Tansy Rayner Roberts is my New Best Friend.

Not only does Tansy Rayner Roberts really like my story "The Miner's Tale," she's put it as one of her tops for the year in her latest post on the Last Short Story blog. (I believe her exact phrase is "Awesomest of the Awesome." Shucks, Ms. Roberts.)

The Last Short Story team as a whole did not put "The Miner's Tale" on their year's-best list (oh, well), but they did post the list on the blog. Note to all: eleven of the 30 stories were by a Clarion South 2007 student or tutor. That's a bloody high rate if you ask me. And Gardner Dozois tried to tell us that the odds were against us being, as a group, magnificent. Ha!, I say, and again, ha! (Although one could argue that including the tutors, who were invited to be our tutors because they already were magnificent, is not playing fair. I say phooey: the distinction is a false one! Are we not Clarion???)