Hello!

*taptap*Is this thing on?Right, then, here we go.Hi folks! I'm Cat Rambo, and I'll be guest-blogging for a couple of weeks. I've got posts planned on "literary" fiction, superheroes, games, podcasting, a smattering of politics, and a variety of other things, but I thought it would be polite to give you some sense of who it is behind the keyboard.I came to speculative fiction through a circuituous path that included stops at the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, a PhD program, the land of network security, and Microsoft. In 2005 I quit my job as a programmer-writer at the last of those, and went off to Clarion West, which was held right across the lake, in Seattle. My teachers that year were Octavia Butler, L. Timmel DuChamp, Andy Duncan, Connie Willis, Gordon van Gelder, and Michael Swanwick, and they crammed my head with wisdom and a lot of pithy sayings.Since then, I've been writing short stories, some of which have appeared in places like Asimov's, Strange Horizons, and Weird Tales. In all of this, I've been lucky enough to have a spouse who supports me, lets me bounce ideas off him, stays quiet when I'm intently staring off into space, and who read just about every draft of the novel I just finished. You know you are loved when someone is willing to read your book not once, but five times. Accordingly, many shout-outs to Wayne, who is the best in just about every way I can think of.I'm the co-editor of Fantasy Magazine, which puts out an online fantasy story each week as well as interviews, reviews, news, etc. This week's story, "In This City," is by Brian Dolton and we've included an audio version, which we've been trying to do more of lately. We've teamed up with PodCastle, which podcast fans may be familiar with, as part of that effort.More to come soon...