Hmmm, it's all of a sudden been awhile. And boy, are you behind on what's going on around here.
News of various degrees of bigness, most of which y'all probably know. We're off to Scotland in a couple of weeks for the World Science Fiction Convention. My programming schedule is intentionally light--I've got a reading and a "kaffeeklatsch," both on the convention's Friday afternoon--so we'll be taking at least one day trip away from Glasgow. Sunday is the big day, as that's when the Hugos are announced.
Back at home, while the final schedule has yet to be set, I'll definitely be teaching a 12 week course at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning here in Lexington starting in September. Here's the description that will appear in the course catalog:
Introduction to Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy Short Stories
Christopher Rowe, a 2005 finalist for the Hugo, Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon Awards, will lead a workshop that addresses the unique challenges and opportunities associated with writing science fiction and fantasy short stories. We'll begin with group discussions of recently published stories; the later stage of the class is a full-fledged workshop where you'll write a story and also critique the work of other students. Heavy reading load! The 12 week workshop meets [Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday] nights at 6:00 pm and is limited to 12 participants aged 18 and above. First meeting, September X.
The very first question our Clarion West class was asked by our Week One instructor, Terry Bisson, was "How do you expect to write this stuff if you don't read it?" I took that very much to heart, so in this class much sf/fantasy short fiction will be read. Thanks to Gordon van Gelder, Shawna McCarthy and Sheila Williams for arranging donations of course texts in the form of recent issues of the "Big Four" genre print magazines and to Ellen Datlow and the editorial team at Strange Horizons for editing magazines that are, y'know, free and online.
Finally, in the "blogs as group e-mails" department, if you've got my cel phone number (the one with the 494 exchange) please lose it. My cel is a perk of my dayjob, which will be changing after we get back from Scotland. Thanks to the extraordinary generosity and support of Miss G (and, hopefully, the federal government), I'm taking advantage of an unexpected change in life circumstances to go back to school. Higher education and I struck each other a few glancing blows in the years after I graduated high school, to no noticable effect on either side. I'm going in with different expectations this time. Also, less hair. (And a less annoying haircut.)
On the writing front, the two projects on the front of the stove are revisions of the story I took to Sycamore Hill and a new story that's given me the opportunity to make a phone call to a place here in town called the Asphalt Institute.
There's no good transition sentence away from asphalt, so bye-bye.
