Now? The website is live and it has interviews with the narrators about their process in reading the stories.  In particular, I like what LeVar Burton has to say, “Storytelling is storytelling.”

Check out the site, in particular the interviews with Jonathan Frakes, Kate Mulgrew (my narrator!), Wil Wheaton, LeVar Burton, and Gates McFadden are really interesting.

Can you tell I’m looking forward to release day? November 16, the day before our 9th anniversary.  Now if only it were willow or pottery…

Case Study was a great host and we had a full house at the reading. Some of the folks came out to see a specific author, others were patrons of the coffee shop, and some came out to support the magazine.

Our format was that two authors would read and then we’d break for coffee and conversation and then the next two and so on. We recorded the readings and you can listen to them here. It’s about an hour and nine minutes and does not include the coffee breaks.

Strange Horizons readings at Case Study Coffee

Since some of the authors stopped at cliff-hangers, I thought you’d like the opportunity to read the stories we read, which are all available on Strange Horizons.

• Ken Brady – Emergency Claus
• Tina Connolly – On the Eyeball Floor
• Brenda Cooper – The Multiple Universes Poem
• Mary Robinette Kowal – Portrait of Ari
• Jennifer Linnaea – Second-Hand Information
• Tamela Viglione – Triage

I’d also like to encourage you to consider donating to the magazine. Strange Horizons has a staff of about thirty dedicated volunteers, and is funded entirely by donations.

Strange Horizons launched in September 2000 as a venue to showcase a new generation of science fiction and fantasy authors, a diverse range of voices and perspectives. The magazine has published new material every week for the past ten years: fiction, poetry, reviews, articles, columns, and sometimes even art and music. Every issue is available free online.  Stories and poems from Strange Horizons have been reprinted in major anthologies and been shortlisted for major awards, and many of the magazine’s authors have gone on to successful publishing careers.

Then I went up to have lunch with my editor, the Hugo-nominated Liz Gorinsky (have you voted yet?) and my publicist Cassandra Ammerman.  That was fun and was split between talking about business and just shooting the breeze.

Cassie and I took some time to talk about the upcoming publicity for Shades of Milk and Honey. She also read a review that’s coming out in August that made me faint with delight and relief. Sorry, you’ll have to wait a bit on that one.

From there I headed over to visit some friends and then immediately ran into Rose Fox and Josh Jasper with a group of folks having lunch in the park. New York is such a small town.

KGB in the evening was delightful. Man, I have seriously missed the community here. Mind you, I love Portland and it was the right choice to move back but there are definitely things that I miss about NYC.

Today is all about audition prep. I slept unevenly and am sort of rattling around the apartment until it is time to go. My trainer, who is awesome, emailed me with reminders to stretch and do warmups before the audition. Also to drink plenty of water. It’s really nice to feel like people are looking out for me.

Jodi auditioned yesterday. He and I talked through his experience this morning so I have a few more ideas about what to expect when I go in this afternoon. Really though, none of this speculation matters. They’ll walk us through the puppets and talk about what they are looking for when I get there. It’s all a mental trick I’m performing to keep myself calm and focused on the work.

Because really, gnawing my arm off with nerves would not be useful for a puppetry audition. I’ll need that hand.

Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler and Dan Wells are very engaging hosts and made me feel quite welcome. For the first episode, Brandon asked me if there was anything I particularly wanted to talk about.  I said that lately I’ve been talking about how puppetry intersects with my fiction.  So we spent fifteen minutes talking about the four principles of puppetry.

They’ve just posted the podcast, so go give it a listen.

Then, if you are curious, you can go read the Puppetry Manipulation Clinic handout I have over on my puppetry website.

You may download a .pdf in the form of a mini-chapbook, illustrated by me. I do layout the way other people doodle and made this while I was waiting for the announcement to go live.

Or you could listen to me read it. Six minutes of science-fiction.

Evil Robot Monkey, by Mary Robinette Kowal

Edited to add: Andrew Neely very kindly converted the audio to an M4B (iTunes audiobook) version.

Or, you can skip after the cut and read the story right here.

Evil Robot Monkey

by Mary Robinette Kowal

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.

In the courtyard beyond the glass, a group of school kids leapt back, laughing. One of them swung his arms aping Sly crudely. Sly bared his teeth, knowing these people would take it as a grin, but he meant it as a threat. Swinging down from his stool, he crossed his room in three long strides and pressed his dirty hand against the window. Still grinning, he wrote SSA. Outside, the letters would be reversed.

The student’s teacher flushed as red as a female in heat and called the children away from the window. She looked back once as she led them out of the courtyard, so Sly grabbed himself and showed her what he would do if she came into his pen.

Her naked face turned brighter red and she hurried away. When they were gone, Sly rested his head against the glass. The metal in his skull thunked against the window. It wouldn’t be long now, before a handler came to talk to him.

Damn.

He just wanted to make pottery. He loped back to the wheel and sat down again with his back to the window. Kicking the wheel into movement, Sly dropped a new ball of clay in the center and tried to lose himself.

In the corner of his vision, the door to his room snicked open. Sly let the wheel spin to a halt, crumpling the latest vase.

Vern poked his head through. He signed, “You okay?”

Sly shook his head emphatically and pointed at the window.

“Sorry.” Vern’s hands danced. “We should have warned you that they were coming.”

“You should have told them that I was not an animal.”

Vern looked down in submission. “I did. They’re kids.”

“And I’m a chimp. I know.” Sly buried his fingers in the clay to silence his thoughts.

“It was Delilah. She thought you wouldn’t mind because the other chimps didn’t.”

Sly scowled and yanked his hands free. “I’m not like the other chimps.” He pointed to the implant in his head. “Maybe Delilah should have one of these. Seems like she needs help thinking.”

“I’m sorry.” Vern knelt in front of Sly, closer than anyone else would come when he wasn’t sedated. It would be so easy to reach out and snap his neck. “It was a lousy thing to do.”

Sly pushed the clay around on the wheel. Vern was better than the others. He seemed to understand the hellish limbo where Sly lived–too smart to be with other chimps, but too much of an animal to be with humans. Vern was the one who had brought Sly the potter’s wheel which, by the Earth and Trees, Sly loved. Sly looked up and raised his eyebrows. “So what did they think of my show?”

Vern covered his mouth, masking his smile. The man had manners. “The teacher was upset about the ‘evil robot monkey.’”

Sly threw his head back and hooted. Served her right.

“But Delilah thinks you should be disciplined.” Vern, still so close that Sly could reach out and break him, stayed very still. “She wants me to take the clay away since you used it for an anger display.”

Sly’s lips drew back in a grimace built of anger and fear. Rage threatened to blind him, but he held on, clutching the wheel. If he lost it with Vern–rational thought danced out of his reach. Panting, he spun the wheel trying to push his anger into the clay.

The wheel spun. Clay slid between his fingers. Soft. Firm and smooth. The smell of earth lived in his nostrils. He held the world in his hands. Turning, turning, the walls rose around a kernel of anger, subsuming it.

His heart slowed with the wheel and Sly blinked, becoming aware again as if he were slipping out of sleep. The vase on the wheel still seemed to dance with life. Its walls held the shape of the world within them. He passed a finger across the rim.

Vern’s eyes were moist. “Do you want me to put that in the kiln for you?”

Sly nodded.

“I have to take the clay. You understand that, don’t you.”

Sly nodded again staring at his vase. It was beautiful.

Vern scowled. “The woman makes me want to hurl feces.”

Sly snorted at the image, then sobered. “How long before I get it back?”

Vern picked up the bucket of clay next to the wheel. “I don’t know.” He stopped at the door and looked past Sly to the window. “I’m not cleaning your mess. Do you understand me?”

For a moment, rage crawled on his spine, but Vern did not meet his eyes and kept staring at the window. Sly turned.

The vase he had thrown lay on the floor in a pile of clay.

Clay.

“I understand.” He waited until the door closed, then loped over and scooped the clay up. It was not much, but it was enough for now.

Sly sat down at his wheel and began to turn.

END

The audio version of “Evil Robot Monkey” by Mary Robinette Kowal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Based on a work at www.solarisbooks.com.

Ken is one of my dearest friends and he’s also one of my favorite authors, which is a handy combination.  If you’re in the Seattle area, you can head over the the U-bookstore for his signing.   But if that’s too far away and you want a sampling of Scholes, Tor.com has one of his short stories up.

A Weeping Czar Beholds the Fallen Moon by Ken Scholes.

Frederico leaned close to smell the poison on his thirteenth wife’s cold, dead lips. It tickled his nose and he resisted the strong desire to kiss her that suddenly overcame him.

That you might lose yourself from sadness by my lips, my husband and Czar, her open, glassy eyes promised him. He looked away, uncomfortable with her empty, inviting stare.

Behind him, the Minister of the Interior cleared his voice and spoke. “The cabinet feels it would be more stabilizing to consider this an assassination. Jazrel was a most popular wife.”

As a bonus, they have an audio version available as well, read by me.

Um.  Whoa.

The science fiction and fantasy community likes to honour the writers in its ranks, and no honour comes higher for new writers than the John W Campbell award. Previous winners include Orson Scott Card, Stephen Donaldson and Cory Doctorow, so it’s certainly worth watching. This year, Mary Robinette Kowal beat a strong shortlist to scoop the award on the basis of a clutch of well-crafted short stories that showcase her emotional deftness while still telling strange and exhilarating stories in the SF tradition.

Thanks Mr. Walter!  This is an excellent pre-birthday present.

Here, let me offer a party favor!   This is an audio version of “Evil Robot Monkey” from the 2008 edition of the Solaris New Book of Science Fiction.

via Damien Walter on exciting new SF and fantasy writers | Books | guardian.co.uk.

Trip, Trap, Tripping by Mary Robinette Kowal

You can tell that I’ve got some adrenalin going because I’m just flying through the text at the beginning before I catch myself and slow down.

My favorite bit is about at 4:20, when some guy’s cellphone goes off.  I shot him a look and the text of the story obliged me with a totally appropriate phrase.  Very satisfying

Here you go. Six minutes of science-fiction.

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.

The audio version of “Evil Robot Monkey” by Mary Robinette Kowal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Based on a work at www.solarisbooks.com.