Those announcements I mentioned

Did you think I'd forgotten?

Neither of these is earth-shattering, but both will, I think, be fun for me and for other readers.

Announcement #1: I've signed the contracts for my first work in the urban fantasy area. I'm entering this realm cautiously: I'll be editing for Baen an original anthology, The Wild Side (think Lou Reed singing, "Hey, babe, take a walk on the wild side"), of urban fantasy stories with a racy edge. This book is likely to push Baen's boundaries a bit, and it will definitely be new ground for me. I will be writing a story for the book, and my goal is to make that piece serve as the starting point for a novel. That said, the story will, of course, stand alone as a complete work.

Announcement #2: David Drake and I will be editing a reprint anthology, The Baen Big Book of Pulp SF Adventures. Every noun and adjective in that working title is important:

* Baen, not only because it's the publisher but also because of the emphasis on story values the company represents

* Big, because we're aiming for 150K to 200K words

* Pulp, because that's where we're going for source materials (though for those truly into old magazines I should note we may stretch the definition a bit and include tales from digests and bedsheets)

* SF, because we're sticking to that category

* Adventures, because that's the emphasis of this volume

If the book does well--unlikely, but we can hope--then other collections could always follow.

I don't have dates for either of these books yet, but we have about eleven months to finish them, give or take. I'm looking forward to them!