Two very nice things happened today.

The first was that I received my copy of Asimov’s Science Fiction with my story “Pug” in it. Here’s what it looks like:

My name is on the cover! Did you notice? (I think the last time I had my name on the cover of a magazine was way back when “The Rose in Twelve Petals” appeared in Realms of Fantasy. That was my first publication, so I almost feel as though I’ve come full circle. I’m back in a place of infinite possibilities.)

There’s something I want to tell you about “Pug.” Asimov’s calls it a “gentle SF story about a group of Victorian girls.” And it is that (although slightly before the Victorian era – Georgian, to be precise), but it’s also more than that. “Pug” was written to be a sort of puzzle, and I want to know if anyone will figure it out.

If you want to try, I’m going to give you two clues.

The first clue is the epigraph: “Pug is flat, like most characters in fiction. He is once represented as straying into a rosebed in a cardboard kind of way, but that is all . . .” E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel

The second clue is the name of the main character: Miss Anne de Bourgh of Rosings Park.

If you think you know what the story is about, send me an email (tgoss@bu.edu) telling me what you think. And if you’re right, I’ll send you a signed copy of In the Forest of Forgetting.

The second very nice thing that happened today is that I learned my story “The Mad Scientist’s Daughter” is one of the five finalists for a Locus Award in the novelette category. Here are all the novelette finalists:

“The Fool Jobs,” Joe Abercrombie (Swords & Dark Magic)
“The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains,” Neil Gaiman (Stories)
“The Mad Scientist’s Daughter,” Theodora Goss (Strange Horizons 1/18-1/25/10)
“Plus or Minus,” James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s 12/10)
“Marya and the Pirate,” Geoffrey A. Landis (Asimov’s 1/10)

And here are the Locus Award finalists in all categories.

Do you know why I’m especially pleased? Jim Kelly and Geoff Landis were instructors of mine at the Clarion Writing Workshop, back in 2001! It’s rather nice to be a finalist for an award along with your actual Clarion instructors. (Jim and Geoff, you have only yourselves to blame. You’re the ones who taught me all that stuff!)

So all in all, it’s been a very good day, even though I’m still getting over this cold. But I’ll take a cold for this sort of good news!