Wow, it's been a while

Mowgli has reached the age of grabbing the computer keyboard whenever I turn on the screen. This has, obviously, made typing more than a little difficult. Today he is taking an unusually long nap, allowing a certain amount of typing to happen. Despite the impediments, I have a new story out at Enchanted Conversation and have a couple more that need to be edited and sent around. Half-Sick of Shadows could do with more sales. Seriously. Also, it could do with reviews at Goodreads and other pats on the head.

However, that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying the little one, even if he is stealing all my writing materials (he loves pens) and hanging onto my leg. He's a clever, inquisitive, and bold little creature, which means we both learn a lot as he trots around the house, yard, or library. We've made it to a few of the nursery-rhyme events at the public library, and he enjoys exploring places like malls and grocery stores. I have begun to use his baby-leash, which looks like a monkey backpack with a really long tail. It's been quite handy for keeping him nearby while I pay for his new hat and mittens.

Perhaps a few words about Half-Sick of Shadows are in order. Once upon a time it was part of a fanfiction saga. The saga itself turned inside out and upside down in my head (I was taking a prescription dose of codeine cough syrup at the time, though I'm not sure how responsible that was) and landed in its own dark little magical alternate universe. The current work is part of that set, the part I could get together the most readily. Somewhere, someone claimed that one of the basic plots begins "Someone goes on a journey," and this is one of those stories. During the Blitz, little Elena's parents stuff her onto a train and send her to her aunt in Wales. Dreamer that she is, she dreams herself into a romance much too young, and returns to the town when she is old enough to act on that romance -- never mind that Johnny Howell was recalcitrant material at best. He never intended to fall for a witch, for a start.

The rest of the set is concerned with their son, Ichabod, and with other members of the family tree. The one most likely to be published next is Carried by the Tides, which takes place around the time of the First World War and Russian Revolution. It begins with the mirror of the above plot-seed: "A stranger comes to town." Ichabod's tale is still working itself out, as it is a complex thing about a complex person, but is looking to begin with an amnesia.

I also have a poem, of all things, out in print. I'm on page 109 of Through The Keyhole, which is published to benefit the charity Room to Read. Room to Read builds libraries and schools, supports local-language authors, and promotes secondary education for girls in areas that traditionally favor educating boys. MNFF promotes the idea that fanfiction can be a tool for learning to craft a well-written story. You might say I'm a fan.

Obliviously Obvious: the Blurb

Copied book blurb:

Where you ever in Quebec ? Were you ever responsible for a yard sale, for a bake sale or for the resale of overly ambitious hedgehogs? Even if not, join the celebration taking place in Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting of junk mail-fashioned sculptures, of hungry, angry, riotous quolls and of shiny, acrylic pantsuits. As you turn this book’s pages, you are invited to sigh, to pout and to otherwise chortle in unison with KJ Hannah Greenberg as she tells tales about raising modern children.



In Oblivious to the Obvious, the joys of nay saying gothic nail polish and the horrors of encountering roosting lizards are explicated. Children who argue over their portion of motel rooms, siblings who fight over car seats and youngsters who go into battle over whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher all are included.



In this book, family life is not merely one mom’s experience of shouting down the hall to demand that the kids lessen the decibels issuing from their stereos, Ipods, and stringed, electric instruments nor is it merely one mom’s exploration of teenagers’ uncanny fashion sense, of nursing toddlers’ surprising schedules or of elementary school children’s notions about how to construct good sandwiches (marshmallow fluff coupled with pickles chips ranks fairly high on such lists). Rather, Oblivious to the Obvious is also concerned with nodding at broken heaters, at flooding toilets and at scores of uninvited visitors, both human and multi-legged in nature.



Sit back and laugh as Hannah chooses, daily, between five minutes of sleep and hot water for her shower, as her furballs succeed in reigning supreme, except for when they knock over her antiques, and as her family’s craft materials breed faster than do most of her dust bunnies. Smile, too when Hannah’s children discover that there’s no more ketchup in her entire house or when they realize that the singular piece of athletic gear brother needs for a sporting event has already been absconded with by sister for a drama presentation.



It’s not remarkable to be possessed of a husband, of a bevy of children, of a home, and of a job. Sadly, however, it’s becoming increasingly rare to be able to beam about such assemblages. Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting can bring that solace back, can help you work your smile muscles and can aid you in stretching what’s left of your sanity.



Join Hannah in frenetic her romp through exhausted printer ribbons, busted vacuum cleaners, and tuckered out grandparents. Find your inner oven mitt, retrace your report card traumas, and laugh, just a little, over lice, brown rice, and the nice things most of us tend to say about smelly, sticky babies.



Oblivious to the Obvious will not get your kids to bed on time, will not remind your husband to leave you love notes, and will not cause your employer to give you a raise or to stop asking you to make coffee. Oblivious to the Obvious will, however, help you express amusement at such small things.




Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting is available now! Please visit Oblivious to the Obvious: Wishfully Mindful Parenting! for excerpts or go directly to Amazon to order.

A House Divided

I'm trying to complete rewrites on my Science In My Fiction entry. I am also trying to keep little Mowgli under some control or at least observation. He's determined to crawl after the dogs, the cat, and any fancy that strikes him. I'm determined to produce a good story.

The story, however, is nearly as recalcitrant as the baby. Half of it is now in past tense, half in present, with switches in mid-paragraph. Since new sentences tend to be in present, I'm trying out the whole story that way; if it stinks, I'll try all-past. Plotwise, it's almost where I want it but I can't seem to see what it needs when the file is open, only when it is closed -- and then when I look for where to put the new bits, there's no such place.

The story is also supposed to have links to new scientific events which have inspired it. There are plenty of those, as I am something of a science nerd, but the roots go deeper than that. When I was eight, I was torn between becoming a veterinarian or a meteorologist (yes, always something of a science nerd). Or, of course, maybe a writer. This story has some of both of those, back when I was blissfully unaware of all the dreadful things vets sometimes have to do, back when climate change was a rumor instead of something every yahoo what's had a drop of rain fall on his head has an opinion about. At least when someone ventures an opinion on some story of mine, I can be confident they've probably read some other ones by other people as well.

Maybe that's why this story is turning out to be difficult. It requires research, but most of my stories either require it or come from it spontaneously. It's in a new voice, but what fun is a story in the same old one? But it also comes more from my own past and present than most, and is at the same time about the end of the world. This is a most uncomfortable literary apocalypse, then.

But enough grumbling. I must go recover the baby from the next room before he does something dreadful.

Testing -- Facebook link

I'm also trying to get more people into the Travelers' Tales group, so if you want to follow my latest writing and publishing news, please join!

Chasing the Baby

On The Move

The baby is teething, crawling, kneeling, sitting, and doing his darnedest in the standing and walking departments. He's eight and a half months old, mind you, and I keep telling him there's no hurry. He disagrees. What he's not doing much of is sleeping.

In the course of writing that last paragraph, I pulled him out of a corner, sent him after a push-and-go toy, and...

and recovered a stray kibble of dog food from his grabby little fingers. It's no wonder I'm not posting much! Anyway, in the near-ish future, look for announcements regarding an online buddy's book, a review of my camera, and other such news.

Meanwhile, though, I will announce my own book, or rather ebook. Half-Sick of Shadows is now out at Shadowfire Press. I feel odd calling an ebook publisher a "Press," as nothing is pressed except perhaps time.

Where Have I Been?

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Shadowfire Press picked up a set of stories I've been working on for some time, and the first will be coming out May 21. For those of you looking at your calendars, yes, that is SOON. Half-Sick of Shadows will be available in ebook format, and soon after, perhaps, the rest.

This means that for the last few days I've been working on art request forms, taglines, and the like. For whatever reason, a fifteen-word tagline is much harder to write than an 18,000 word story. It comes off cryptic, or inadequate, or dull, or too much like a fortune cookie. The author bio is even worse, or at least it is if you've lived a writer's life: baking bagels, training dogs and shoveling kennels, flipping burgers, adjunct teaching, periodicals checkin at the library, and so on. I tend to think that a bit of variety feeds the muse. The muse may, at this point, get indigestion.

The little fellow is fine, though. He wallows around on (and off) a blanket on the floor, attempts to eat my laptop, swats at keys, and generally makes himself helpful. He's getting interested in Cheerios now, though has not yet worked out the art of putting them in his mouth himself. He'll eat them from my fingers. He's grabbing at them happily. The bridge will eventually connect here to there. I'm now finding that babies are crawling into all my short story efforts.

Happy Earth Day, Dear Mowgli

I just signed up for Boobquake on Facebook. Earthquakes have been on my mind lately -- and probably a good many other people's as well -- and it's both a good experiment and a good excuse to wear something low-cut. Unfortunately, we have a design flaw in the experiment, namely, that there are so darned many earthquakes lately that it'll be hard to separate signal from noise.

Recently I was watching TV while nursing the little one. This happens a lot; he tends to keep my hands too full to do much of use, so I try to put it on something educational for one or both of us. This particular time, I was learning about the last great ice age and glaciation, and that the mass of ice on the center of North America was sufficient to bend the continental plate, heaving up such features as Florida.

You know. Nothing big. Just Florida.

Then we had a nice run of quakes and volcanic eruptions all over the place. This sort of thing makes me thoughtful, and that's like the TV-watching. There's more time for it these days when I'm pinned under a breast-feeding baby. Eventually I wiggled free and played with Google. You can get some very interesting scholarly papers from 2006 or so predicting that decreased glacier mass would cause reduced downward pressure on continental tectonic plates and therefore more volcanic eruptions and more earthquakes.

I noticed that the first few results said nothing about the corresponding increase in pressure on the oceanic plates. Granted, every inch downward the oceanic plates are forced is an inch less that the ocean rises to swamp continents, and that's great if you're on a continent and rather sucks if you're on an island. However, it seems to me that taking this pressure into account makes the melting of glaciers an even bigger problem. Surprise! It's all one planet, and when something changes in the atmosphere, that can affect the crust.

So, what can one worried mother, who would feel bad bringing forth a son into a world of lava falling from the sky onto the constantly trembling earth, do?

I can drive less, and decrease my carbon footprint (and expenses). I can eat less beef, and decrease the methane footprint. Surprisingly, a great many green choices save some green in the other sense: living on whole foods is cheaper than living on processed ones, and there's a lot less discarding of peels, cartilege, and so on in home prep, especially if you give yourself a jaw workout on the cartilege. I'm hoping to replace our energy-sucking fridge with one that would pay for itself in about two years. All of these are small acts by one small person, but it beats not doing them.

Naturally, this is when Georgia in its infinite wisdom thinks it'll help people's finances by NOT funding public transit. Whose finances, exactly? Public transit tends to benefit those who cannot afford to drive, and I'm not too clear on what they're supposed to do without it. Gas prices are supposed to go up right in time. We chose this house because there was a bus stop at the end of the block; being near public transit lines was the big selling point of this lemon.

Big and Tall Babies

I went shopping for a new sleeper for Mowgli yesterday. He's six months old now, and finally ready for those six-month-sized summertime sleepers everyone gave us in the belief they were getting things timed just perfectly.

Problem is, the nine-month size goes up to 27.5 or 28 inches in most brands. He measured as 28 inches two weeks ago at his well-baby checkup, and probably has added a half-inch by now. He's not fat, inclining more toward the bean-pole build of his father, but the distance from the shoulder of the sleeper to the foot is the part that matters, and lesser circumference about the waist doesn't help much.

The real problem, however, is that we've reached another point where the design changes to accomodate developmental stages. A twelve-month-old baby is presumed to be sleeping under a sheet, so his pajamas don't have feet and come in two-piece sets. A six-month old baby in those will wiggle backward and end up with the pant legs up around his thighs, the top bunched under his armpits, and drafts on places he's used to keeping warm.

We had exactly the same problem with newborn clothing, which Mowgli outgrew in his first few weeks. Newborn sleepers come with cuffs that could be turned over into little mitts. A newborn's circulatory system can leave him with shockingly cold hands without those little mitts, we discovered because we couldn't find any bigger sleepers that had them. Poor baby was also upset because he liked sucking on his mitts for comfort, and sleeve cuffs were apparently a poor substitute.

I may have to break out the sewing machine and learn to sew summer-fabric sleeper sacks. In this world of supersize everything, where are the supersized baby clothes?

Exploring the World

Brightly colored toys are all the rage now. We've started on pop beads as a good outlet for Mowgli's desire to pull things apart and feel mighty. This desire has been very hard on his books! Also, ours. We're reading to him a little less now, but I'm trying to make up for it with lots of real-life experiences like textured quilts to crawl on and mango baby food to sample.

Mango was okay. It was worth two wrinkled-forehead moments, but vanished all the same. However, Mowgli prefers his father's Elder Scrolls official game guide. Nummers!

Happy birthday, Grandpa!

Yellow

According to the baby books, a little fellow of Mowgli's age usually prefers red and blue to all other colors. Not this baby -- he likes yellow. In his Dr. Seuss book, he likes the yellow busy buzzy bees. Yesterday with his toes in the grass, he grabbed up a dandelion from amongst the violets and yanked its head off.

It's a good thing he likes yellow, as our house is surrounded by oaks, dogwoods, and redbuds which are all in full, glorious, pollinating bloom at present. If we play fetch with the dogs, they kick up great yellow clouds from the grass. If we leave a car window open, the dashboard is yellow. If we walk across the porch (and it's pretty well impossible not to) we leave gray footprints on the yellow and bring in yellow footprints for the hardwood floor. I'm liking my Swiffer.

Today's forecast is for rain. I'm looking forward to it, so that the above car can look that much less like Bart Simpson (description courtesy of follower Gryffinitter).



At least it's pretty!

Food, Glorious Food!

The preferred foods so far are rice, sweet potato, chicken, and beef -- and, apparently, high-chair tray. I'm beginning to feel even more like I'm raising a very slow-growing puppy.

We went to the pediatrician this morning for shots. Doc says he's doing great, 50th percentile for weight and head size but 90th plus for length! Apparently he takes after his daddy. In the waiting room I gave Mowgli a few blocks to pull apart and fiddle with. He was particularly entranced with a green one which almost matched the pull-ring on one of his travel-seat toys. He'd hold the block beside the ring and look from one to the other with an expression of profound thought. I don't know if he was intrigued by the colors being so close or offended that they didn't match. Either way, the nurse and doctor thought it remarkable.

After shots and a good long consoling nursing session, we went to the market. I'd intended to restock my dried apricot supply, but ended up shopping for veggies and fruits as well. The goal: making Mommy a good cow without making Mommy the size of a cow. Lunch was zucchini, summer squash, and snow peas with rosemary and a little omega-3 enriched margarine-stuff, along with a low-fat carrot cornbread from a mix plus other goodies. I like using cornbread as a foundation for pumpkin or carrot breads, and seeing the market's excellent but fattening muffins had put me in the mood for cinnamon, walnuts, and raisins with my carrots. It was quite good, but now I'm jonesing for another piece.

Mowgli likes the market -- nifty flags on the ceilings, pretty-colored things in the bins, and lots of people to fuss over him. He's now been chatted to by women of pretty much every possible color, shape, size, and nation of origin on one trip or another.

Milk Proteins, Colic, and The Joy of Soy

When Mowgli was a month or so old, he began to have screaming fits every evening until just about five minutes shy of the "Okay, we're calling the emergency room" point. Sometimes these fits were combined with cold, clammy skin and shivers, and we felt like terrible parents for letting him get a chill.

I called the pediatrician, of course, and the nurse told me colic was perfectly normal. We should tough it out. It would go away and he'd turn loveable again. I read books. Most of them said the same thing.

Then I happened to have an unusual day in my life and didn't have milk, or cheese, or anything of that sort. Mind you, this is a rare thing. I am a cheese fiend. Mowgli spent an evening cooing, nursing, and going to bed early. Aha, I thought. Sure enough, dairy led to screams and chills the next time I had some.

With the exception of one slip, that's the last time I had some. Now I'm reading labels ardently and skipping a lot of foods one might not expect to contain whey, casein, or other such extracts. Soymilk, however, seems to be fine, as is soy-based yogurt. Thank heavens! Otherwise I'd starve, and then so would my breast-fed little boy. Now, though, no more chills, no more screams, and no more of that mysterious emerald-green grass-clipping-looking stuff in the diaper either. (TMI?)

Since then, I finally hit a book that said something like "Actually this is common." There are medical studies out. Apparently more babies than anyone used to think are sensitive to milk proteins, and getting rid of those might just solve the colic problem for other people, too. Besides, soybeans are supposed to be good for women. I can't vouch for any objective facts about myself to go with that, but without the dairy, I do feel better in some diffuse and puzzling way. Maybe it's just a sense of lowered guilt. It's difficult being a cow; soybeans just hang out in the sunshine, making really wonderful shade for a kid willing to lie between the rows, until they get harvested.

Mommy's Ridiculously Healthy Rice Pudding

1/2 cup wild rice
1 1/2 cup water
1/4 tsp each cinnamon, ginger, cardamom
1/8 tsp allspice
small dash black pepper

Simmer together until rice is fluffy and water has vanished.

Add:
2 cups DHA-fortified soymilk
8 chopped dried sulphite-free apricots
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tbsp honey

Simmer together until thickish, then chill.

Hmm. Now I have to go have a helping. This wasn't for Mowgli, as you could tell from the honey, but for his poor run-down mother who needs her minerals. This should be rich in zinc, iron, calcium and a whole bunch of rarer and more exotic goodies, as well as having that dab of locally-grown honey to help me combat the extra drag of local allergens. Besides, there's something about rice pudding that's extra-pampering, even if you make it for yourself.

What Counts as a Word?

Mowgli is now five months old and making syllables like mad. Some of them are consistent: "Muh" noises, once or several times, indicate distress or hunger; "Da" syllables are attention-seekers; "Bub-bub-bub" seems to mean an uncomfortable diaper. I'm getting a little better at catching these.

Last night, however, he was yanking the ladybug on his bouncy chair and playing "If You're Happy and You Know It" 4,723 times. "Are you enjoying that ladybug?" I asked.

"Lah-dah-bah," he answered in contented tones.

He wouldn't say it again, though. Probably it was simple parroting. He's a chatty little soul. I'm looking forward to the real conversations, as he seems to have a great deal to say.

Stroller Time

Is winter over yet?

OMG He's Actually Asleep

I picked up some sensible books on getting Baby to sleep. They're not doing much for us, though. We put Mowgli to bed when he starts acting tired and close the door and plug our ears. If he's really tired, he might sleep six or seven hours, with or without a feeding along the way. The last couple of days, he hasn't napped.

Today, at last, I stuck him in a car seat to take Daddy to a bus stop and drove for perhaps ten minutes. Kid has now slept for some three hours. Ah the serenity!

Upsetting News Tidbits

Three news stories put up blips on the Mom Radar yesterday, and I want to share all three. I'm not sure which is most upsetting.

First there was the Pedophile Pediatrician. Moral of the story: stay with your child at all times, I suppose. I can only figure that a huge number of parents figured doctors know best and children always say they're scared of getting hurt at the doctor's office. And then the videotapes were found.

Then there was this sorry incident: the woman who starved her one-year-old son to death because her religious leader told her not to feed him. I just absolutely cannot imagine doing this. I mean, what makes it seem more reasonable to believe that your mother and stepfather were offering your son to Satan than that they were showing him the stars? What makes it seem sane to starve your one-year-old for not saying "Amen" on demand? This is the sort of thing that makes me want to read some Connie Willis stories, perhaps aloud to Mowgli, just to remind myself that this is rather outside the Christian norm. The real kicker for me, though, is that the mother was supposed to nurture the child's body to bring him back, although she wasn't supposed to nurture him when he was alive.

Then, silly me, I watched The Rachel Maddow Show. Mowgli will probaby consider her Aunt Rachel, as her voice will be familiar to him from the womb. Yesterday's attention grabber, courtesy msnbc's transcript:

And did you hear Harry Reid talk about—an incredible conversation he had with a constituent who owns a restaurant, a lovely couple and they had a baby and they had good insurance, really good insurance, covered the birth. The baby was born with a cleft palate, and they were so devastated, but the doctors say, “Don‘t worry, we can fix this, we can fix this.” It‘s easily done. And they then got a note from the insurance company: your baby has a pre-existing condition, and therefore you have to pay for this.

Er. Yeah. I'm not crazy about the "pre-existing condition" thing in the first place, although I understand why it's there, but applying it to newborns? Life is a pre-existing condition. Companies could get away with never insuring a baby from now to eternity.

Apparently to be a mother is to worry and get outraged. I also have to wonder if an insurance company will retroactively refuse to cover the pediatric visits from that first story on the grounds that the services provided were not in their plans. Sounds like a tasteless joke -- I don't mean it as one. I'm just wondering where the boundary of the outrageousness really lies.

Westminster Watching

Mowgli may just be his mother's son, at least as far as dog-show watching goes. We sat on a blanket on the floor and did fun things, sitting and standing and tummy-time, and watched the rerun of Westminster's first groups this morning. Since I grew up with Smooth Collies and have shown, worked sheep, and done SAR with German Shepherd Dogs at various times in the past, I was happy to see him so fascinated with the introduction to the herding group.



Of course, eventually he wanted to get off the soft blanket on the floor and be fed again. The blanket didn't go to waste, though. Dustin, the show dog of the house, liked watching Jimmy Moses handle "Meg."

Baby Books Leave Stuff Out

The book says Mowgli is the right age to discover his feet. He is indeed doing new things with them, though he's been kicking his bath toys with great accuracy for a couple of months. Now he also grasps the bath scoop between his feet to raise it to his hands, then pours the water inside into his mouth. Yay, baby! Luckily the soap is entirely edible, or so claims the bottle. He seems to like the taste of highly dilute Over-Tired and Cranky formula.

He has also learned to seize his incoming fresh diaper monkeylike with his toes. Then he gives a mighty heave and attempts to fling it across the room. I have learned to swiftly anchor it beneath his butt before he's managed the grab. He's heavy enough to make a good paperweight against his own strength.

Nobody warned me that either of these behaviors were on the list of possibilities. The baby books just have charming pictures of babies grasping their feet or perhaps stuffing those tasty little toes into their mouths. Mowgli appears to feel that these babies lack imagination.

Blurry Baby Toes

That's blurred toes, not blurred baby. This picture is now nearly two months out of date and the foot has grown enormously!

How To Buy A Baby Carrier

We're giving up on our third attempt to have hands-free baby carrying. I'm beginning to feel somewhat expert in what can go wrong, so for babyless gift-givers, I offer the following guide to purchasing a baby sling or pack for expectant friends.

1. When you go shopping for this, take along your pet monkey (well-diapered, of course). If you do not have a pet monkey, borrow one. If you cannot borrow one, I suppose a ten-pound sack of sugar will suffice.

2. See what successful parents in your baby-goods store are wearing. Try those first.

3. Open the package and find the directions. Put the pack on yourself. If you cannot get into or out of the pack, don't give it to someone else.

4. Put the surrogate baby in the pack. If you have the monkey (active baby), it should not come out the top. If you have the sugar (drowsy baby) it should not come out the bottom. If you wind up with a monkey touring the cribs or sugar all over the floor, something has gone wrong, and you should consider a different pack.

5. Walk around a while. Determine whether you can adjust the straps yourself, whether the monkey is furious from a pinching binding, or whether you end up leaving a trail of sugar once its paper sack has been chafed through. Also, see if the pack is giving off fumes.

If you follow this procedure, it is not a bad idea to bring along a partner. If you need the partner's help to put on the pack, it's no good. Partner should be there strictly in the capacity of photographer.

First Food

We made rice cereal last night. After a week of having a cold, I wasn't doing as well as sometimes on the milk production. Too, Mowgli has been watching us eat with great fascination for a month now. He would watch our spoons and make little mouthy faces. By his reckoning, if not quite the pediatrician's, he was ready to give this food thing a try.

He seemed to have a good time. His father did a round of feeding while I finished eating and that seemed to go best. I'd take a bite from my bowl of lentil pilaf, the baby watching attentively. Then Daddy would offer a spoonful of organic rice cereal and it would mostly end up on the inside.

Unfortunately, and contrary to much family opinion and lore, he didn't sleep any earlier or better for it.

Welcome to the MommyBlog!

It was inevitable. I write. I have a baby. Sooner or later, I was going to start writing about the baby.

Right now I'm juggling contractual requirements for a novella by my Evil Twin (you know, the one who writes the smut), a couple of back-burnered short stories, and breastfeeding. I'm learning to type one-handed while supporting a hefty little boy with the other arm, but I'm getting back into the flow of things.

In 2009, I was published in The Drabbler, Reflection's Edge, Emerald Tales, Crossed Genres, and Everyday Weirdness. I'm now in Crossed Genres' editors-choice anthology, awaiting publication by The Future Fire in early March, and hoping to hear back from a couple of vanishing editors. The Evil Twin publishes at Shadowfire Press.

As you might expect, every one of those stories was written before Mowgli came along. Why "Mowgli"? In an early ultrasound, he had his long legs folded up by his ears and his hands clutched close to his chest and looked quite like a little frog. It's not the name that will be on his college applications, but it'll do for the interwebs.