Again with the address changing!

Two things, y'all. First of all, if you're one of the people who call us on telephone machines, please start using our cel phone numbers. We're trying to wean ourselves off the landline. If you're somebody who calls us on telephone machines that doesn't have our cel phone numbers, then send me an e-mail.

Second, I guess this is my last entry here at Blogger, because Gwenda's set me up with a Typepad account, on account it has powerful web authoring tools that I will someday look at.

The all new all new UnCommonwealth is linked off this sentence.

The Secret School of Chicken Hauling

So, I was having a looksee at the message boards over at oilburners.net, as you do ("as you do" is Australian for "I'm not going to tell you why I was looking at the message boards at oilburners.net). And I came across this essay, which you really should read. As enticement, I repeat here the excited reaction to the piece that one reader had:

For All the Chicken Haulers AKA Poultry Relocation Specialists:

AIN'T NO FEELIN' LIKE CHICKEN MOBILIN'!!!!! WHOOP WHOOP!!!

That other obsession of mine...

Besides the sci fi, I mean.

So, this week the World Road Cycling Championships are being run in Madrid. A brief primer: there are basically two different types of races run by three different groups of people. The race types are the road race (basically what you'd expect, a bunch of people all trying to get to the finish line as quickly as possible) and the time trial (which is also a bunch of people trying to get to the finish line as quickly as possible except in this case they race one at a time "against the clock," over shorter distances and with wacky aero helmets and disc wheels and stuff). The three groups of people are the "Elite Women" (basically pro bike racers from around the world), the "Elite Men" (same thing but with different chromosomes and inferior tactics), and the "U23 Men" which are the top men under the age of 23. Where are the top women under the age of 23? In the "Elite Women" race, presumably. Don't ask me, ask the UCI.

Anyway, hate to be provincial and all, but the women's time trial has been run and Team USA placed all three of their TT riders in the top eight! And Kristin "No Relation" Armstrong is on the podium at third!

You can check the results and see pictures and maps and stuff here. And if you've got the bandwidth, you can watch the elite men's TT (tomorrow) and road race (Saturday) on the net at cycling.tv.

I love Worlds for some of the same reasons that I love the Olympics. For one thing, they're not raced (theoretically) based on the structure of the trade teams the riders work for through the season but instead based on national teams, so you get to see tons of cyclists from all over the world that you've never heard of, wearing much cooler kits than the logo laden billboard style kits of the regular teams. What makes them better than the Olympics is that its all bicycle racing!

I believe I've sent everybody who asked for one an "answer sheet" to the quotes from last week. If anybody else still wants one, please let me know. And I know I haven't fixed the typos in the Link and Delany quotes yet (I'm talking to J.S. and N.H. here) but will soonest.

Oh, and in tonight's class we'll be discussing plot and talking about Ian McDonald's "The Little Goddess," a novella from the June issue of Asimov's that provides a great foretaste of his award winning novel River of Gods for those of you who are waiting for the Pyr edition to come out here in the states. Here's an excerpt of the story.

No googling!

Been way busy since the semester started. Like the girl said when she was still the girl we loved, "School hard."

Tomorrow is the first meeting of the sf/fantasy short fiction class I've mentioned a couple of times. If anybody reading this is one of the students, then here's a bit of a sneak preview.

Part of my approach in teaching this class is formed by a question Terry Bisson asked us (I think I've mentioned this, too) on the first day of Clarion West 1996. "How can you expect to write this stuff if you don't read it?"

To that end, we're going to learn about writing science fiction and fantasy short stories, to begin with anyway, by reading a bunch of 'em. I'm going to ask the students to read Strange Horizons and SCI FICTION weekly, as well as distribute the copies of F&SF, Asimov's, Analog, Realms of Fantasy and Weird Tales that the editors and publishers of those magazines have so generously provided for the class.

And on the first night, stealing another trick from Terry, I'm going to get a feeling for how well read in the genre the folks in the class are by reading some of the following openings to them to see who can identify what. How many stories can you identify by title and author from these lines? (Order--and inclusion for that matter--determined by arbitrary whim.) (I know some of 'em are dead easy.)

----

"Fashion, nothing but fashion. Virus X having in the medical zodiac its course half i-run, the physician (I refuse to say 'doctor' and, indeed, am tempted to use the more correct “apothecary”)--the physician, I say, tells me I have Virus Y."

"Two pieces of yesterday were in Captain Davidson's mind when he woke, and he lay looking at them in the darkness for awhile."

"Here is a story about a man who had too much power, and a man who took too much, but don't worry; I'm not going political on you."

"It is a Sunday morning in summer and a small brown chimpanzee named Rachel sits on the living room floor of a remote ranch house on the edge of the Painted Desert."

"It is three thousand light years from the Vatican."

"I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopedia."

"The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green."

"It was the time of the Sun Dance and the Big Tractor Pull."

"The strange stars of the World of Newhon glinted thickly above the black-roofed city of Lankhmar, where swords clink almost as often as coins."

"I used to go the thrift stores with my friends."

"And came down to Paris: Where we raced along the Rue de Médicis with Bo and Lou and Muse inside the fence, Kelly and me outside, making faces through the bars, making noise, making the Luxembourg Gardens roar at two in the morning, then climbed out, and down to the square in front of St. Sulpice where Bo tried to knock me into the fountain."

"Steena of the Spaceways--that sounds just like a corny title for one of the Stellar-Vedo spreads."

"Were the tower to be laid down across the plain of Shinar, it would be two days' journey to walk from one end to the other."

"He awoke--and wanted Mars."

"Whatever your gravity is when you get to the door, remember--the enemy’s gate is down."

"I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you’re crude, go technical; if they think you’re technical, go crude. I’m a very technical boy."

"With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea."

"Dr. Strauss says I shud rite down what I think and evrey thing that happins to me from now on."

"Everybody else got off the train at Hell, but I figured, it's a free country."

"He doesn’t know which one of us I am these days, but they know one truth."

"I was driving with my brother, the preacher, and my nephew, the preacher's son, on I-65 just north of Bowling Green when we got a flat."

"I saw Archibald Murray's obituary in the Tribune the other day."

"Somehow the idea was brought up by Mom that perhaps the whole family would enjoy a fishing trip."

"If you only see Dry Bone: one meager man, with arms and leg thin so like matches stick, and what a way the man face just a-hang down till it favour jackass when him sick!"

"Are you familiar with the scent of extinguished birthday candles?"

This one's for all the cops in the doughnut shops...

And it reads...Dear Kasey,

The so lovely so talented Nalo has posted a meme-theng about pop music. Way it works is, you go plug the year you graduated high school into the search box at top right on this page. The first link on the page that pops up will be to a list of the Top 100 (not to be confused with the Hot 100) songs of that year.

You can read Nalo's entry if you want to follow the instructions about highlighting and circling and arrowing which songs did it and which songs didn't for you. I'm not going to do that because I gotta go follow Eurosport's online coverage of today's stage of the Tour of Germany (Allez, Levi!) but suffice it say, reading the 1987 list sure made me smile a lot.

Funny how strongly I associate the videos with the song titles. Maybe I should have dedicated this entry to Tawny Kitaen.

Please

Go read this. Then spread it far and wide.

Via Patrick Samphire.

Joe College

I'm all registered for classes up at college now. I'm taking four courses totalling 13 hours to kind of ease my way in. Here's how all the undergrad goodness is looking for yours truly:

Elementary French I: MTWR (R is college for Thursday) 11:00-11:50.
History of Kentucky: MW 2:00-3:15
Cultural Diversity in the Modern World: TR 8:00-9:15
Literature & Genre, Special Topic: Kentucky Masters of the Short Story: TR 9:30-10:45

I did manage to hit two of my three scheduling goals (done by 4:00 pm, no classes on Fridays) and missing the third (nothing before 9) isn't really that big a deal now that I'm no longer nineteen years old.

Next up, finding a part time job downtown somewhere.

Just a link

Strange Horizons has an excellent interview with Kim Stanley Robinson, a good man and a great writer.

Classified

Tomorrow I'm off to college to sign up for college classes. It'll mostly be exciting 200 level coursework, foundational "gotta know algebra before you can study Elizabethan drama" type stuff. If anything interesting comes out of it I'll let y'all know.

Perhaps of more interest to you, my core audience, is that the details have been finalized on the class I'm teaching. You'll remember this from an earlier post, I'm sure:

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 Wednesday nights from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm and is limited to 12 participants aged 18 and above. First meeting, September 14th. Cost: $100

The class will be here in Lexington at The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. I'm going to be working up some fliers to put up at local colleges and libraries, as well as in the comics and gaming shops. And of course, as you can see, I'm using the limitless marketing potential of the internet. I'd like to fill up the class if at all possible so that the folks at the Center might have me back for future sessions. If anybody has additional ideas for getting the word out, I'd appreciate it if you jumped on the comment button or dropped me an e-mail. If you live in Lexington and are interested in attending the class, you can contact the Carnegie Center through the website above or via telephone at 859-254-4175.

All the News that Fits

While we were "travelling" last week (it's hard for me to use such an evocative word to describe such a banal experience--maybe "to travel" should be reserved for journeys on foot or by bicycle) I had a couple of opportunities to flip through USA Today. For those of you who don't live in the states, USA Today is kind of like a newspaper.

There was one feature in the paper that I thought was kind of interesting. It was sort of a state by state headline roundup, where many of the fifty remaining states of the former hegemony were listed by name, followed by a brief precis of the big news story in that state.

My question is this. Is there a comparable thing anywhere out there in the electrical universe for the whole wide world? Google News is close to what I have in mind, but they only list the top five or six stories in a handful of categories. I'm not looking for categories, I'm looking for geography--and of course I don't just want a bullet point version of the item, I want to be able to drill down through a link to more detailed stuff.

In short, I want to know everything that's going on everywhere in the world, but I'd like it packaged in an easy to read, easy to navigate form. Oh, preferably the stories linked to will be in English. But otherwise, no bias or agenda that isn't in line with my own, okay? Finally, if this kind of aggregator doesn't in fact exist, could one of you computer types whip one up? Thanks!

Just so you know

George Rowe the Dog? Big fan of Afro-Celtic synthpop. Don't believe the naysayers! I have the evidence of my eyes!

NoMoFoLiPa

FoLiPa is a sign-off I use sometimes when I write e-mails. It's a shortening of the phrase "Forklift Papers" and I use it to indicate that I need to get off the interweb 'cause I got big deal forklift papers to work on. Important dayjob stuff, y'dig? Richard suggests that I should put some kind of counter on this journal to count down the days until my move to the exciting world of underemployed studentdom. I don't know how to do that, so I'll just tell you that NoMoFoLiPa liftoff is scheduled for around 4:30 pm local time on Friday, August 19th.

Speaking of that dayjob, check out this pic that's one of the entries in this week's VeloNews photo contest.

And while you're just messing around looking at pictures on the internet anyway, check out this fab entry by Susan Marie Groppi and follow the link at the bottom to a great 1865 photo of a famous gray old man snapped (did they snap in 1865? maybe it was fwoomped) before he was famous and gray and old.

Also, there was a big sci fi convention over there in Scotland. I didn't win any big rockets, but some Californians gave me a little one (hopefully it's in the bag that US Airways has managed to find and not the one that Air Canada is denying the existence of) and we had a fabulous time. My reading went pretty well (I read the first chapter and part of the third chapter of my novel-in-progress) and the weird little "meet the 'pro'" thing I had was fun too, with actual people I didn't know there, even people from exotic foreign lands like Holland, Germany and Texas.

I'm not much on the con reports, so just go read this one, which kind of looks like a poem.

You like rambly?

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.

giveaway

And the winner of the subscription drive's fabulous prize is:

(drumroll)

(tense silence)

Darby Dixon III.

maybe just one last one...

... before the cat reaches a landline.


Your alter poet is Allen Ginsberg. Quick, go nuts,
because THIS IS GOOD FOR YOU!


Who is Your Alter Poet?
brought to you by Quizilla

Courtesy of Southern Blog Cabal member Jeff (whose blog you should be reading if you don't already).

Ciao!

cat's away: day four OVERKILL

congratulations. you are the "you smell like
butt" bunny. your brutally honest and
always say whats on your mind.


which happy bunny are you?
brought to you by Quizilla


Raver Bear


Which Dysfunctional Care Bear Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla


You have a Purple Lightsaber.

Purple is associated with wisdom, dignity,
independence, creativity, mystery, and magic.
Purple denotes high spirituality and religious
aspiration. Purple also represents Peacefulness
and Purification. It also has a sense of
intuitive understanding and a feeling of
intimacy with the world.


What Colored Lightsaber Would You Have?
brought to you by Quizilla

cat's away: day three (or something like that)

You are Dorcas Meadowes.


Image
(c) Katrina Young aka Rohanelf, all rights
reserved.
They are not to be stolen, altered, or sold without
my full written permission.
Anyone who disregards the copyright laws WILL face
immediate legal action, as well as the delight
of meeting me on their doorstep
with my sword to rip their guts out and use them as
a necklace.



You are the ultimate individual. You are very
resourceful, creative and extremely
imaginative. You don't really live in reality,
you tend to laps into your imagination all
the time, only being dragged into the real
world when someone has gotten your full
attention. This results in you being quite nave
about the world and people hate to see your
dreams crushed because of it. You like to be
different; in fact you go to extremes sometimes
to be different. A lot of people admire you for
that kind of bravery and you end up having a
whole bunch of people trying to copy you which
annoys you because then you have to go and
change yourself again so they're not the same
as you are. You are completely random, you
come out with odd sayings, weird jokes and
maybe just add a completely unrelated word into
a conversation because... well you don't know
why, you just do.
Sarcasm is you best
friend, it goes with your dry sense of humour
and it just comes naturally!


You use yourself as an example, to prove to people
that you don't all have to be what so society
declares normal to be accepted. You'rejust one
big living contradiction... You are mature
because you decided at a very young age that it
doesn't matter at ALL what others think of
you... and yet you really didn't make it past
the mental age of 6, dressing up is fun!
Dancing randomly at any given time or place is
a given, that goes the same for singing. You
are the nicest, calmest, laid back person in
the world... but there are a few obscure things
that REALLY get to you, and once someone had
pissed you off everyone needs to dive for the
bomb shelter because you can be incredibly
violent when provoked!! If there's a topic
you're not interested in, you can't concentrate
from more than 2 seconds before your
imagination distracts you, but if it's
something you are interested in you can
concentrate for hours, days, weeks months,
years even!! You trust people waaaaaaaay too
easily, but you don't trust people to know
what's behind the hyper, happy-go-lucky, crazy
wall for years...


Don't change for ANYONE do it in your own time
where you're good and ready! You're perfect and
people want to be just like you because you
have broken free of the chains of society! Just
remember that some people are
trustworthy, don't hide the sentimental 'soppy
feelings' side from them forever.




:.*.: Who are you in Rohanelf's Destined Tragedy? :.*.:
brought to you by Quizilla

I don't even know what this one means! But do not pirate, steal or otherwise impersonate this lady's art. You do not want her on your doorstep. She will elf your ass.

(And I think I just caught some Jane Espenson dialogue on the so-far disappointing The Inside. But still, snappy, funny Espenson dialogue spoken by Jayne!)

cat's away: day three

So, despite being busted, the games continue:

*************

Your wise quote is: "The best
antiques are old friends" by Unknown...
Your buds is the source of your happiness
(maybe not all but still). Even if it's just
one, a couple or a whole group they are the
ones you can't wait to see. It does not matter
if you're shy with everyone else or not, with
them you let your true spirit shine and can be
as loud as you want. They accept you, and you
love them for that.


What wise quote fits you?(pics) UPDATED
brought to you by Quizilla

(posted by Gwenda)

the cat's away: day two

Which Survivor of the Impending Nuclear Apocalypse Are You?
A Rum and Monkey joint.

(Posted by Gwenda)

the cat's away: day one

You are Tiffany Case -- sexy and scheming. You're
a hard-headed North American gal in it for the
money and travel. You size up the value of
anything, from men to fashions to diamonds, in
a trice and you're seldom wrong in your
instincts.


Which Bond Girl Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

- posted by Gwenda (who can't figure out how to post as herself on this blog without screwing up the template -- blogger you are too smart for your own good!)

For now...

...this is gonna have to do, vis a vis blogging.

I've been preparing for a week long writing workshop that starts tomorrow and working on a side project that I'm comfortable describing as research for my bicycle race book, so I've fallen off the pace here a bit, sorry. I'll see if Gwenda will "guest blog" while I'm gone. I'll leave her all the links she'll need to bring you any important breaking news.

Tonight is the reading at Malaprop's in Asheville with Kelly Link and Maureen McHugh. If you're in the area, please come and check it out. They both have important new books that will be available for purchase. As for me, well, I promise to keep it short.

Other people are posting their WorldCon schedules, but I think I'll save that for when I get back.

Don't forget the big Say... subscription drive and its attendant fabulous prize. I beg the patience of folks who've placed orders in the last couple of days; I'll get your zines in the mail once I'm back in the Commonwealth.

Summer's arrived in the northern hemisphere. If you're in the northern hemisphere, go outside.

Gelukkige verjaardag, Eddy!

The greatest professional athlete of all time, the Flandrian Eddy Merckx, is sixty years old today. VeloNews offers this reprint of a 2000 article that gives a nice overview of who the man is, and makes an attempt at the impossible task of putting his accomplishments into some kind of perspective. Give it a read.

Go read this!

Anecdotal data suggest that my readership consists pretty much entirely of people who also read Shaken & Stirred, but just in case you don't, go read this cool story that Gwenda has posted as part of sort of online anthology. It's fantastic, in at least two different senses of the word.

Pretty Magic Subscription Drive Prize

As you may have read elsewhere, if you subscribe to Say... by the end of the month, your name will be entered into a drawing. The big prize is this:



And what that is, is an extremely limited edition chapbook that we produced a few weeks back. Just six numbered copies exist, and this one is signed by all the contributors (I believe it's number 2 of 6--I don't have it at hand to check; if I'm wrong I'll come back in and correct this so that nobody will ever believe you if you claim I said something else). Gwenda described it like this:

"It contains the work of Scott Westerfeld (first chapter of Peeps, due out in September), Justine Larbalestier (first chapter of Magic Lessons, the second volume in the Magic or Madness trilogy, due out next year), Ysabeau Wilce (an excerpt from a new short story "The Unkindest Cut") and me* (first chapter of new novel-in-progress Roanoke, hopefully due out at some unknown point in the future). It's signed by all the contributors and it's beautiful."

You can subscribe to Say... via PayPal, which you can use even if you don't have an account because they also basically act as a credit card processing service. Just click the appropriate button below. Alternatively, you can use Project Pulp.

If you already have the latest issue, please let us know and we'll start you with #6, Say...what's the combination? which is due out later this year. If you're already a subscriber, we can add another two issues to your current subscription so you'll have a shot at the prize.

By subscribing (or extending) now, you also lock in the $5 per issue price for two more issues. We will be raising the individual issue price starting with #6 and two-issue subscriptions will go up in price as well.

Say...has there ever been a clearer time to act?

In the US, only 10 dollars:

In Canada, only 11 dollars:

Other countries, only 12 dollars:

Winner to be chosen by random drawing on July 1.

* Her.

What's it about, Larry Hammer?

With his contribution to Say...have you heard this one? writer Larry Hammer adds to the cycle of folklore surrounding a well known businessman from the American West. Here's an extract from "Paul Bunyan and the Photocopier."

"Now just between you and me, there's nothing on this green earth that scared Paul the way that photocopier scared him...that big plastic box, all white and humming, with its ten thousand buttons and twenty thousand lights, the sole purpose of each one to tell him that he'd fogotten to select an output tray--that sent the cold blue heebies down to his feet, through the soles of his boots, and into the basement boiler room."

Larry's most recent stories and poems have appeared in The First Heroes, edited by Turtledove and Doyle, Abyss & Apex, and Light. He lives in Tucson with his wife, Janni Lee Simner.

He has a Pretty Good Home Page, a Pretty Good LiveJournal, and would like you to know the Straight Dope about his subject matter.

Larry sent this answer when I asked what his story is about:

"'Paul Bunyan and the Photocopier' is about how capitalism attempts to harness the mythic to its own purposes, while the folk process continues to liberate it. Well, you kinda have to squint past Mazy to see the last part. Babe made me write that, and having a Big Blue Ox whuffling over your shoulder can be mighty persuasive."

Thanks, Larry Hammer!

Please consider subcribing to Say... via PayPal--just click the "subscribe" link appropriate to your nation of residence in the righthand column.

One night only

Sorry to have dropped off the pace a bit this week. As noted earlier, June's got a lot of activitization, but here's a couple of quick things.

First, again, if you wanna, come to this tonight.

Second, here's me doing you a favor. Karen Joy Fowler came to our town last night and you should check this schedule to see if she's coming to your town, too, 'cause going to see Karen Joy Fowler is a very rewarding thing to do.

Update: The fabulous Erin Keane, High Queen and Supreme Hacker DreadKnight of the InKy Reading series, points out that tonight's Strange Fiction reading is a pick of the Louisville Courier-Journal's "One Great Date" column this week, and a staff pick on the events calendar of Louisville's weekly indie rag, LEO. Thanks, Erin!

Sci-fi World Taken by Storm! Names Dropped Like Hail!

Actually, it's just an interview with me.

That link goes to straight to the interview, which is published in the online version of Apex Digest. A couple of months back Gwenda and I were startled to see a sign beneath a magazine at a local bookstore that read "Locally Produced Science Fiction Magazine!" and it wasn't ours. (Actually we would have been startled to see Say... at this particular bookstore since we haven't dropped off copies there.) We met up with the publisher and his family for a nice lunch and this interview is one result. Another result is a series of upcoming board game steel cage death matches, but those have yet to be scheduled.

Anyway, take a look at Jason Sizemore's magazine, and read that interview! I put something in there especially for you.

Admit it...

You wish you'd thought of this, don't you. (Biggish, loudish video).

Notebook lust

According to Ed, Moleskine now has a line of topbound reporters notebooks. Sweet, sweet notebooks...

"June is bustin' out all over."

I read something the other day about the problem of unattributed quotations on the internet. So, just in case, that subject line is a song lyric (and title, come to think of it) by Hammerstein. From Carousel, which is a pretty quotable musical.

Anyway, I thought I'd take a minute to update all y'all on where I'll be this month (all times are Eastern).

Thursday, June 9th: Karen Joy Fowler is appearing at Joseph-Beth Booksellers at 7 pm right 'chere in Lexington. She'll be talking about her fabulous best selling novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, as it's the current selection the Herald Readers Book Club. That doesn't really have much to do with me, but I'll be in the audience, and so should you if you live within easy driving distance (or even if you live within moderately difficult driving distance, hello Raleigh!). Joseph-Beth Booksellers, 161 Lexington Green Circle, Suite B1, Lexington. 7 pm.

Friday, June 10th: I've mentioned this one before. Mark "Full Unit Hookup" Rudolph, Gwenda "Shaken & Stirred" Bond and Christopher "PayPal Buttons Over There on Your Right" Rowe read "Strange Fiction" at this month's edition of the InKY reading series. The venue is a great bar, The Rudyard Kipling on Oak Street in Louisville. The time is 7 pm. There's a band. And it's a bar. The Rudyard Kipling, 422 W. Oak Street, Louisville. 7 pm-9 pm.

Sunday, June 19th: I'll be joining Michael Williams, Jason Sizemore, and Samuel Travis Clemmons at the Borders on Hurstbourne Lane in Louisville for a panel discussion titled "Why Write Science Fiction & Fantasy?" Details are still developing on this one, and the event may include a signing afterward. Borders Books & Music, 2520 S. Hursbourne Gem Lane (corner of Hurstbourne Parkway and Taylorsville Road). 2 pm-5 pm.

Friday, June 24th: A non-Kentucky appearance! Kelly Link, Maureen McHugh and I will be reading at one of my favorite bookstores, Malaprops in downtown Asheville, North Carolina. Says here that we're "Modern Fabulists." Malaprops, 55 Haywood Street, Asheville. 7 pm.

For the last week of the month, I'll be holed up on a mountain top with eleven of my writing buddies for this year's edition of the Sycamore Hill Writers Conference.

In a few minutes, I'll be mowing the lawn.

Tomorrow, I'll be at my job, shuffling large quantities of papers concerning forklift repair jobs and reminding my mechanics that they're talking to a modern fabulist.

Glamorous, ain't it?

What's it about, Karen M. Roberts?

"Within This Present Time" is just a few pages long, but in it Karen M. Roberts gives us a rich science fiction story populated with some characters you'll not soon forget. Here's the narrator, the quirky, powerful Sereela, considering her unusual system of navigation:

"No time, no time." I flex my fingers, tapping from strand to strand. "A destination. The pink is always friendly, and the yellow is like sailing on a sheet of ice. Blue is intolerable. Spiky, improbable. Blue."

Karen lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two young children. Previous to this, her work has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.

I asked Karen what "Within This Present Time" is about and she said, "It's a cautionary tale about the hazards of traveling without first consulting Yahoo Maps."

The story appears in Say...have you heard this one? and you can read it by subscribing now (just look for the PayPal buttons on the right side of this page, or e-mail cvrowe at gmail dot com for details). Thanks, Karen M. Roberts!

Not a WisCon report!

So, reports and photos and "technorati tags" about the big goings on up in Madison this past weekend abound all over the place. I invite you to go look at all of them and be envious if you weren't there and a little teary eyed if you were. That's all I'm doing on WisCon.

The "what's it about?" mini-features will ramp back up in this space tomorrow, in celebration of the newly physically extant Say...

Other upcoming blog posts will cover our reading next week in Louisville, the Sycamore Hill Writing Conference, news about the next issue of Say... and details about my new teaching gig (sneak preview: I'll be leading a class on writing speculative fiction short stories at Lexington's Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning starting in September).

It only looks like content!

Humor is contextual...

...and a lot of y'all won't be familiar with the context for this joke. Feel sorry for those of us who are.

But, without further ado, wacka wacka wacka!

What do you get when you cross a coelacanth with an ostrich?

A living fossil with its head buried in the sand!

Thank you! Thank you!

What's it about, David J. Schwartz?

The woman in the traffic copter, the sales rep, the anthropomorphic tortoises who staff the toll booths at exit 46, QTYPY22. These are some of the people around you while you're happily stuck in the traffic of David J. Schwartz's poem, "Jam."

Here's a few lines:

He's got accounts
from N'Orleans to Kalamazoo,
Bowling Green to Boulder.
He's thinking about the
snowplow in the next lane.
He wants it all to be over.

David J. Schwartz's fiction has been appearing on the backs of subway posters for nearly seventy years now, which has led to speculation that he is either a sandhog, a rat, or an electrical conduit. The truth is far more terrifying. Recently his fiction has appeared in more reputable publications such as Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Talebones and The Third Alternative.

David keeps a web journal called Mumble Herder. You can read some of his work online, such as Iron Ankles at Strange Horizons and The Colossus Vignettes at The Fortean Bureau.

When I asked him what this poem is about, David elected to answer with nothing less than the truth, unvarnished and unadorned. The poem, he said, is:

"[a] series of human interest pieces written for the short-lived cable news channel Spoken Word News. The anchors recited their copy from stools in a smoky bar while a trio of local high school kids played wank jazz in the background. All the reporters were required to wear berets and drink vermouth. My beat was Interstate 13, which runs between Zirma and Palomar. Interesting side note: the head meteorologist for SWN was a malevolent spirit from the lower planes who delivered the forecast in limerick form. It needed bodies to inhabit, though, so we went through a lot of on-camera temps. After the network folded it went back to its old job at Fox News."

"Jam" appears in the new 'zine, Say...have you heard this one? which you can purchase via the PayPal links at the right. Thanks, David J. Schwartz!

Any day on a bike...

...is a good day.

Yesterday morning Gwenda and I met up with our friends Nathalie the actress and Bill the conductor for the Bike Lexington event I mentioned a couple of days ago. We rode our hybrid Treks, while they were on their very sweet tandem that even the local hammerheads and bike shop guys were drooling over. It was a good ride, a lot of fun for everyone except that we eventually discovered that the reason that Gwenda couldn't really get going was that her rear brake was engaged and dragging for the first five or six miles. "Hey, that's just like what happened to Lance Armstrong on the Col du Telegraphe/Col du Galibier double climb in Stage Eight of the 2003 Tour," you say. Which is funny, reader, because that's exactly what I said.

It was all made up for, though, by the fact that in the raffle after the ride, Gwenda won a new bike! Actually, they just gave her a coupon, which worked out great since the sponsor of that particular giveaway was the other very cool Local Bike Shop we frequent, and Wendy (one of the owners) told us to just come out to the shop and Gwenda could pick the color and style herself (I refrain here from pointing out that it did not turn out to be me who made this a six bike household, or that I still think we need mountain bikes). Oh, and Nathalie won a pair of cool cycling sunglasses--pretty good luck for our group given that there were several hundred people there.

Then we rode around the corner for brunch at Alfalfa's, then Bill and Nathalie wanted to check out the sales at Pedal Power, then we went to our main LBS, Scheller's, so they could fix Gwenda's brake, then we went to a tasting at Wines on Vine, then finally we rode home. After I mowed the lawn, we went out to Pedal the Planet to pick up G's new cruiser, a Phat Sea Breeze in aqua that I'm sure she'll post pix of later, then home to watch yesterday's epic Giro d'Italia stage.

After all that, I spent a few hours laying out a special limited edition chapbook for Gwenda, Scott Westerfeld, Justine Larbalestier and Ysabeau Wilce. They're going to be giving away one copy of it at their reading next weekend at WisCon, and since we're only producing six, that'll be a rare prize indeed. It contains a short story by Ysabeau and the first chapters of upcoming novels by G, Scott and Justine. The swank cover for "Pretty Magic Butlers of Roanoke" is by the same mad and madly skilled rock goddess that did the cover for the latest issue of Say...

Speaking of WisCon readings, I suppose I should now write something for the one I'm doing. Any ideas?

All afire, all atwirl

1. The person (or persons) who passed the baton to you.

Shezah mah wife now!

2. Total volume of music files on your computer.

Whatever the total volume of the songs you can download from Lipkandy is. Ask, and it shall be given to you.

3. The title and artist of the last CD you bought.

Um. Um. The last Mountain Goats record, maybe? Gwenda buys the music.

4. Song playing at the moment of writing.

Nada. But the last music I heard was the the score behind the trailer for the Narnia movie that I just downloaded. December 9th, baby!

5. Five songs you have been listening to of late (or all-time favorites, or particularly personally meaningful songs)

"Tour de France Etape 1," Kraftwerk
"I Ain't Ever Satisfied," Steve Earle
"I'll Fly Away," traditional (preferred version by the Rich Family)
"Goin' Back to Harlan," Emmy Lou Harris
"Shower Medley," Christopher Rowe


6. The five people to whom you will 'pass the musical baton.'

Alice B. Toklas
Professor Moriarty
R5-D4
The First Slayer
The Pirate Jean Lafitte

Bicycling Entry! (With Gilmore Girls tie-in)

Because it's been too long...cycling links!

First of all, for those of you who follow the Gilmore Girls and the apres Gilmore Girls discussions over at Shaken & Stirred, you should know that the bicycle "race" that was a feature of the season finale Tuesday night was a nod to the real deal Tour of Connecticut, one of the bigger stage races on the domestic cycling scene. The real race starts today with a 70 kilometer crit in New Haven. In cycling, as opposed to writing, crit is short for "criterium," the fast, twisty, spectator-friendly circuit races that are the backbone of US competitive cycling.

One of the many domestic pro squads competing in Connecticut over the next few days is Team Subway. I mention that only because one of their riders, Nate Cornelius, actually works at our LBS. More vocab! The LBS is your Local Bike Shop, and the excellent one that Gwenda and I use is Scheller's. (So, New Havenites--and I'm looking at you, Taaffe--head out to the race and whenever you see a guy in a Subway kit zoom by yell "Go Nate! Lexington represent!" Hopefully that won't cause a wreck).

Bringing it down from the heady heights of Division III pro cycling to what you can do in your town, check this out. Our fair city is hosting their annual Bike Lexington event, at which ten miles of city streets are closed down and hundreds of people like Miss G and I get to mosey 'round the town velocipedical like. Helmets are required, but a local sponsor is giving away 500 for free before the start. How cool is that?

And finally, it would be an absolute shame if those of you who have the technology didn't take a few minutes to check out the coverage of the Giro d'Italia on OLN this weekend. Yesterday's initial mountain stage was absolutely breathtaking--the Dolomites are beautiful, and with the new Pro Tour structure in place, this race is the most competitive it's been in years. (OLN's also taping in Connecticut and will broadcast a highlights show of that race on June 5th.)

Stay tuned here for a few more "What's it about" featurettes and maybe even some stuff about all the new sci fi that's getting composed up in this joint.

What's it about, E. L. Chen?

What's it about, Janni Lee Simner?

"Practical Villainy," Janni Lee Simner's instructional tale of life on the other side of the fairy tale, is one of the highlights of Say...have you heard this one?

The narrator explains himself:

"The first thing I want you to know is that I drowned those kittens for a reason. Villains rarely do anything without purpose, and I'm no exception..."

Janni tells us that her story is about "the challenges of being a single parent, and also the proper use of sinister eye patches."

She's published more than 30 short stories, including recent appearances in Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales, Cricket magazine, and on the labels of Story House's coffee cans. Her next novel, Tiernay West, Professional Adventurer, will be published by Holiday House. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband, Larry Hammer.

Janni keeps a LiveJournal called Desert Dispatches and a website devoted to her writing. She also has a line on a supplier of sinister eye patches.

Thanks, Janni Lee Simner!

By now you know to look over to the right for the PayPal buttons you need to subscribe to Say..., right?

We have a winner...

The "My Day Job Destroys My Will and Soul at a Faster Rate than Your Day Job Destroys Yours" contest was fought out on the green playing fields of the UnCommonwealth comments section over three hard days. What we lacked in quantity of entrants we more than made up in quality, as what I'd long suspected was proven: y'all are some miserable people.

But none of you more miserable than one Scott, who wrote:

I had a job in a lead soldier factory. There were big hot machines that spewed out rings of lead soldiers. I was a "picker," who had to pick off the little soldiers from these rings and trim the "flash" (molten lead that has leaked into the mold joins) from them. This was a highly stupid task--repititious, boring, and the whole while I was breathing lead fumes. But the soul-destroying (as opposed to lung-destroying) part was that ocassionally at the end of 1000 or so soldiers, I would realize that the suspiciously similiar bit of flash I had just trimmed from all those lame-ass hats of the Prussian Fucking Light Guard was in fact a FEATHER.

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THERE! Didn't I KNOW that the Prussian Fucking Light Guard had feathers on their hats?

I had accomplished nothing. My lungs had been coated with lead for nothing. The men who ran the melting machines hated me, for they had accomplished nothing. And all those steadfast little tin soldiers would all be dumped back into the big garbage can to be remelted, never to make a little boy smile.

This happened quite regularly.

Scott, if you're still with us, please drop me an e-mail with your address so I can send you your fabulous prize.

What's it about, Craig Gidney?

The first thing you'll come to when you begin paging through Say...have you heard this one? (after the TOC and traditional informative front matter, of course) is a story called "The Safety of Thorns." Writer Craig Gidney rings some changes on an old story when a young man in the American south considers a deal with, well, with a person who looks like this:

"His fingernails were black and slightly curved. He was crowned with a black silk top hat that boasted a white feather. There was no mistaking him. His skin was as black as tar, a color that glistened, but did not reflect."

Craig lives and works in Washington, DC. Previous stories by him have appeared in Riprap and Spoonfed. He keeps a LiveJournal called Treasure Hiding, helps illuminate the post industrial underground with music reviews at Heathen Harvest, and writes articles like this one about Tanith Lee.

As I did the other contributors to the 'zine, I asked Craig what his piece was about. He replied, "It's a story about love and loyalty. About rebellion and futility. It's an homage to Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, Angela Carter, and Tanith Lee. It's about the safety of thorns."

Thanks, Craig Gidney!

To subscribe, please find the PayPal buttons to the right.

The Fountain Award

The second annual Fountain Award, given to a "speculative short story of exceptional quality" has been awarded by the Speculative Literature Foundation. This year's winner is Jeffrey Ford for his "The Annals of Eelin-Ok," a great story from last year's best anthology, The Faery Reel.

The jurors also published a short list of honorable mentions, and the list of stories, publications and writers included make up a pretty good snapshot of where the exciting work is in genre fiction these days, I think. Of special note on that short list is David J. Schwartz's "The Lethe Man" from the last issue of Say...

Congratulations to Jeff and Dave, and to all the other finalists. Go read all about it.

Saturday this 'n' thatz

• The lovely and talented Erin Keane has put up a page with all the details about the June edition of the InKY Reading Series, where I'll be a participant, along with Gwenda Bond and Mark Rudolph.

• Love your day job? I didn't think so. There's still time to scroll down to the next entry and play My Day Job Destroys My Will and Soul at a Faster Rate Than Your Day Job Destroys Yours! Looks like the first few entries are all by men. I guess that means any women who read this have enjoyed fair, supportive environments throughout their working lives, just like Anne Coulter always says.

• This morning has been a lot of fun, because digital printing is breezy easy and the internet always works. The super-cool and talented Melissa Mas, who designed the cover for Say... #5, managed to beat Adobe Illustrator into submission long enough to get her files burned onto a cd which was in turn couriered to us here at the Fortress of Words under cover of darkness.
  

Then it was a simple matter of typing a few commands and hey presto! Everything the printer will need to produce our stylish 'zine was on their computron machines down there in Tennessee. Yep, that's what happened. Nothing at all involving the downloading and discarding of four GUI ftp applications for OSX occurred. The printers servers couldn't possibly have a conflict with the OSX built-in ftp client, either, right? Surely nothing so complicated as uploading the files to the fortressofwords.com server hosted on the South Island of New Zealand could have been required, could it? A web bunny in Raleigh didn't have to be rousted out of bed to move the files from New Zealand first to a UNIX box in Charlotte then finally to the printer in Nashville, did he? Surely not!

It'll all be worth it, readers. I know you're tired of me reminding you about those "subscribe now" buttons at right, but it don't cost nothing to read me reminding, and it won't cost much to get to read this:

• 

It's time to play!

Hey everybody! It's time to play My Day Job Destroys My Will and Soul at a Faster Rate Than Your Day Job Destroys Yours!

The playing field is defined as the comments of this blog post. The big prize is a copy of the next issue of Say... if you're not a subscriber, and a one issue extension of your subscription if you are. Winner will seemingly be determined by a whim of the contest organizer. The little (indeed) prize is the knowledge that you have somehow found the strength to grimly soldier on.

(Um, this is for fun. If you work at an animal shelter or for a Republican administration or something, use your old job).

Entries should be formatted in a structure parallel to that of the first entry, unless you don't like that format, in which case entries must be formatted in a structure more clever than that of the first entry. If there are zero comments when you read this post, congratulations! That means you've been chosen to post the first entry.

Contest closes when contest administrator wakes up and checks the internet on Sunday morning, so get those entries in!

What's it about, Sonya Taaffe?

"White Shadows," Sonya Taaffe's tale of a mysterious girl named Fetch, begins on page 52 of Say...have you heard this one?

Sonya describes the story's central character:

"Her hair was white as flour, opaque as though powdered, and her skin had the solid pallor of chalk. Only her eyes had color; they consumed her face, vivid as a snowman's chunks of coal, and did not blink often. If she had been at all given to introspection, it might have made her smile: laquered ivory shadow, blanched past albino, and she never stood out in a crowd. She did not look inward..."

In her biographical notes, Sonya reminds us that she's been here before, as she's contributed to three earlier issues of Say... She's also seen work in Realms of Fantasy and Flytrap. She has two books forthcoming this year from Prime Books: Singing Innocence and Experience collects fiction, while Postcards from the Province of Hyphens offers many of the best poems of this Rhysling Award winning poet.

She keeps an online journal called Myth Happens, is a contributing editor to Not One of Us, and was recently interviewed by Geoffrey H. Goodwin at Bookslut.

I asked Sonya what her story was about, and she replied with this exchange from George Gershwin's Crazy for You.

"Look, I'm depressed."
"Oh, you're depressed? I'm just not myself today..."

Thanks, Sonya Taaffe!

See earlier entries here and here for subscription information, or find the PayPal links at right.

Pretty pretty

Hey, somebody's been refurbishing my blog. I like it. You'll like it too when I continue the series of posts I started last night highlighting individual contributors to the new issue of Say..., because I'll no longer have to paste in those PayPal buttons. It's all about the art from here on out, baby, and commercial concerns are relegated to the sidebar. Over to the right. Down towards the bottom. See? Right down there.

What's it about, Peg Duthie?

On page 21 of Say...have you heard this one?, you'll find a poem by Peg Duthie entitled "The nty-nth Coming." Here's a taste:


Now refusing to race toward revelations—
no longer eager, evidence having evaporated
faster than the foam of fragile faith—
no matter how tantalizing, how true-seeming—
we've heard it before, and it's hell to behold
this mane of absence mightier than Abaddon—

When I asked Peg for a biography, she wrote simply that she works as a calligrapher and copyeditor in Nashville, Tennessee. You can find out more at her professional website, NashPanache, or by reading her LiveJournal, chrysanthemum.

Peg's had several poems published at the No Tell Motel website; here's one called "Journey's End."

I asked Peg what "The nty-nth Coming" is about. Her answer?

"Slouching towards a slug of single malt Scotch."

You can read Peg's poem in its entirety, along with stories, book reviews, a comic and another poem, by subscribing to Say... today.

Despite what the buttons read, you don't have to have a PayPal account. Just click the button appropriate to your country of residence and you'll be able to use your credit card. Thanks readers, and thanks, Peg Duthie!

In the United States:





In Canada:





In the rest of the world:

Authentic Blog Entry!

This is the real deal, right here folks. I'm going to point to an entry on somebody else's blog, which itself consists of a link to and extracts from an article at still a third site, then add a pithy sentence designed to be the equivalent of me standing there nodding my head and saying "So true." With links!

So, check out this entry over at the Conversational Reading blog. Nothing in the article under discussion quite so quotable as Ben's observation that the literary world is shaking off "the long cold sleep of realism," but still pretty interesting.

Man, I am getting this stuff figured out.

PayPal:

Okay, after being mocked by a Canadian, I've decided to try to figure out if I can add little buttons so that interested folks can subscribe to Say... from this journal for now, until the fortressofwords.com site goes live anyway.

If I'm doing this right, this should be a button that lets domestic subscribers send ten bucks for a two issue subscription:

This should be a button that lets Canadians, even mocking Canadians, send eleven bucks for a two issue subscription:

And this last one is for people in the rest of the world who'll need to send twelve bucks for a two issue subscription. In all cases, I'm using "bucks" to mean "US dollars."

Theoretically there'll be a place for you to enter your address and all that stuff. Let me know if it doesn't work. If it does work then I suppose I'll know by getting messages from PayPal.

Once Gwenda is up and around I'll have her figure out how to put these buttons over on the side so they won't scroll down off the page as I continue my white hot pace of blog updating.

Happy Mother's Day!