Three very nice things happened in the last few days.

The first thing was that I received the page proofs for “Pug,” which is going to be in Asimov’s Science Fiction. It was the first time I had absolutely no corrections to make to page proofs. But the very nice thing was just seeing the story as it’s going to appear in the magazine. As I read through it again, I realized that I liked it – there was nothing I cringed at, nothing I thought I could have done better. There was even a paragraph that made me cry. I write all this knowing that readers may well not understand the story, may look at me and go, “What?” It’s a sort of literary gamble.

And guess what? I’m not going to explain it to you. You’re just going to have to read it and figure it out for yourself!

The second nice thing was that Jo Walton mentioned me in her list of recommended writers on the Tor.com blog. Here she is, working on the letter G: “OK, where do I start with that? G.” Jo wrote, “Theodora Goss is one of the best short story writers and poets working today in fantasy,” which I mention only because that’s the sort of thing that keeps you going, you know? The sort of thing that makes you sit at your desk and write, even on the days when all you want to do is crawl under the fuzzy blanket and read Murder in Mesopotamia. That someone like Jo Walton not only mentioned me, but thought my writing good enough to praise.

The third nice thing was that I saw not only the cover for the February issue of Realms of Fantasy, but also how my Folkroots column is going to look online, on the Realms of Fantasy website. This particular column is going to be online because the February issue will be the first one under the new publishers. Future columns won’t be. But I think you’re going to enjoy this one, which is also my first for the magazine. I can’t show you the column, although I’ll link to it when it comes out in a few days. But here is the cover:

Doesn’t it look great? And look: the Folkroots column is prominently mentioned. I’ve been told that under the previous editors (Terri Windling, Ari Berk, and Kristen McDermott), it was a part of the magazine that readers loved most. I know that when I read my copy of Realms of Fantasy, I always went to Folkroots first, and then to the art column and reviews, before starting on the stories. I really, really hope that I can make it as interesting and engaging as they did.

(And just so you know, I’m thinking of writing my next column, for the June issue, on fairies. That sounds like fun, don’t you think?)