I've never known anyone to meet their goals as well as you did this past year! And one rejection slip is infinitely better than zero.

I have mixed emotions about the Sir Apropos books... they can be largely depressing at times, but their endings tend to be... apropos. (Which is more than I can say for a lot of books' endings.) I've read all three (the first one, Woad To Wuin [probably the darkest of the three], and Tong Lashing. I can't decide whether I would ever read through them again, but if he wrote another one, I would definitely read it. (They are almost the tone I was aiming for in my "Chikken Strider" novella... don't know that I succeeded, though.)