Happy Moment

I am such a geek. I bought POET'S WRITER'S MARKET last night (since I'll be in the U.S. for a wqhile, I figure I may try submitting some things; having the forthcoming spanish-language poetry book(s) in the near future has--at last!--gotten back into writing poetry) and I've actually been reading it cover to cover.

I'm up to page 329, and to my surprise: there I was!

While I'd been published in a handful of earlier journals that had entries, this was the first one to actually mention me. Something I hadn't been expecting. I'm even listed first. O happy vanity!

(It's the entry for the Science Fiction Poetry Association/STAR*LINE, FYI.)

Wasted Jealousy

I've been actively not working on some overdue translations by weeding my book colelction, or at least rearranging everything, and otherwise cleaning up. I did recycle market guide magazines from 1995 and 1996 as being no longer relevant; likewise a handful of publisher's catalogues from the same dates. And all the Spanish gay magazines I'd picked up in 1997 and 1998, before actually moving there; no longer need any of those (half of which are no longer publishing) as references, since I have now written for or been profiled/reviewed in all of them. But it's amazing some of the stuff I not only have but have kept on to. I found a whole pile of hotel stationery from places we stayed in Scotland, England, and Wales 17 years ago on a family trip! Maybe I need to now write some letters...

Last week when I was at Keith's apartment I had a moment of envy when I saw a copy of Lois McMaster Bujold's DREAMWEAVER'S DILEMMA on his shelf.

Well, tonight I found my copy.

Since the shelves are sooverflowing with books, it was both on its side and double shelved behind a more-recent layer of acquisitions, so I couldn't see it and had forgotten I'd bought it. On seeing it, and what was around it, I remembered buying it at Dreamhaven in 1992 when I was I was on my Jewish Book Fair tour, but all of those purchases got stored in the apaartment in NY when I flew back to Spain right after the exhausting trip was over. Since I accummulate books far in advance of reading them, sometimes I'll wind up buying things a few times because I haven't yet read it--especially if, as was the case with this, I can't see it on my shelves, and thus don't have the visual reminder that I already own it.

Found a bunch of additional oddities, like Joan D. Vinge's novelization of SANTA CLAUS: THE MOVIE or Thomas M. Disch's THE TALE OF DAN DE LION and Terri Windling's THE CHANGELING and three copies of POOH'S WORK OUT BOOK by Ethan Mordden (best known as a gay novelist and/or for his books about theater) and...