Mark Anthony Brennan's story "Beneath the White Layer" will appear in the upcoming speculative fiction issue of Descant. The spring 2003 issue of Hadrosaur Tales will feature "Loyalists," and the fall 2003 issue of that magazine will include "Josef: A Strange Tale from Dudinovsk." The debut issue of Crux magazine will include "Drot Detail." Mark's "Return of the Native" will be in Andromeda Spaceways In-flight Magazine in early 2004.

The on-line zine SDO Fantasy, for which Mark is fiction editor, is now a paying market.

Leslie Brown's short story "Fox and Otter" will appear in the winter On Spec Shakespeare-themed issue, and her short story "The Relics of Venice" is in the Christian science fiction anthology "Leaps of Faith," available on CD-ROM.

Cory Doctorow's first  novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Tor) is now available. Cory has started a website to collect info about the novel, featuring reviews, news, upcoming signings--and even the free, downloadable complete text of the novel.

As well, Cory's novelette "Liberation Spectrum" is now online at Salon.

Dave Duncan's SF novel West of January, winner of the 1990 Aurora Award, is now available from Red Deer Press, with a foreword by Candas Jane Dorsey.  This is one of the Bakka Collection of outstanding SF titles.

Paragon Lost, A Chronicle of the King's Blades, is also avaiable now; it won starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. 

Dave will be (or was, depending on when you read this) Guest of Honor at Rustycon in Bellevue, Washington, January 10 to 12.

Sandra Kasturi's latest editorial project, The Stars as Seen from this Particular Angle of Night, a speculative poetry anthology, will appear in April 2003 from Red Deer Press in Calgary. It includes poetry from Canadians Colleen Anderson, Peter Bloch-Hansen, Mary E. Choo, Carolyn Clink, David Clink, Donna Farley, Phyllis Gotlieb, Barry Hammond, Eileen Kernaghan, Susan A. Manchester, Yves Meynard, John Park, Kathy Shaidle, Heather Spears, Jason Taniguchi and Carleton Wilson, as well as U.S., British and Australian poets. Phyllis Gotlieb is also writing a foreword, and Neil Gaiman an afterword.

Sandra's small press, Kelp Queen Press, has several projects lined up for 2003, including a reprint of Jason Taniguchi's Very Sensible Stories and Poems for Grown Persons, the first printing of which sold out last year. Sandra will also be reading at Parallel Chaos IV, at the Oasis Pub in Toronto on January 23.

Michèle Laframboise's latest YA novel, Piège pour le Jules-Verne (Médiaspaul) is now available.

Claude Lalumière's short story "A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens" appeared in Interzone #182 (September 2002) and "The Ethical Treatment of Meat" in The Book of More Flesh (Eden  Studios). He recently sold  "Nocturnes: A Triptych" to Fiction Inferno; it's scheduled for the Winter 2003 issue. He also recently sold "Njàbò" to On Spec and "Dregs," the third in his loosely connected "Lost Pages" series, to Interzone.  At 8,500 words, "Dregs" is the longest story Claude has sold to date.

Claude is editing two upcoming anthologies, both of which will launch at the World Science Fiction Convention in Toronto, Labour Day weekend.  The deadline for Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic (Véhicule Press) is April 13. Submission guidelines are here. The deadline for Open Space: New Canadian Fantastic Fiction (The Bakka Collection/Red Deer Press)  is April 30. Submission guidelines are here.

Some of Claude's recent  SF-related nonfiction includes "Playfully Perverting Consensus Reality: A Critical Chronology of Paul Di Filippo's Fiction" and an interview with Paul Di Filippo, both for Strange Horizons.

Claude will be one of the judges for the next Grand Prix de la Science-Fiction et du  Fantastique Québécois.

Sally McBride's short story "Pick My Bones with Whispers" appeared in the January 2003 issue of Asimov's. Her short story "Szabra's Souls" will be appearing this year  in the speculative fiction issue of Descant.

Steven Mills has sold two stories to On Spec ("No Life Like It" and "Chasing Goodbye") for forthcoming issues.

Derryl Murphy's story "More Painful Than the Dreams of Other Boys" is the first story sold to Open Space, the new anthology edited by Claude Lalumière. At close to 12,000 words, it's Derryl's longest sale yet.

John Park's story  "Imprint" appeared in the Fall 2002 issue of On Spec.

Holly Phillips and the On Spec editorial collective appear to have survived her first year as neophyte fiction editor, "much to everyone's surprise," says Holly. Aside from all the rejections she's had a hand in this fall, on both the giving and receiving ends, she's had stories accepted for the anthology Low Port ("The Gate Between Hope and Glory"), Alchemy , the new fantasy magazine from Edgewood Press ("A Beggar in Shadow"), and Black Gate ("Luck of the Gods"). In the recent past, her ever-so-slightly futuristic literary story "Goatwalking" appeared in Event, and her story "The New Ecology" appeared in On Spec, along with her first-ever editorial. In the near future, she will have stories in Land/Space ("All the Room in the World"), Dreams of Decadence ("Alchemy"), and On Spec  ("An Instant Remedy" ... which she submitted to the Shakespeare theme issue long before she was invited to join the editorial collective, she swears!).

Douglas Smith sold a novelette entitled "Scream Angel" to the upcoming U.S. anthology Low Port (edited by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller), due to come out for the World Science Fiction Convention in Toronto this fall.  Says Doug, "It's a pleasant little tale about a genocidal drug addict--and he's the hero."

Doug also sold a short story to Julie Czerneda for Odyssey, the next anthology in Wonder Zone series that she edits.  The series is aimed at public school kids and supplements the science curriculum for the anthology's target grades (Grades 7 and 8 for this one).  The story is called "Jigsaw" and the subject is geology.  Jean-Pierre Normand does the cover and internal illustrations for the series.

The U.S. Sci Fi Channel, which is co-producing a television series based on the Tremors movies, has asked if they can put an article Dennis Valdron wrote about the biology, taxonomy and evolution of the Tremors monsters up on their official web site.  

Élisabeth Vonarburg's 10,000-word essay in English for the Gale Research Institute, titled "The Blue House," should be published at some point in their series Authors by Themselves.

Her short-short collection, Vraies histoires fausses (in English, literally, True False Stories), which, says Élisabeth, contains "everything and the kitchen sink--mainstream, fantasy, SF, etc.," will be published by L'instant Même, a literary publisher, this spring. A not-so-short-stories collection (SF only), Le jeu des coquilles de nautilus, will be published by Alire this fall; the collection also includes two previously unpublished novellas.

As well, a poetry collection should be published sometime this year, or early next year, and the two-volume fantasy novel Reine de Memoire (Queen of Memory) is due out in the spring and autumn of 2004.

Peter Watts reports that "After almost a year of scowling and growling, the third rifters novel--Behemoth-- is officially contracted to Tor. I promise this will be the last of that long, sorry tale--in fact, Behemoth's Epilog is entitled 'Not God-Emporer of Starfish.'"

Peter has also sold an educational story about environmental apocalypse to Julie Czerneda's anthology Odyssey (see Douglas Smith's news above), but, he says, "I can't remember any details right now except the title--"Defining an Elephant"--and the theme--"why you should kill yourself before graduating from high school."

He adds, "I'm not yet sure which constitutes the greater accomplishment."

As well, Peter's story "A Niche" appear in the reprint collection  The Hard SF Renaissance (Tor), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

Edward Willett's young adult novel, Spirit Singer (Awe-Struck E-Books/Earthling Press) won the Regina Book Award at the 2002 Saskatchewan Book Awards gala on November 30 (complete details are on the 2002 awards page). Spirit Singer has also been named as a finalist in the young adult category of the EPPIE Awards, presented annually by EPIC (Electronically Published Internet Connection) to honor the year's best e-published books.

Ed has turned in his children's biography of J.R.R. Tolkien to Enslow Publishers, for their series Authors Teens Love, and may be writing  biographies of two other SF/fantasy/horror writers, if he gets his act together and turns in the overdue outlines...