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Today, I received the following surprising treat in my inbox:

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Google Web Alert for: A Practical Guide to Wizardry

Is Aldwys Acadamy for wizards real? - Yahoo! Answers <www.google.com/url?sa=X&q=http://answers...>

I was reading "Practical Guide to Wizardry" and found a secret note on the back of the book that ... 
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Sadly, the question was taken down before an answer could be posted, and the clip that google alerts sent me didn't have the full message! My duty is clear. As a public service to Aldwyn's Academy, I must answer the question here.

Yes. Yes it is.

If you need more proof, just look for the secret message!

Sometimes the holidays give us a bit of extra cheer in the form of a Google Alert on a book we've written. I can't even express how happy the story [copied and linked below] makes me. Families like this are exactly the reason I wrote A Practical Guide to Faeries. It is so encouraging. It really makes me feel as though I am connecting with people through my writing--something I've always aspired to do. Thanks, Sherrie!

From a post entitled "Believe" on solvangsherrie.blogspot.com/2009/12/beli...:

My daughter asked if I believe in faeries. Because she's pretty sure she is one. She just hasn't figured out the flying part yet.

"Of course I believe in faeries," I said. "Obviously if you're a faerie, then I am too."

She stared at me solemnly, trying to figure out what magic could possibly lay beneath my motherly exterior.

We were in the Book Loft, browsing through "A Practical Guide to Faeries," a book that now accompanies her to bed each night as she memorizes the words. I read a passage out loud to her in the store.

"Faerie-touched humans often have huge appetites...sometimes craving...charred toast, raw sugar or a stick of butter."

We both turned to stare at her brother who sat on the floor reading Anthony Horowitz. Her brother who consumes startling amounts of food, who eats pats of butter without bread, who begs for the bowl when I cream butter and sugar together for cookies. He felt our curious gazes and looked up uneasily.

"What?"

We giggled and ran to the counter to purchase the book.

Sometimes we faeries are mysterious that way!

Check it out!

www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/w...

We are once again open to receiving writing samples from prospective authors. We won't necessarily have an opening that suits your talents, but we will keep your sample on file for when new opportunties arise. Please be sure to indicate which of our shared worlds you are interested in.

I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with!

You know what? I love the undead. I love the poignant, disturbing questions they explore, the sense of tragedy and history they evoke, and the end-of-their-ropes characters they attract. I love the monsters (Skin kites! Rot angels! Visages!) that fray at our nerves and our moral understanding of the world. I love the haunting, dirt-encrusted, desperate, beyond-the-pale stories they inspire. I love the way you can order them around and they can't say boo about it...

Whenever I get to work on a book about the undead, I really feel like I've been handed such a treat. Like the undead anthology I'm editing right now: Realms of the Dead (due out January 2010). So. Good. With stories by Richard Lee Byers and The New York Times best-selling R.A. Salvatore, among others. And full of groovy undead. But to sate you until it comes out, check out The Haunted Lands trilogy by Richard Lee Byers (Unclean, Undead, and Unholy) and City of the Dead, by Rosemary Jones.

For a glimpse into what I (and a host of other editors, including WotC Senior Managing Editor Philip Athans) do every day, read this interview with Clarkesworld Magazine: clarkesworldmagazine.com/book_editors_in...

Don't I have a dream job?