A nice review of Prime Codex, the latest anthology I have a story in, may be found here. It says some very nice things about my story "To the East, a Bright Star." I'm still waiting to get my hands on a copy of the anthology myself, since it just launched about ten days ago, but I've read several of these stories by fellow codexians and can vouch that this anthology is going to be a good read.
I've also recently made a sale to another anthology, for my IGMS short story "To Know All Things That Are In The Earth." Unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot of details about the anthology yet, such as when it's being published or even what the title of the collection is. Watch this space.
Bitterwood
"For the sake of humanity, join in Bitterwood's revolt." - Kirkus Reviews
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Monday, June 4, 2007
rage, jealousy, intrigue, backstabbing, love, hate, mixed emotions, and loss of hope
Rick Novy has just reviewed an advance reading copy of Bitterwood at his blog "Frothing at the Mouth," which is, I must note, a blog name I wish I'd thought of. Check it out.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
ConCarolinas
I spent Friday and Saturday at ConCarolinas in Charlotte. This was the most panel intensive con I've ever attented. I was on 4 back to back panels Friday night, then wound up moderating 4 panels on Saturday (I was scheduled to do 3 of them, and wound up getting drafted for the last when the moderator was unable to attend the con).
Among the highlights of the con were seeing my fellow Codexians Alethea Kontis and Ed Schubert. I hadn't seen Alethea since DragonCon back in August, so it was good to catch up with her. She was there plugging her many projects, including her picture book AlphaOops, the anthology she coedited Elemental, the books currently being published by her small press Nyx Books, and, of course, her upcoming Dark Hunter guide. Ed was there promoting his work on Intergalactic Medicine show and pulled off the most impressive feat of writing I've witnessed in many years.
Ed was on the panel I had to moderate at the last second, a panel called the "Quick Write," where teams of writers have only 7 and a half minutes to write an entire short story. Ed's team consisted of Steve Cross and an audience member (who's name I didn't write down, alas). The challenge was to write a story using randomly generated prompts from the audience... and the prompt's turned out to be Napoleon, Kuala Lampoor (I'm sure I just misspelled that), an inkpen... and when I asked and audience member for a genre, he said, "musical." The team rose to the challenge, with Ed writing the ending, and managing to write actual song lyrics to bring the story to a close. I didn't write down the lyrics, alas, so I can't repeat them here, but the entire room was laughing so hard it really doesn't matter.
Of course, the in the first round the other team also knocked my socks off. It consisted of Robert Buettner, Glenda Finkelstein, and Debra Killeen. In the first round, they wrote a story about a scientist who is given a cardboard box and opens it to find a recently killed baby t-rex head inside. I've attended several quick-writes at various cons, and this was definitely the most professional sounding story I've ever seen produced in seven minutes. The amazing thing was that, for three writers, I couldn't tell where one writer's work ended and the next's began. I picked up a copy of Robert Buettner's first novel, Orphanage, and I'm looking forward to checking it out.
I also wound up on two science panels with Stephen Euin Cobb, host of the podcast "The Future and You." The two panels sort of blended together as we discussed such exotic concepts as transhumanism (which I'll loosely describe as the theory of what humans will be once they are no longer human), how to plausibly travel outside the solar system without falling back on any exotic physics like warp drives or hyperspace, and how science may be becoming indistiguishable from magic for a majority of people.
I feel a little guilty about skipping out on the Sunday part of the con. I planned to only stay Friday night so I could save money on a Saturday night hotel room. Ah well. Now I know. Next year, I'll budget the extra time and cash to get the full con experience.
Among the highlights of the con were seeing my fellow Codexians Alethea Kontis and Ed Schubert. I hadn't seen Alethea since DragonCon back in August, so it was good to catch up with her. She was there plugging her many projects, including her picture book AlphaOops, the anthology she coedited Elemental, the books currently being published by her small press Nyx Books, and, of course, her upcoming Dark Hunter guide. Ed was there promoting his work on Intergalactic Medicine show and pulled off the most impressive feat of writing I've witnessed in many years.
Ed was on the panel I had to moderate at the last second, a panel called the "Quick Write," where teams of writers have only 7 and a half minutes to write an entire short story. Ed's team consisted of Steve Cross and an audience member (who's name I didn't write down, alas). The challenge was to write a story using randomly generated prompts from the audience... and the prompt's turned out to be Napoleon, Kuala Lampoor (I'm sure I just misspelled that), an inkpen... and when I asked and audience member for a genre, he said, "musical." The team rose to the challenge, with Ed writing the ending, and managing to write actual song lyrics to bring the story to a close. I didn't write down the lyrics, alas, so I can't repeat them here, but the entire room was laughing so hard it really doesn't matter.
Of course, the in the first round the other team also knocked my socks off. It consisted of Robert Buettner, Glenda Finkelstein, and Debra Killeen. In the first round, they wrote a story about a scientist who is given a cardboard box and opens it to find a recently killed baby t-rex head inside. I've attended several quick-writes at various cons, and this was definitely the most professional sounding story I've ever seen produced in seven minutes. The amazing thing was that, for three writers, I couldn't tell where one writer's work ended and the next's began. I picked up a copy of Robert Buettner's first novel, Orphanage, and I'm looking forward to checking it out.
I also wound up on two science panels with Stephen Euin Cobb, host of the podcast "The Future and You." The two panels sort of blended together as we discussed such exotic concepts as transhumanism (which I'll loosely describe as the theory of what humans will be once they are no longer human), how to plausibly travel outside the solar system without falling back on any exotic physics like warp drives or hyperspace, and how science may be becoming indistiguishable from magic for a majority of people.
I feel a little guilty about skipping out on the Sunday part of the con. I planned to only stay Friday night so I could save money on a Saturday night hotel room. Ah well. Now I know. Next year, I'll budget the extra time and cash to get the full con experience.
Monday, May 21, 2007
Another blog review
The latest blog review of Bitterwood may be found at Nancy Fulda's Live Journal.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
If you just can't wait for July....
I just discovered two ARC's of Bitterwood for sale on E-Bay. These are the uncorrected review copies the publisher sends out, so they still have all the typos and the paragraph where I slip up and call my protagonist "Sparky" for a whole page instead of "Bitterwood." I don't frequently troll around on E-Bay, but I feel like finding my words available there is another small milestone in my writing career. It's similar to the wierd satisfaction I felt when I found a copy of "Nobody Gets the Girl" for sale at the local library used book sale and bought it for fifty cents. The author in me thinks, "Fifty cents? That's all?" while the shopper in me thinks, "Wow, what a bargain!"
ConCarolina's
I'm going to be a guest at ConCarolinas in a few weeks, June 1-3. This is in Charlotte, NC and if you're in the area the "Geek Comedy Tour" is going to be performing and is well worth the price of admission. I saw them at Ravencon and they were great. Fellow Codexian's Alethea Kontis and Ed Schubert will be there, as well, at least on Saturday. Hope I see you there!
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
When Gravity Fails: Bitterwood Gets Publishers Weekly Starred Review
When Gravity Fails: Bitterwood Gets Publishers Weekly Starred Review
A very nice review indeed, even if they did get the name of one my characters wrong. For the record, the king's brother is named Blasphet, not Blasphiel.
A very nice review indeed, even if they did get the name of one my characters wrong. For the record, the king's brother is named Blasphet, not Blasphiel.
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