Shannon Phillips

Robin has given me permission to share his first work of fiction here. It’s called “Godzilla vs. King Kong 2.” It has been lightly edited for spelling, but otherwise is presented exactly as intended by the author. Warning: this story contains violent themes!

“Once upon a time there was a city people were nice.
THEN monsters came and guns were everywhere and one was damaged
AND people are screaming OF ROARS and King Kong. Bad was here.
THEN GODZILLA ROARS SCARIER THAN KING KONG
with 1,000,000,000 of ☺ died GODZILLA DIES but he comes back
Then monsters fight
Godzilla is uses his bite. King Kong uses his punch.
Godzilla will become so powerful times of atomic breath
King Kong will not be powerful.
Godzilla wins

THE END or is it”

In other creative-writing news, I’ve recently learned that a story of mine will be included in the upcoming Love Hurts anthology from Meerkat Press. It’s scheduled to be published in October, so I’ll post more about it as the book nears launch. I’m fairly stoked that the list of other authors includes Charlie Jane Anders, who is a distant friend and whose work I have been following with interest and pleasure. (We moved in some of the same circles when I lived in San Francisco, and I always liked her, though I actually knew her girlfriend Annalee better.) I was super stoked when she won a Hugo Award for her novelette Six Months, Three Days, and I feel warm and cozy about having our stories share a Table of Contents. It’s sort of like a writerly high-five.

Robin’s expression in this photo cracks me up (click for bigger version):

And Sol’s birthday is tomorrow! He’s still super happy, super sweet, and super destructive. The Wreckin’ Ball turns two…

Davy is soldiering on, though he’s been having a little bit of a rough time lately. It turns out he has a hernia that will need surgical repair—he had one very painful episode that took him to the emergency room, but it subsided and he’s doing okay now. The surgery is scheduled for April 17th. Apparently hernias in children are actually relatively common; I had no idea. Until the surgery’s done he can’t run or jump around, so that’s putting a big crimp in his style. I’m nervous about it because he’s going to need general anesthesia, and there’s always risks associated with that, but I’m told that this is a very routine procedure and he should be able to come home right afterwards.

Bonus pic of Robin and Davy:

And another photo of two kids! (Ha ha hah.) This one’s a bit older, as you can tell because it was taken before Robin got a haircut; I took it when we last went to Nevada to visit Nonna and Pappy.