Promise me that, when you look up this essay on the SmartPop website, that you’ll read the essay all the way to the end. And promise me that you’ll remember that I wrote it a number of years ago, so some of the references are out of date.  Okay? Now that all of that is out of the way, check out “Batman in the Real World.”

Drabblecast is holding Women Writing About Aliens month and has decided to air my story, “What Fluffy Knew,” as part of the celebration.  ”What Fluffy Knew” has been reprinted a few times, but has never been in audio before.  You can listen here. And visit Drabblecast for more stories here.

Smart Pop Books has put my controversial essay, “Barbarian Confessions,” on their website for free–one week only.  If you’ve been reading my nonfiction columns, you’ll see me refer to this essay a lot.  Here’s your chance to read it.  You can find it here.

And, last week, I got interviewed for the nifty podcast site, StarShipSofa. Check out the excerpt here. The entire interview will be posted soon.  Check out the entire website here.

On May 1, Golden Gryphon is releasing my latest short story collection, Recovering Apollo 8 and Other Stories.  The collection features all of my award-winning and best-of science fiction/fantasy stories from the last five years or so.  None of these stories have been in previous collections, and some are very hard to find.  It also has a stunning Bob Eggleton cover.  Bob and I are happy to be working together again.  He was the artist on my very first cover story, “Sing,” in Aboriginal SF Magazine–and, it turns out, that was his first cover painting ever.

You can preorder here or directly from the publisher here.

One of my own personal favorites–”The Disappearance of Wicked”–appears in the March/April edition of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.  I think I like this story because I needed a writer’s office cat, so I inserted my own. The Goddess, as she appears in this story, was as she appeared in life–forever biting the hand that fed her, threatening the raccoons, and being her usual tough self.  She was still alive when I wrote the story, but died last May at an advanced age–at least 15, probably much older. (We’d had her 12 years, and the vet said she was at least 3.  But she had a gray muzzle and old lady habits even then, so she was probably 10.)  Anyway, there are other things in the story–children, dogs, kidnappings.  But I won’t give it all away.  Find your copy here, and enjoy!