My flash story, Elf Aware, is now up at PodCastle! Yay!
It’s quite short and worksafe. And has black people in it. Well, a black people.
Category: Writing
Electric Velocipede 17/18 Cover
On the heels of the stunning Federations cover comes this from the next issue of Electric Velocipede:
(click to embiggen)
Isn’t it lovely? Also, I must point out that I’m sharing a TOC with fellow Altered Fluidians Mercurio D. Rivera and Matthew Kressel. Also of note: Richard Bowes, Yoon Ha Lee, and Caroline Yoachim.
Yes, I do see Will Shetterly, too. I am trying to pretend he is not there.
There are plenty of fabulous writers in this issue and you must buy it. You know you want to. If you don’t buy and read it, well…
Reprint Markets
I am pretty knowledgable about SF/F markets for original work, but woefully ignorant of places that take reprints. Obviously I know of the Escape Artist stable, but am less aware of other podcasts. (With the exception of Clonepod and Drabblecast. I had not-good experiences with both, and I’m reluctant to send them anything else. Nothing truly horrendous, just enough that I personally am not going to send them anything else in the forseeable future.) Anyone care to give me a head sup on the reputable markets that take reprints so I can start bombarding them?
Life is Compliated, I’ll Talk About Tarot, Instead
There are about 7 million things I need to attend to, but due to various life stuff, I haven’t been able to. And, of course, I’ve been quiet on the blog for two days. Horrors!
So, let’s talk about something fun: Tarot.
I’ve been reading various things about tarot for months because I’m writing a kids book for CatsCurious Press based on tarot. Yes, I know, this is the first time you’re hearing about this. I kept waiting and waiting to make the announcement and now I am just like: yes, book deal, moving on. Sometimes I can be strange.
ANYWAY, tarot books. After coming across more than my fair share of really silly books about tarot I pinged my homie Barth Anderson, because he wrote a novel about tarot. Tarot and a bunch of other crazy mythological shit, and you know how I love the mythological shit. The Magician and The Fool is a pretty awesome book and I’m going to talk about it in a sec.
Back to Barth. I asked him if he could point me toward some non-stupid books. We chatted a bit about tarot and crazy new-age books and sucklike. He pointed me toward one book, and in looking for that book at the store I came across this one: The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination. This book is interesting, particularly the history bits. I’m going to use a few of the ideas in constructing my story, yay. Reading that book made me want to read The Magician and The Fool again, because I was trying to remember how much of the history stuff Barth mentioned there. So, I did.
When I first read this book, I was totally hooked. For people like me who are totally into mythology and ancient mysteries, this was some serious crackfic. I liked it just as much the second time around, but had the same feeling that all the threads were not resolved to my satisfaction. Possibly because I want answers to ancient mysteries and care less about the character arcs being resolved. This is completely opposite from my normal reactions to fiction — this must be how hard SF readers feel about Spin.
After I finished The Magician and The Fool, I had a serious itch to pick up one of my many tarot decks. I went through a period where I scooped up a bunch of decks based on a variety of reasons. I only have two decks I ever regularly used, though: the Goddess deck and the William Blake deck, which is annoyingly obscure. I had to buy it from the dude who created it because it wasn’t available on Amazon at the time. I only use the Blake deck for artistic/creative work. I lost the book to the Goddess deck a while ago and felt kind of lost without it. But the desire to throw down was really strong, so I pulled the deck out and decided to see what happened if I just tried to interpret the cards themselves.
And now it’s as if I’ve always known what the cards mean even though I didn’t before. My brain is all inside-out!
I’ve done a few readings in the past couple of days and just as spot on as I used to be. (Yes, I used to be kind of good at reading.) This is very weird to me, and I can’t even explain why it is so weird. I’m not sure what’s going to happen when I crack the Blake deck again, because that one is even more mind-bending than “regular” tarots.
Okay, back to 7 million things.
Federations Final Cover (with quote… omg)
Look at this beautiful cover!
(click to enlarge)
You see that ‘& more’? That’s me! I am & more.
Also. ALSO. Back quote by Wil Wheaton. WIL FRAKKING WHEATON people! Squeee.
Yes, I did just squee in public. I have no scruples. Wil Wheaton is awesome. And so is this book. And oh hey, you can pre-order Federations now! Squee.
I Am Shameless. At Least I Admit It!
The storySouth 2009 Million Writers Award for Fiction is now accepting nominations!
The purpose of the storySouth Million Writers Award is to honor and promote the best fiction published in online literary journals and magazines during 2008. …this year there will be three cash prizes: $500 for the overall winner, $200 for the runner-up, and $100 for the honorable mention/third place.
I am going to nominate some stories (yes, I’ll tell you which when I know), but I am shameless and want people to nominate my 2008 story, Until Forgiveness Comes, as well. Here’s the link to do so IF you desire. Obviously, I shall not force you. ;)
My Bad
It has been pointed out here and here that, back in late 2007, when I put together a roundtable on POC in Fantasy, I linked coffeeandink’s real name to her blog on the second post in the series.
I do not actually remember the circumstances under which I did this. If my recollection is correct, back then I didn’t know that C&I wanted to keep her sf/fan activities seperate from her real name. This may account for the linkage. What I can’t account for is why there was linkage on part 2 but not part 1. This indicates that there may have been a mistake on my part. I am honestly not sure.
I, however, take full responsibility for doing so. I removed the link, as I was asked to (I wasn’t aware of those two posts until after I did it), and was happy to do so. My apologies to coffeeandink for that blunder.
I am highly amused to find certain parties waving a flag around about this. It would certainly be a really bad thing if I had purposefully linked the name to the LJ knowing coffeeandink didn’t want me to. It would also be a bad thing if, after being asked to remove the link, I stomped all over the internet like Godzilla raging about how horrible everyone is for even hinting that I should do so. Or demanding someone should throw me a parade because I complied. Really now.
My Kingdom For Some Back Support!
I am hanging out in a cute cafe around the corner from my apartment. I really like it — they have good food at decent prices, know what a real smoothie is, and they play awesome music. But oh my god, the chairs are AWFUL. They are all leany back and provide no sitting up straight support. Sigh…
Why must everything be almost perfect?
Also, I realize these people don’t have a lot of money, but no one could spring from some decent chairs in this place? Beyond the leany back thing, they’re small, hard, wooden, and I think a bit low. I guess they don’t want people to hang around. I don’t understand cafe owners who take this mentality. You have people who desire to sit in your establishment for hours and consume things. Make it so they can!
Want To Be A Weekly TV Columnist?
We’ve had some success with our TV columns and I would like to do more to cover TV on Fantasy. However, I do not want to bombard our readers with a bunch of TV coverage all the time. I think confining it to the end of the week is a good, and maybe not one post for every show. So I have conceived a plan to have posts on Fridays and Saturdays where columnists discuss the latest episodes of the one or two shows they’re assigned and then open up comments on them. I know a few of my current columnists will be interested, but in case there are other people dying to write up a short response to an episode of the shows they watch, I’m putting the call out to my readers as well.
As always, the job sadly does not involve pay. It does involve committing to one season of the show in question. Columns will be casual, like blog posts, filled with your opinion and a short recap. You are not required to love a show to do this. But fi you don’t like it, your dislike must be reasonable and not just “I want to stab Joss Whedon.” I mean, it’s fine to want to stab him, but at least let’s lay out all the reasons why in a semi-calm way ;)
If you’re interested, send me a note at this gmail address: fantastictempest. Tell me 1 – 3 shows you’d be interested in doing a column on. If you have blog posts about TV or related, include a few links. All SF or Fantasy shows are welcome.
I just realized my titles need to be more interesting so people on FaceBook will click
Which has nothing to do with this entry.
Since I got my day job I’ve been struggling to figure out when I can write. I don’t want to relegate all of my writing to the weekends because I have plenty to od then (Fantasy Magazine, mostly) and sometimes it would nice to just sit around and do nothing all day. Anyway, I’ve been trying for a while to wake up earlier so that I can leave the house by 8, get to the general area of my office, then write until I have to go in (at 10).
Waking up is the hard part of this equation. I am by no means one of those people who objects to getting up in the morning. But I always struggle to set a new default wake up time for my body. Current target: 6:30AM. I could write a whole essay on the ways my body attempts to trick me into getting more sleep. I have the most whacked out and realistic dreams just before and after my alarms start going off.
I would also like to write in the evenings, but this presents a whole other set of challenges. I need to go to the gym twice during the week (Monday and Thursday). I usually have an Altered Fluid meeting on Tuesdays. Once a month Wednesday is all locked up. And Friday there is sometimes drinking. This vexes me.
I think that I can psych myself up for flexibility when it comes to Wednesdays and Tuesdays — if I don’t have a meeting and if it’s not a KGB week, etc. And on weeks when I have both, then I need to commit to writing an hour before I work out on Monday or Thursday and write on Friday instead of drinking. Honestly, I’ll be with the same people if I do either.
Which brings me to: is anyone up for writing with me in the after work hours? I work near Times Square, and there are actually several places around here that make decent writing spots (mostly hotels, but at least they leave you alone). I’m willing to go a bit downtown or further uptown as well. Inspired by Livia, I’ll commit to 2 hours an evening, and then I will get myself home. I usually get out of work between 6 and 7, so 7 – 9 would work really well for me.
I’ll write whether I have company or not, but it’s always nice to have company.