Later this summer I’m going to start with my official SFWA duties and I need to simplify my schedule before then. Step one: Ask someone to help with layout duties for Shimmer.

Job Description: Layout stories to conform to an existing template. Adjust for widows and orphans. Confer with art director on art placement.

Time Requirement: 10-20 hours per issue, quarterly.

Benefits: Exactly what I get. Bio and credit in magazine. Two copies of magazine per issue. Opportunity to hob-nob with talented writers during our conventions parties. Licensed copy of CorelDraw X3 graphic suite. ¹

Skills Required: Some experience with layout preferred, but will train the right person.

Drop me a line or pass this along if you know someone who might be interested.

1. If you make a strong case for moving to a different platform and are willing to do the work to make it happen, then we can talk about another program [↩]

I’m doing the cover design for Realms, the anthology of Clarkesworld Magazine. There is a poll to see which of the three versions people respond to most. Please hop over to the Wyrm Publishing webpage and cast your vote.

Which one do you most want to read?

Cover 1	Cover 2	Cover 3

I read Wax, the second standalone story/chapter in the mosaic novel New Amsterdam by Elizabeth Bear for Subterranean. They’ve just posted the audio files at Subterranean Online

Abigail Irene Garrett drinks too much. She makes scandalous liaisons with inappropriate men, and if in her youth she was a famous beauty, now she is both formidable–and notorious. She is a forensic sorceress, and a dedicated officer of a Crown that does not deserve her loyalty.

She has nothing, but obligations.

Sebastien de Ulloa is the oldest creature she has ever known. He was no longer young at the Christian millennium, and that was nine hundred years ago. He has forgotten his birth-name, his birth-place, and even the year in which he was born, if he ever knew it. But he still remembers the woman who made him immortal.

He has everything, but a reason to live.

In a world where the sun never set on the British Empire, where Holland finally ceded New Amsterdam to the English only during the Napoleonic wars, and where the expansion of the American colonies was halted by the war magic of the Iroquois, they are exiles in the new world–and its only hope for justice.

What a fantastic way to start off 2007. Patrick Swenson just emailed me to say that he’d like to buy “Death Comes but Twice” for issue #35 of Talebones. I’m delighted. Talebones is one of my favorite magazines and I’ve been hankering to get in there.

Happy New Year everyone!

Richard Horton does a summary of the different magazines, and my name actually shows up in his summary of Strange Horizons. I’m all the way at the end under “strong work.” It doesn’t give the title of the story, but since the only one that I’ve sold to Strange Horizons is “Portrait of Ari,” it’s pretty easy to figure out which one he was thinking about. I’m very pleased.

Well. Extremely well. In fact, I think I just impressed my mother who is a fund-raising goddess. I tallied what has come in so far and shared the numbers with Jason. As of this posting, the raffle has made $1828.00. Jason did not get the 200 subscriptions he was looking for, but your raffle ticket purchases made up the difference.

The raffle is scheduled to run through Friday, and I’ll keep it open until then, as promised.

Jason and I have talked about what will happen to any money that comes in from here on. Two things. He’ll be able to raise the writer’s rates. Any remaining funds will provide a safety net for Apex; running a magazine is always a risky business, and Jason has high goals for Apex.

Thanks for making sure the Apex Digest sticks around.

I was ordering a subscription to the Clarkesworld Magazine chapbooks (which look gorgeous) and the order form asks “Who is your favorite author?” This stopped me dead in my tracks. Favorite. I was just having this conversation with my husband last night about The Sparrow. It is the book that I always recommend when people ask me to recommend a book. But it’s not my favorite book. My favorite book is probably Lavender and Old Lace by Myrtle Reed.

This is favorite defined as “a person or thing regarded with special favor or preference” because it’s certainly not the best book I’ve ever read, but it makes me cry everytime and I love it. She wrote in 1902 and it’s a straight ahead romance, with mild fantasy elements, and yes there is purple prose. But the characters are very real and the descriptions are evocative. I mean look at this line, “The faded green shutters blended harmoniously with the greyish white background, and the piazza, which was evidently an unhappy afterthought of the architect, had two or three new shingles on is roof.”

So, favorite author? Orson Scott Card, Mary Doria Russell, Guy Gavriel Kay, Steven Brust, Neil Gaiman, C.S. Lewis…? Lordy. I should just put down Myrtle Reed and confuse the living daylights out of them. I regard all of them with special favor.

I think I’ll go with Steven Brust though, because of three things: I won a interpretive reading competition in college with an excerpt from Brokedown Palace; I had my first fan girl squee! over him; I read The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars whenever I’m creatively constipated and that always gets me over it. I have a special regard for him for that.

So who’s your favorite author?

Gmail has this wonderful feature which shows the first line of an email next to the subject line. This evening I was checking my email and saw something from CICADA (a highly prestigious, professional magazine) which said:

Dear Ms. Kowal: I’m drafting an acceptance letter for “This Little Pig” and w

In a state of excitement I clicked on it to see what came after the “w” but gmail gave me an error message and said it couldn’t perform that function and to try again in a few seconds. I did. It gave me the same error message. By this point I am about ready to gnaw on the keyboard, but still can’t see more than that tantalizing first line. I wait.

I refresh.

I wait some more.

Finally, I realize that there’s a chance that the email went to my Other Hand Productions email address, which forwards to gmail, so I go to that mail box. Behold! There is the email.

Dear Ms. Kowal:

I’m drafting an acceptance letter for “This Little Pig” and want to verify your address. Your ms shows Portland, Oregon, while your SASE has Chattanooga, Tennessee. Which one is your current mailing address?

I’ll look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,

Deborah Vetter
Executive Editor, CRICKET and CICADA

While this isn’t an actual official acceptance, it’s close enough for me to do all kinds of happy dances. I told her that both addresses forward to Reykjavik.

Cicada.

I can’t believe it.

“Mary Robinette Kowal’s Portrait of Ari is a bittersweet tale of a couple, one of whom is perhaps not quite human, and how that fact alters their happy relationship.”

–Rich Horton, Locus

This is a submission for the magazine The First Line. I am required to use the first line they provide, but everything else is up for grabs. Let me know if you’d like to read the rest.

Rampion

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp As the warrior guided his horse back home, she pondered what the future might hold. Sybille had plotted his seduction from the moment he arrived in their village, and now that he rode away, she had a deep longing to call him back. But she did not know his name.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Sybille brushed a strand of her golden hair, still sweat-damp, back from her face. Her hand traced a path down her face to her belly, resting above her womb. Would life quicken there?
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp She turned and went back into the tiny cottage she shared with her husband, Hans. If the warrior chanced to look back, she did not want to be standing in the doorway watching like a girl at a barn dance.