CONNOR

Our little boy had his eye operation on Thursday. For those not in the know, he was cross-eyed because the muscles that control lateral movement in his eye were too far forward, which meant they pushed his eye round too far every time he moved them sideways. If it hadn't been corrected, he would have been blind in his left eye by the time he was five.

Needless to say, I was a mess. Luscious has a far better description of what went on than I can manage, but the upshot of the whole thing is that he came through okay. His eyes are red, and we have to be very careful of infection for the next 5 or 6 weeks, but apart from that, the surgeon examined him the day after the operation and pronounced it an unqualified success.

But please, I never want to watch my little boy being wheeled out on a hospital bed again. I just never know if I'll see family members again when that happens, and I can't bear it.

SWANCON

Was a mixed bag. If not for the herculean efforts of mynxii, prk, and utopos, it wouldn't even have happened, such was the clusterfuckery that preceded it. My interest in the guests approached nil (although I should say that the on the one panel I shared with Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon, they were excellent), and had I not had the book to launch, I wouldn't have attended at all. Having said that, there were some big positives to come out of it, and they are what I'll be listing, to whit:

1. We launched the book. We launched it in a tiny, loud, crowded space at the back of the busiest huckster's room I've ever seen, but we launched it. And it sold out.
2. The beautiful and talented Luscious won the Western Australian SF Achievement Award for Best Professional Short Work, a deserved win for The Memory of Breathing, which I still think was the best short story released last year.
3. Tin Ducks also went to good friends Dave Luckett, Chaosmanor (who also won the short story competition), and the crew at Borderlands.
4. The huckesters room was as busy as I have ever seen it: there was space for big stalls this year, and the hucksters made good use of it. And busy! Probably due to the lack of interest in many program items, the room was chockers, and I spent an awful long time and a lot of money therein.
5. I bought me a sonic screwdriver. I've only wanted one since I was, like, 6.
6. I also bought season 27 of Dr Who in the box set, and a massive history of the series, and Blake's Seven season 2, and badges, and a colectable set of Who figurines (it was a very Whofanny year for me), and more books, and some magazines, and.... I did shopping!
7. A bath big enough to fit me, Luscious, and Connor. Luvverly.
8. Danny Oz's amazing Who3D panel. I didn't know the little fella did 3D modelling, and his work is spectacular.
9. Buying art. I rarely buy original art, as I rarely find any I want to spend money on. But I always find something to bid on at the Swancon art show. Last year I picked up 3 pieces. This year, despite the smallest art show I've ever seen, I still walked away with a Danny Oz original.
10. Winning the bid for Swancon 2008. Yup, I'm on a Concom. The sounds of birds coming home to roost can beginnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn now.

So, there were positives. But in comparison to what is being done over East by conventions these days, it was a very average event indeed. Still, as a number of committee members admitted to me, after dealing with the convenor for two years they were pretty impressed they got it to as high a quality as medium.

BOOK

Is launched! We took 30 copies to Swancon (and next time you see the Stephen or Chaosmanor, give them a big pat on the back for their efforts) and sold the bloody lot of them! This result, she is not a bad one :)

There are a couple of options for getting your hands on a copy. I'm about to bring in another bunch, so I'm likely to have copies on me pretty damn soon if you want one. Fantastic Planet will undoubtedly be doing the same. Yoyu could probably even ask Prime direct. Or, if you fancy waiting until June, I'll be at Conflux to launch it again (you can never have too many launches, I say) and will have copies on me then.

You know you want one.

SQUEE

By order of myself and that paragon of taste, Angriest, 'Squee' is officially the stupidest sound in the history of the entire Universe.

Stop it.

ZNAKKING OUT

Synchronicity strikes. No sooner do I write an afterword to the story Goodfellow in the collection that says I sold the story to European magazine Znak Sagite, but to date I’ve never seen a copy of the magazine so don’t know if it ever saw print than Geoffrey Maloney writes me to tell me that issues are on their way to Australia.

I've always wanted to see my name in Serbian....