Since I let it slip during my impression of Understanding Europeans in this installment, I feel it best to air it here as well: yes, I am going back to school, something I thought I would never want to do during the long time I was an undergraduate. Readers who have been with First Impressions for the last year will recall a strange request I made several installments ago in which I stated a need for someone who was a professor of English. That was me dredging for someone to write recommendations to graduate school for me--a successful dredge, thankfully, because I was unable to contact any of my previous teachers (not that I had that many former English teachers to begin with; my undergraduate degree was a thing of variety, not beauty). I was able to prevail on some other long-time friends (and readers of First Impressions, for that matter) to also write recommendations. The outcome is that I have been accepted into two Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing programs, and a final decision as to which I will go with will be made this month. Come September, Jill and I will be located in either Long Island, NY or Washington, D.C.

This is a sea-change in my career direction. For those of you who only know me through this venue, when I'm not being a book-reading superhero, I'm a mild-mannered programmer for an environmental consulting firm. I stumbled upon the job by accident--they originally hired me as a technical editor, then discovered I knew databases. The job has been financially rewarding, especially compared to editing, but it was never my intention to sit in front of a computer day after day and limit myself to words like "if," "then," "dim," "for," "next," and "case." Going back to school will allow me to concentrate on what I love: the entire English language.

That's the good news for this month. The bad news, which I only found out today, is that OMNI Online is folding. As one of the longest-running and best-paying markets for fantastic fiction, OMNI, especially under the fiction editorial lead of Ellen Datlow, established the benchmark for quality short fiction. While its demise is unsurprising--I really do not think the online world is ready to support a magazine of this caliber--the departure will be felt. I hope that Datlow will be able to find a new forum for her talent (possible publishers, take note!).

Keep the cards and letters coming, especially news of wonderful books that I've missed out on.