My MFA application story, “A House, Drifting Sideways” was just published by GigaNotoSaurus. So if you’ve ever wondered what it takes to get into Hopkins and NC State, just drift over there and see for yourself. Actually, you can’t see–you’ll never see–because what was published was a significantly revised version of what I sent in to MFA programs. I owe many thanks to Ann Leckie for giving me a rewrite request. The open word limits of her magazine gave me the room I needed to give the story a proper ending.

Fellow Bay Area SF writer, Amy Sundberg has recently been mining me for some good blog posts. She wrote a few weeks ago about my practice of disposing of books that I no longer read (and let me tell you, that was a real tempest in a teapot!) and then she wrote a later blog post about one of my many pearls of wisdom.

Finally, I was asked to contribute a post to author Emily Anderson’s blog for National Short Story Month. And I did. I think it’s a preeeetty good one. I wrote about how short stories need that extra thing in order to succeed. I always thought that the “extra thing” requirement was common knowledge, but I think that most people don’t know about it, because whenever I mention it (usually in a very complimentary way, i.e. “This story really has that extra thing!), I get these blank looks.