Agent News!

Earlier this year, I began querying my second novel, Bone Arrow.

I love this book. I worked my tail off on this book.

Even so.

Querying felt like this:

I tried to be compelling:

I waited a bunch.

My friends kept me going, sometimes by sending funny links, sometimes by threatening me with poetry. There’s no way to properly express how thankful I am for you all. Nicole, Kelly, Sara, Chris, Jim, Debra, Greg, Oz, Jon, Alex, Natalie, Ben, Amy, Amy, Beth, Raq, A.C., Eugene, Doug, Wayne, Lou, Cath, Sandra, Lauren, Siobhan, Sue and Chris, and especially Tom and the Urchin – you guys. I can’t even begin to list the ways you helped. Thank you so much.

Because you know what?

It was worth it.

Today, I went to New York to meet the people who have a lot of lovely things to say about this book I love so much. And they’re awesome.

It’s still sinking in. So I’m going to type it out and then it will sink in some more.

I’m truly excited and honored to be represented by Russell Galen and Rachel Kory of Scovil Galen Gosh Literary.

You can read a short story set in the Bone Arrow universe this summer, in the Impossible Futures anthology.

If you could hear the soundtrack to this post, it would sound like:

or possibly (this is for you, Liz):

Algorithms Love You and Want You to Be Better!

Baxter, from Rethink Robots

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a seminar on disruptive technology given by the director of Singularity University, Salim Ismail, his colleague David Roberts, and Banning Garrett, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Heads up — this post is going to be higher-geek-octane than usual. Specifically: robots, 3D printers, gene-hacks, exponential technology growth, pristine-algorithm-theory, self-replication, and godmodding. If those words make you clutch your bleeding ears, Cooking the Books is over here, and there are fine fiction links here and here.

Still with me? Sweet.

March – May Reading & TBR

Some recent reads, from novels and anthologies to short stories, opinion, and nonfiction. Plus  reads I’ve already placed on my TBR book stack. What about you? What have you read lately and loved?
 

My Little Shoggoth: Evolution of an Eldritch Horror

“At The Mountains of Madness” Astounding Stories (serialization), 1936.

Say you want to put a little Lovecraftian horror into your life. Let’s take a moment to consider the shoggoth, and how it has evolved in cultural perception.

The shoggoth, in all its glory, is described in Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness”:

… a plastic column of fetid black iridescence… a shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and un-forming as pustules of greenish light.

Readers, shall we see whether 82 years has domesticated the shoggoth? I think we shall… (My latest post is up at Apex Publications for their month of The Weird – check it out!)

Some Funny News:

Over the weekend, when I wasn’t slipping on banana peels at the local coffee shop, I learned that the UFO2 anthology has accepted my story, “How to Feed Your Pyrokinetic Toddler”.

So, despite all of my best attempts at becoming a stodgy stuffed shirt, someone thinks I’m funny. Or at least they think one of my stories is. I’m delighted because this story is completely inappropriate, highly pear-shaped, and was a lot of fun to write.

UFO2 is, like its predecessor, Unidentified Funny Objects, a collection of humorous science fiction and fantasy stories. UFO2 will feature Robert Silverberg, Esther Freisner, Mike Resnick, Ken Liu, Tim Pratt, Jody Lynn Nye, Jim Hines, me, and many more*.

Hey, do you write funny? *Because you could be in this anthology too. The open reading period is May 1 – 31 and submission guidelines are here.

UFO2 is a kickstarter-funded anthology. I’m not going to tell you that you should help back it, because I’m obviously biased. But if you like backing highly entertaining and suspiciously funny anthologies, I’d say this is a good place to start. Plus, then you’ll get to read about the care and feeding of pyrokinetic toddlers. You know, in case that should ever become a thing.

Sheer Awesome: The Impossible Futures Anthology Cover

It’s been spotted in the wild! The incredible Impossible Futures cover for the anthology edited by Tom Easton and Judith K. Dial. Artist Duncan Eagleson is a genius.

I’m ridiculously excited to be a part of this anthology – the TOC is amazing. The anthology includes stories by Rev DiCerto, Paul Di Filippo, Debra Doyle & James D. Macdonald, Duncan Eagleson, Jeff Hecht, Edward M. Lerner, Shariann Lewitt, Jack McDevitt, James Morrow, Mike Resnick, Sarah Smith & Justus Perry, Allen M. Steele, and yours truly.

And this cover? I want it as a poster / t-shirt / wallpaper, you name it. It’s glorious. Well? It is.

Impossible Futures (Fall 2013, Pink Narcissus Press). Edited by Tom Easton and Judith Dial.

Eeeeeee. So. Shiny!

The Sneaky Lathe of Poetry

Lathe: n. A machine in which work is rotated about a horizontal axis and shaped by a fixed tool.

Reblogged from my monthly column at Apex Publishing.

If you are not the sort who enjoys poetry, you might think April (being National Poetry Month) is the season for eye-rolling over enforced rhyme schemes and cringing at public displays of meter.

But even if you skip town for the month, poetic voice still shapes your experience in sneaky ways. The results will catch you unawares.

Take some of your favorite titles, as one example.

Don’t look at the stories (or poems), yet. Just the titles. The ones that carve meaning and sound into the smallest of spaces. Swirsky’s “If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love” (Apex Magazine), and Valentine’s “A Bead of Jasper, Four Small Stones” (Clarkesworld). Go back further: Ellison’s ”I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream.”

Now look deeper. Look at structure. Poetic forms are reshaping fiction, from the brevity of flash to the use of sectioned prose.

Poetry broke from its restraints a long time ago. (Continue reading…)

The My Little Jhereg & Lunch of Locke Lamora Bartender’s Guide

In the worlds of Steven Brust’s My Little Jhereg and Scott Lynch’s Lunch of Locke Lamora, it’s always five o’clock somewhere. To help you keep your own cabinet stocked, Lynch and Brust, along with able assistant Jennifer Melchert, have teamed with Cooking the Books to unearth a very rare copy of: The My Little Jhereg and Lunch of Locke Lamora Bartender’s Guide.

Only one copy exists, and it is of no use trying to bribe any of us for access. None whatsoever.

To whet your appetite, enjoy these ten complementary beverages, on the house.

*

Gratitude: Ghost

Now and then, I interrupt the digital media nattering, writing how-tos, and food-in-fiction posts for some old-fashioned gratitude. It’s that time again.

The mobile of my childhood is 34 feet long and weighs 225 lbs. It spins irreverent between medieval tapestries and Saint-Gauden’s sculpture of Diana, itself originally conceived as a weathervane.

Wind. Movement. Change. Even indoors, Alexander Calder’s Ghost rings the changes each second.

To see it properly, you have to stand beneath it, then run up the stairs, then catch it from the balcony. Ghost requires you to change perspective, even as it changes. The Philadelphia Art Museum guards will not take kindly to your running, but do it anyway.

On its own, Ghost is engineering, and balance. It is wing and wind.

In its current context, Ghost is whimsy and defiance. It interacts, where other art is still.

I am grateful to know it. And grateful to see it from many perspectives – as a child, as an adult, and somewhere on the steps in between.

Strange Horizons Readers’ Poll

Thanks to everyone who voted in the Strange Horizons readers’ poll!  The results are in and there are many winners – from fiction to poetry, from columns to reviews, and articles.  Readers voted the notorious Cooking the Books Roundtable the third most popular article last year – which is pretty amazing.  Thanks again to the authors who participated, Elizabeth Bear, Gregory Frost, Nalo Hopkinson, and Scott Lynch; the great editorial team at Strange Horizons, and most especially, everyone who read and liked the roundtable.