I’m organizing a collection of my science fiction short stories to be published by the Fantastic Books imprint of Wilder Publication (that is, Warren Lapine), and would like your help as I try to decide the order of the stories. (Well, the help of those of you who’ve actually read any of my stories, that is.)

The best theory I’ve heard for assembling collections and anthologies has been that the two strongest stories should go at the beginning and end of the book—the opening story to reel the reader in, and the closing one to let the reader leave on a high note.

The book, to be titled What We Still Talk About, will contain the following 95,000 words of stories, which aren’t arranged here in any thematic order, but just in reverse chronological order:

“Glitch” The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Volume Three (Solaris)
“A Very Private Tour of a Very Public Museum” PostScripts (PS Publishing)
“What We Still Talk About” Forbidden Planets (DAW Books)
“My Life is Good” Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (Tor)
“Together Forever at the End of the World” Men Writing Science Fiction as Women (DAW Books)
“Choosing Time” Angel Body and other Magic for the Soul (Back Brain Recluse)
“Eros and Agape Among the Asteroids” Once Upon A Galaxy (DAW Books)
“The Only Thing That Mattered” Absolute Magnitude
“Mom, the Martians, and Me” Mars Probes (DAW Books)
“True Love in the Day After Tomorrow” Treachery and Treason (Penguin Roc)
“The Last Man on the Moon” Moon Shots (DAW Books)

If you’ve read my fiction, or heard me read any of it aloud at a convention, please let me know which ones you think would best act as bookends to the collection. I know which ones I’d choose, but you know how it is with writers—we’re not always the best judges of our own material.

Thanks!