillier, suibhne_geilt and I have ever appeared together in the same anthology. (This is particularly remarkable since suibhne_geilt and I just met a few months ago, managing to become friends just before he was seemingly permanently buried in the godawful snow that has inflicted Michigan er I meant Wisconsin this winter. Go check out his blog for the freaky pictures. Rumour has it that he's still alive, but I'm not sure if we'll have actual proof of this until June.) And if that doesn't entice you, I'll just add that previous anthologies from this editor have featured work selected for The Year's Best Science Fiction 25, nominated for various Predators and Editors awards, and recommended for Nebula Awards. Desolate Places is currently available from Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com and a host of other online and specialty bookstores; you should also be able to order it from most local bookstores. The editor, ericreynolds, has also hinted at some upcoming book signings, most of which I won't be able to make it to, but I'll keep people updated as I find out.

On a related happy professional note, I just stumbled across this review by ecbatan, who very kindly selected "Remembering Sara" as his favorite story from Coyote Wild in all of 2007.