This is what happens when a lone finger impacts a heavy, metal door at a high rate of speed. Believe me, it was A LOT more purple and swollen about 4 hours ago.

There's this peculiar little passageway between the control room and the backstage area and on either end there's a heavy, air-locked door. On my way into the studio for rehearsal, I was reaching for the handle of one door while my friend Suzie was coming through it. Neither of us saw the other. Cue hilarious pratfall. Anyway, after crouching on the floor for about five minutes whimpering and clutching my quickly bruising finger, Bobby the cop/security guy took me to the NBC medical center where they didn't have any finger splints that fit my long, thin finger. So they cut off the top of a tongue depressor and taped it on. How's that for state of the art medical treatment. Plus, the x-ray tech is on vacay this week, so I was told to hike it over to the nearest emergency room, so they could take some pictures. Needless to say, I ignored that direction.

So here I am, it's 9 at night and I still have a tongue depressor taped to my finger. At least the bruising is almost gone.

I just found out that my friend Elizabeth Glover's story "Metaphysics" was recommended for a Nebula Award. How cool is that? Congrats, E!

The John Joseph Adams edited anthology "Wastelands" now has its own site with info on the authors, the stories and links to places you can pre-order. "Wastelands" will be out in January of 2008 from Nightshade Books, and when you check out the TOC, you'll know this is not one to miss.

So over the hiatus Aaron Bleyaert and I both got emails from Ketchum PR, the company that reps Clamato, responding to Aaron's Late Night Insider blog post about the 9 year old bottle of Clamato that has become a script department mascot. Now the fact that they responded is funny enough, but then I got a second email from them earlier this morning. Apparently the Clamato story got picked up by Popcandy, the USA Today blog and by the CNBC blog. How insane is that? And why CNBC?

Well, I'm back and I'm exhausted and I promise to tell the whole story and post pictures once I've recovered. Some highlights: my flight out to LA was delayed, so I spent 7 hours hanging out in Newark Airport--yes 7 hours. (Go American Airlines!!!) Meeting all the other winners and the instructors KD Wentworth and Tim Powers. Writing the 24 hour story. The awards ceremony. OK, I'm tired just talking about it. Going back to sleep now. Oh wait, I can't, I'm at work. Crap.

And congratulations again to Gold Award winner Stephen Kotowych. He's an exceptionally talented writer and a great guy, too, even if he does have a peculiar way of telling time and doesn't know how to pronounce his own name.

You'd think after all these years of watching clocks and counting down in base sixty, I'd have a better sense of timing. Apparently not. Hour of the Wolf went well, except that I misjudged how long it would take to read the damned story and didn't get to finish it. Next time, I'm breaking out the stopwatches beforehand.

In other news, later today I'm leaving for LA and the WOTF workshop. Got my gown for the ceremony all in order (after two trips to the tailors...long story) but I've yet to pack. I haven't written a speech, either, although I haven't got much to say beyond a list of thank-yous the length of my arm.

Also, yesterday seemed to be birthday central. Mike and I went to his grandmother's 97th birthday party last night, but also, my nephew Peter turned 6 (Happy Birthday, Petey!!) and my friend Bill Shunn celebrated his 40th. Many more to everyone.

I'll keep you all update from LA--well, Pasadena, really, but whatever...

...I'll be on Hour of the Wolf tomorrow morning, reading my WOTF story. "Sun God..." has several visual elements to it, not the least of which is a paragraph written in Russian. The only other time I've read this part aloud to an audience was earlier this year at Lunacon and my solution then was just to hold up a picture of the Cyrillic text. Well, that wasn't going to play very well on the radio, so I decided it would be fun to try and actually read the Russian as well. Hell, I was in the choir in grammar school, and I spent two years not just reading but singing phonetic German, Latin and French. So how hard could a little Russian be, right? Ha! Sucker. Tune in to Hour of the Wolf on Saturday, WBAI 99.5 FM, (Yes, yes, I know it's on at 5 in the morning. Don't be a pussy!) and hear how it all turned out. No doubt my pronunciation will have all of Brighton Beach on the floor in stitches.

Claire Danes was on the show Wednesday plugging "Stardust," so I asked the segment producer who worked with her if I could borrow the screener the studio sent over, and I watched it this afternoon. (I would have much preferred to watch it at home on the big 50 inch flat screen, but my ancient DVD player won't play burned discs, so I had to settle for the crappy 19 inch tube TV in my office. Note to self: upgrade video playback components to equal killer, cutting-edge plasma.)

In any case, I absolutely loved loved loved "Stardust." Now, I will admit that this overwhelmingly effusive response could have something to do with the fact that, after having my heart broken several times, I tend to grade f&sf films on a bell curve, and I've learned not to expect much of them anymore, especially those adapted from novels--think "Dune" or "A Wrinkle in Time" or that "Earthsea" travesty, and, oh, I can still remember sitting in the Ziegfeld, the smile nearly splitting my face when the the first strident beats of John Williams' theme played for "Phantom Menace"...well, that smile got wiped away but quick.

Yes, it's generally a sad state of affairs for genre film and television and whereas my reaction when I saw a trailer or a promo used to be "Geez, that looks cool!," now, alas, my child-like enthusiasm has been whittled down to a sigh and a jaded "Geez, I hope that doesn't suck."

Well, for the record, go see"Stardust." It totally doesn't suck.

Courtesy of Aaron Bleyaert, one of the show's researchers and author of "The Late Night Insider" blog, the story of my little bottle of Clamato is now known the world over.

Thank you, Aaron.

The Clamato thanks you, too.

I suppose I ought to start talking about this now so that you can all get ready to wake up really, really early on the morning of August 18th when I'll be appearing on Jim Fruend's "Hour of the Wolf."

Jim and I have been trying to nail down a date for me to come on since March, but we could never actually get together long enough to settle on something. Well, that changed at Readercon when Jim pulled out his palm pilot and squiggled me in for two weeks from now.