I briefly considered doing another online Advent Calendar this year, possibly with fiction, but I eventually changed my mind. WIth everything I have going on, I know it would only make me crazy and who wants that, right? But for those who missed it last year, my 2011 Advent Calendar is still online and is probably still relevant.

However, I would like to point out that I put together a kind of Advent Calendar of Fantasy Fiction for LitReactor.com and it links to a free online story for every day leading up to Christmas. So check that out if you would like to read some really interesting holiday fiction.

I didn’t actually manage to pick up an Advent Calendar this year, and that’s okay. I’m doing things a little differently this year. However, could I afford it, I would have gone with this deliciously indulgent advent calendar full of whisky. I suppose it’s still early December. Someone could still get it for me, right? Of course that first night catching up would be a fun one…

So I have a lot to talk about since it’s been a while. Expect an explosion of posts in the coming days.

First, though, I have to share that my middle-grade novel, which I’ve been working on for the past few years, was sent out on submission recently. In a rare moment of pride, I actually feel really good about this book. Fly confidently, little bird. I hope you find a home.

Next up, I’m doing a reread of The Dresden Files for Tor.com. So far the first five books in the series have been covered and new posts will go up every Monday until we get through the series. If you’re fans of the books or thinking about reading them, I hope you’ll give them a look.

Also Dresden-related, I wrote a review of the latest book in the series, Cold Days, also for Tor.com.

Finally, Diverse Energies is finally out. It contains my story, “What Arms to Hold Us,” but more importantly it has stories by Ursula K. Le Guin, Malinda Lo, Cindy Pon, Paolo Bacigalupi, K. Tempest Bradford, Rahul Kanakia, and more. As mentioned here before, it’s dystopian YA stories highlighting diversity. I hope you’ll give it a read.

That’s all for now. More to come later…

Sean Wills reviews Diverse Energies over at the Intergalactic Academy.

Sean had this to say about my story, “What Arms to Hold Us”:

This one is similar in plot to Pattern Recognition, but feels a lot more fleshed-out. The main character is a boy ‘recruited’ by a mining company to control mining robots through a neural link; predictably, he discovers that all is not what it seems.

This is probably my third favourite story in the anthology after Next Door and Good Girl. It’s well-written, the characters are consistently likable, and it manages to pack a decent amount of (coherent) plot into its limited page count. It looks like Khanna has published quite a few other short stories already, so here’s hoping he puts out a novel at some point. I’d definitely read it.

After a minor disaster yesterday afternoon, this was a welcome change of pace. I can’t wait for the anthology to come out.

So Tuesday Funk is a great reading series in Chicago that my friend, Bill Shunn, helps to run. And since I’ll be in Chicago at the beginning of September, I will be reading there! The reading is on September 4 and check out this lineup: Daryl Gregory, Rae Carson, Adam Rakunas, Gregory A. Wilson (and me). I’m really excited about this. If you’re in Chicago, or are going to be at Worldcon and sticking around for a bit afterward, please come by and check it out.

Some of you may have already seen this out and about around the internets, but my story, “What Arms to Hold Us” will be appearing in the anthology Diverse Energies from Tu Books. Edited by Tobias S. Buckell and Joe Monti, it’s a collection of YA dystopian stories focusing on diversity. It’s a pretty amazing TOC and I’m really happy to be appearing in it. Diverse Energies will be out in October (but you can always pre-order now).