Forgive me for squeeing all over myself but I’ve been reading Asimov’s since I was a teen and I just had just had the dream experience. I went into the bookstore and bought a copy of the magazine with my name on the cover. My name. On the cover of Asimov’s. It’s my first sale to the magazine, which is cool enough but didn’t know until I went in that I’d made the cover.

And then! I got home tonight and Lois Tilton at IROSF reviewed the August Asimov’s today. She gave my story, “The Consciousness Problem” a RECOMMENDED.

This is a poignant and sensitive look at problems of identity and relationships, as well as scientific ethics. Elise’s mental lapses are particularly well done. The characters have clearly not thought through the implications of their project.

Swooning. I’m swooning here.

Subterranean is running a 50% off sale and one of the titles is my collection “Scenting the Dark and Other Stories.”

We’ve been receiving a ton of requests that we run one of our 50% off sales, which we haven’t done in quite some time. Tim and I have carved a little time out of the SubPress schedule to handle the increased level of orders that usually accompanies one of these sales, so here goes. The rules are simple:

1. The special runs until the end of the day July 3, 2009.

2. You must buy at least 5 different titles to qualify for the sale prices. There is no the maximum number of titles you may order.

3. You may buy only one copy of a given title.

4. Your shopping cart total and automatic email confirmation won’t reflect the sale price. Don’t worry, we’ll apply the proper discount when processing your order.

5. If you’re using PayPal, do NOT go through our site. Please email us for an invoice.

6. Please note that only the titles listed below are part of the sale, and only editions with cover prices of $150 or less are included.

7. We’re not able to offer retroactive discounts on titles, or combine this special with any other coupons, specials, or savings certificates.

via Subterranean Press » Blog Archive » 50% Off Sale on SubPress Forthcoming Titles..

Friday, I turned in the full outline for Glamour in Glass, the sequel to Shades of Milk and Honey. I wrote it differently than I’ve done the outlines for the other novels, which tended to be linear.

This time, I set down the scenes/chapters that I knew had to be there — about fifteen — and then filled in the spaces around them with the pieces that I needed in order to get from point to point.  Actually, I think I’ve done that unconciously before in that I’d add things to outlines after I started writing.  I expect some flexing will happen with this one too, but it feels more solid than other outlines have.

It might also be a product of writing an outline to make sense to someone besides me.  For myself, I only need the line, “Interesting scene with local characters,” to remind myself that for pacing I’ll need a comic scene in a certain place. But it’s  almost meaningless to someone else so I fleshed those out.

Granted, one chapter summary does consist of a single word and an exclamation point, but, you know, there still have to be some details I get to discover as I’m writing it.

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Hey come down to the KGB bar tonight at 7:00 pm for the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series to hear Brian Francis Slattery and me read.

As an added enticement, I’m including a very short monologue with a puppet.  Brian is bringing a bass, a violinist and fiction! Should be fun tonight.

If you are looking for a YA novel, or something rich and plummy to read on your own, may I recommend, Catherynne M. Valente’s new online novel, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland.

Chapter 1: Exeunt, on a Leopard

Once upon a time, a girl named September grew very tired indeed of her father’s house, where she washed the same pink and yellow teacups and matching gravy boats every day, slept on the same embroidered pillow, and played with the same small and amiable dog. Because she had been born in May, and because she had a mole on her left cheek, and because her feet were very large and ungainly, the Green Wind took pity on her, and flew to her window one evening just after her eleventh birthday. He was dressed in a green smoking jacket, and a green carriage-driver’s cloak, and green jodhpurs, and green snowshoes. It is very cold above the clouds, in the shanty-towns where the Six Winds live.

One of the things that I love about the sf community is the way it rallies around a member in need.  When Cat posted about financial troubles last week she said, “I didn’t want charity, or something for nothing. I wanted to work, and support my family. I decided that in the world of new media and online literature, I could try to do what I do best: write a novel. I could offer up a book to the world, and try to feed us with it. I wanted it to be free, so that everyone could read it, not locked behind a password. But we needed money—so I posted to my blog and asked my readers to pay whatever they thought it was worth.”

Even without the warm glow you get from helping someone out, this novel looks to be well worth making a contribution.  I’d made a contribution last week and opened chapter one today, just to see. I immediately got sucked in. It’s like Rudyard Kipling decided to write Raggedy Ann in Oz, with Amelia Earhardt thrown in for fun.

I call this my time-traveling Grandma story, which isn’t a spoiler, since the story opens with her standing in a time machine. I based the main character on my own grandmother.

When Patrick Nielsen Hayden bought it for Tor.com, he asked me to change the character’s name. Why? Because her name was Elois, just like my grandma.  The problem, though, is that at the end of H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, he visits the Eloi.  Elois looked like a deliberate play on that, but didn’t go anywhere.  Once he pointed that out, I was only too happy to change the name.

Here’s a teaser of “First Flight.”

Eleanor Louise Jackson stood inside the plain steel box of the time machine. It was about the size of an outhouse, but without a bench or windows. She clutched her cane with one hand and her handbag with the other. It felt like the scan was taking far too long, but she was fairly certain that was her nerves talking.

Her corset made her ribs creak with every breath. She’d expected to hate wearing the thing but there was a certain comfort from having something to support her back and give her a shape more like a woman than a sack of potatoes.

A gust of air puffed around her and the steel box was gone. She stood in a patch of tall grass under an October morning sky. The caravan of scientists, technicians and reporters had vanished from the field where they’d set up camp. Louise inhaled with wonder that the time machine had worked. Assuming that this was 1905, of course - the year of her birth and the bottom limit to her time traveling range. Even with all the preparation for this trip, it baffled her sense of the order of things to be standing there.

My dear friend and literary grandfather, Jay Lake, is celebrating the release of his new novel Green.  There are contests and links to free fiction over on his site.

I’ve been looking forward to this coming out since he first started talking about it.  And hey, there’s a bookstore near me.  Handy, that.

I feel guilty because I haven’t been posting much lately, but at the same time, life has sort of narrowed down into things that aren’t very interesting.  Or, rather, that aren’t very bloggable especially not after the flurry of props and puppetry posts.

Yesterday was fairly low-key, largely because I spent the day hanging out in the kitchen. Maggie would eat a few bites at a time if I was in there, so I hauled a chair in and hooked the computer up.  She eventually ate some White Chunk Tuna in oil with a fair bit of enthusiasm and even had some kibble.

Today, mysteriously, she likes the kibble and not the tuna.  The ways of ailing kitties are mysterious.  The kitchen floor has seven bowls of different food set out to tempt her. It’s a kitty buffet.

My big accomplishment yesterday was finishing the outline for Glamour in Glass, the sequel to Shades of Milk and Honey.  With the help of Michael Livingston, I pounded out some details to make them clearer for people who aren’t in my head.  You know how it goes. “Interesting scene with local characters” makes total sense to me it’s just, um, not particularly clear to the rest of humanity.

I actually like outlines and at some point will post the two versions of the outline for folks to look at. There’s the one that’s meant for me, and there’s the one that’s “unpacked” to make sense for other people.

I sent the outline off to my wonder-agent, Jennifer Jackson
to see what she thinks and spent the rest of the evening hanging out with Maggie and Rob in the kitchen.  Today, Maggie seems to be feeling better, so we are alternating between the kitchen and the sofa.

Really, you can probably look at the picture and know what this week’s column at AMC is about. Women in skimpy armor. I’ll tell you, the longer I looked at this, the more irritated I got. These are supposed to be smart, highly trained warriors but look at what they are wearing. I’d love it if you joined the conversation on this one.

I got home from WisCon last night to a wonderful review of  Clockwork Phoenix 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness, edited by Mike Allen.

Allen finds his groove for this second annual anthology of weird stories, selecting 16 wonderfully evocative, well-written tales. Marie Brennan’s thought-provoking “Once a Goddess” considers the fate of a goddess abruptly returned to mortality. Tanith Lee puts a stunning twist in the story of a morose prince in “The Pain of Glass.” Mary Robinette Kowal’s “At the Edge of Dying” describes a world where magic comes only to those at death’s door. In “Hooves and the Hovelof Abdel Jameela,” Saladin Ahmed tellsof a small village on the edge of a desert, a hermit and a woman who may be a witch. Each story fits neatly alongside the next, and the diversity of topics, perspectives and authors makes this cosmopolitan anthology a winner. (July)

via Fiction - 5/25/2009 - Publishers Weekly. (Scroll to the bottom)

• 01:06 You know… just once, I would like to go to a con without pulling an all-nighter at the theater. See you at Wiscon tomorrow? #
• 04:31 I’m waiting for the bus to the airport. Have I been to bed? Does a 20 minute nap count? #
• 04:38 Today’s shopping list consists of ginger ale, laser and napkins. #
• 06:02 Curses. My flight rescheduling means that I’ll arrive at Wiscon after the writer’s workshop session I’m supposed to be leading. #
• 06:54 On the plane and ready to fall asleep. #
• 14:39 Have arrived at my hotel for Wiscon. Very tempted by the nice soft bed but I’m going to head over to registration. #
• 18:03 Sitting around with Klages, Levine, Monette and Thomas. Wiscon is already fun. #
• 22:37 Just a gentle reminder: Robinette is my middle name, not my maiden name, not my surname. That’s Kowal. #

Sans, twitter. The con is great fun and I’m happy to see people. I’m also so tired I could weep, yet somehow I managed to moderate a 10:30 pm panel without any major mind melts. Thank heavens for the theater instinct which kicks adrenalin in to focus the mind just long enough to get through the “show.” 

And I’m even more thankful that I had very smart panelists in Carrie L. Ferguson, M. J. Hardman and Deepa D. so I didn’t have to do more than ask the occasional question. What was the panel?

Many of us can point to something which we read that changed our lives. Some of us view writing fiction as a political act. This panel will explore the relationship of SF/F to society and culture. Can SF/F change the world in a practical and political way? Is there any occasion when writers of SF/F can justifiably claim it is only entertainment and has no responsibility for commenting on popular culture.

Oh, I also managed to catch up with Erin Cashier, who was in the writing workshop I didn’t get to this morning, and go over her story with her. A hearty thank you to K. Tempest Bradford who stepped in to cover the workshop for me.

Sure, I have to research props for stage, but I also have to research them for fiction too. For instance my upcoming story in Talebones,  is set in England in the 1920s.  I needed to find out if cigarette lighters existed by then.  Yes, but hand held ones were still a couple of years away.

One of my favorite websites, Props, as a great article with a load of links on How to Research Props.  I highly recommend it. In particular, A History of Props: A Timeline of Props and Product Usage.

One of the interesting side effects of having a story nominated for a Hugo is that everyone and their cousin posts reviews of them. So, I haven’t been linking to them because it would just get silly.  One popped up on my feedreader today from Best Science Fiction Stories.

I haven’t run across this site before, but I like the way it’s laid out. It gives a non-spoiler summary, plus trivia about the author, where to find the story and says “if you like this then you’ll like…”

Anyway, I thought it was a nifty site and worth pointing out.

My short story “Evil Robot Monkey,” read by Stephen Eley, appears on Escape Pod today as part of their yearly podcast of Hugo nominees. It first appeared in the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, vol. 2 edited by George Mann.

Sliding his hands over the clay, Sly relished the moisture oozing around his fingers. The clay matted down the hair on the back of his hands making them look almost human. He turned the potter’s wheel with his prehensile feet as he shaped the vase. Pinching the clay between his fingers he lifted the wall of the vase, spinning it higher.

Someone banged on the window of his pen. Sly jumped and then screamed as the vase collapsed under its own weight. He spun and hurled it at the picture window like feces. The clay spattered against the Plexiglas, sliding down the window.

via Escape Pod » EP196: Evil Robot Monkey.

This is the last interview of the 2009 nominees for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. I encourage you to find fiction by all of these authors and read them.

Felix Gilman was born in London in 1974. He holds two degrees in history from Oxford, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, a doctorate in Ludology from the Waldzell School of the Order of Castalia, and certain advanced but curiously non-specific qualifications in modern American poetry from the National University of Zembla.

Also he went to Hogwarts. Why not?

He now lives with his wife Sarah in New York, where he works as a writer and lawyer.

Please don’t ask him for legal advice. He’s not that sort of lawyer, and it doesn’t really work that way.

So what did you do when you were notified about the nomination?
I was on the phone when the email appeared. I wasn’t expecting to be nominated at all, and I hadn’t been paying particularly close attention to the process, so I was completely caught off-guard. I had to hang up and spend some time online trying to work out what being nominated meant in this context. Did it mean shortlisted or just voted for by one or more people? It took me about an hour to cautiously decide this was probably good news, and not in any apparent way a trap.

How long have you been writing?
The current sustained push has lasted since about late 2006.

Where did you get the idea for the great city of Ararat?
I don’t know exactly. I knew I wanted a city, and I knew I wanted it to be very big, and to feel (a) very strange and resistant to explanation and (b) suggestive of hidden depths, and so everything else followed from the premises. Details were stolen from every city I’ve ever been in or read about or seen on TV, and inserted as necessary as I went along.

In 2007, you did an interview with Jeff VanderMeer in which he asked you why you wrote. Among other things, you said, “Ask me again in a year.” Two years later…why do you write?
Bloody-mindedness.

Two years, God. Really?

Is there a definable point when you realized that writing had
changed from a hobby to an avocation?
“Hobby” will do just fine.

What projects are you working on now?
I’m due to get back edits from my editor at Tor on a third book, A History of The Half-Made World, any day now. Clearing the decks for that. It’s not related to the first two books.

What are you currently reading?
Norman Mailer’s Miami and the Siege of Chicago, about the 1968 Democratic and Republican conventions. I don’t know much about most of the figures involved, and 1968’s party politics are so remote and in so many ways inverted from today’s that I really don’t know what he’s talking about half the time, but I enjoy it on the level of a series of portraits of nightmarish grotesques. You could imagine Mervyn Peake illustrating it.

What is it about speculative fiction, in general, that most appeals to you?
The strange, the grotesque, the absurd; the capacity of really strange fantastic fiction to reflect back how odd the actual world is. Also, monsters.