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?
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Raver Bear


Which Dysfunctional Care Bear Are You?
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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?
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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? :.*.:
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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
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(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?
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- 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!