I live to bleed another day!

Woo hoo! It looks like I've made it to the top five in the Leisure Books/Chizine/Rue Morgue "Fresh Blood" contest, even though the judges didn't care for my opening chapter (comments included "ARGH-FUCK-KILL!" and "I was longing for Mary to blow her brains out at the end, because I simply didn’t care about her"). Author introductions are up now on chizine.com.

The top five finalists are:

• A Fine Likeness, by Sean McLachlan
• Breed, by Sean Logan
• Disunity, by Aaron Dries
• Heart of the City, by Lisa A. Koosis
• The Sorrows, by Jonathan Janz

So that's the good news. The bad news is that I only got 4% of the popular vote, and the next round of voting determines who will be eliminated. So I'm going to need to try a bit harder to rustle up some votes. And if anyone's reading this *sound of crickets* I'd sure appreciate your support when voting opens again on March 15.