No, I’m not talking about “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”, though I’ve been enjoying reading that. 
More like my assigned reading for the CSSF Short Fiction workshop in Kansas, that I’ll be leaving for in a little over a week. I’ve got 22 short stories now, and 2 that are overdue but should be coming in soon – eight other workshoppers, three stories each. I said that this year, I wanted to have the critiques done for all those stories before I get on the plane. I’m not sure if I’ll manage that, but I’m certainly doing better on the ‘first read through’ stage than I was last year – I was doing first read throughs on the plane, and catching up on them my first few days on the plane.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff in the batch so far, and some stuff that’s just made me go ‘huh?’ at this point. I’ve been noticing quite a few dystopian, totalitarian futures so far, and not very much traditional fantasy aside from mine. I may turn out to be the fantasy guy in the group this time around. (I wasn’t last year, because I didn’t feel comfortable submitting any fantasy.)
I also wrote about 1350 words on ‘Making the Deal’ for Camp Nanowrimo today, putting myself in excellent position to finish that story and begin #7 tomorrow, and I procrastinated some by cooking up beef soup and burning video files onto DVDs.
You have to read 22 short stories for the work shop? Are those all from the other participants. Wow, that’s a lot of reading. I hope you had a few months to get it done.
I love pure fantasy; I miss it. Urban and paranormal fantasy are cool, but nothing beats an old fashion quest.
…….dhole
I have to read 24 short stories – the last two just arrived.