I was just sitting down to write a book report on triciasullivan's Maul when I heard the news, via Paul di Filippo, that SF writer Michael Bishop's son Jamie may be--seems to be likely to have been--among the dead in Virginia.

As much as the community of SFF writers and editors and publishers and fans may brawl and posture, on some level we are a family. A family of a few thousand, which also means that there is always something going on with somebody.

Horrors happen every day, here and elsewhere. We cannot build our lives around them all, and so mostly we nod and maybe hold our breath for a minute and walk past, in a moment of silence. This is not the first time in my life that a news report has turned out to fall closer to home than I guessed when I heard it.

This is a distant link, for me, as such things go. It's nothing like being the person actually getting that phone call. Just a moment of grief, instead of a lifetime.

It would be an imposition for me to claim any of that grief. It's not mine.

All the same, I think I'll leave the book report for tomorrow.