"Oh, no. It's dwarves."
The best line I have ever uttered in RP, from night before the last: "Jack, it's a long way to Hell, and there are no milkshakes there."
1) Here in Providence, the weather is slowly warming, and as the temperature rises, so too my mood. Currently, the temperature is 68˚F, and the office window is open.
2) Vince Locke (he who illustrates almost every issue of Sirenia Digest) has begin a fundraising project at indiegogo*, and you must have a look, and I strongly encourage you to lend a hand. After all, this will, among other things, allow you to purchase prints of his wonderful illustrations from the digest!
3) Spooky's very bow-tie anthropologist dad is being honored by the journal Coastal Management with a special issue (Volume 40, Issue 3, 2012), People and the Sea: A Festschrift Dedicated to the Career of Richard Pollnac. You can download the entire text from that link, if you're into the study of mankind's relationship with and reliance on the sea's resources.
4) I haven't thanked everyone for birthday presents. A lot has been happening on my end, and I've been crazy busy, and...I think I also lost a few names. So, keeping that in mind (and because some of the best gifts were sent anonymously), I'm going to settle for a blanket "thank you, you guys rock" sort of expression of gratitude. This year, the gifts truly did help (and, hey, the Amazon wishlist is always there....).
5) Night before last, I finished reading Jason Bradley Thompson's brilliant graphic novel adaptation of Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and Other Stories (Mock Man Press, 2011). Imagine retellings of HPL's most whimsical, Dunsanian tales - "The White Ship," "Celephaïs," "The Strange High House in the Mists," and "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" crossed with Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland. It's that cool. And this beautiful volume was produced via a Kickstarter project. This is exactly the sort of project that Kickstarter exists to make happen. It's not the sort of volume any publisher ever would have taken on, but it's too wonderful not to have happened. If you can possibly find a copy, snap it up.
6) Yesterday, because yesterday I had to begin a new Mars story, as there was no more fitting way for me to honor Ray Bradbury's life, I began "Martian Requiem." I want it to appear in Sirenia Digest #78, but there's no way it'll be done in time. So, I'll be including part of it, as a work in progress, then including the full story when it's done. I only wrote 650 words, between a headache, a phone call to my editor, and the shock of Bradbury's death. Anyway, yes, Sirenia Digest #78 will include the new vignette/story, "Love is Forbidden, We Croak and Howl," another piece on "Zoo" by David T. Kirkpatrick (this is growing into, at the very least, a future chapbook), the in-progress "Martian Requiem," and, also in remembrance, "Bradbury Weather," a novella I did way back in 2004, which a few of you may not have read.
7) If you have not yet ordered Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart, I urge you to do so. It would be great if the limited sold out before publication. I'm starting to feel as if some folks find Lee Moyer's startling, wonderful, sexy cover off-putting, which I don't understand at all (actually, a couple of people have said as much to me). Lee will likely remain my subpress cover artist for the foreseeable future.
And now email, and then back to Mars. Oh, and I hope that by week after next I will have my first ever tattoo, a bit of text on the inside of my left forearm: "There's always a siren, singing you to shipwreck." I'll certainly have it by Readercon 23 in July.
*Wasn't Kickstarter enough, or did indiegogo come first?
1) Here in Providence, the weather is slowly warming, and as the temperature rises, so too my mood. Currently, the temperature is 68˚F, and the office window is open.
2) Vince Locke (he who illustrates almost every issue of Sirenia Digest) has begin a fundraising project at indiegogo*, and you must have a look, and I strongly encourage you to lend a hand. After all, this will, among other things, allow you to purchase prints of his wonderful illustrations from the digest!
3) Spooky's very bow-tie anthropologist dad is being honored by the journal Coastal Management with a special issue (Volume 40, Issue 3, 2012), People and the Sea: A Festschrift Dedicated to the Career of Richard Pollnac. You can download the entire text from that link, if you're into the study of mankind's relationship with and reliance on the sea's resources.
4) I haven't thanked everyone for birthday presents. A lot has been happening on my end, and I've been crazy busy, and...I think I also lost a few names. So, keeping that in mind (and because some of the best gifts were sent anonymously), I'm going to settle for a blanket "thank you, you guys rock" sort of expression of gratitude. This year, the gifts truly did help (and, hey, the Amazon wishlist is always there....).
5) Night before last, I finished reading Jason Bradley Thompson's brilliant graphic novel adaptation of Lovecraft, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and Other Stories (Mock Man Press, 2011). Imagine retellings of HPL's most whimsical, Dunsanian tales - "The White Ship," "Celephaïs," "The Strange High House in the Mists," and "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" crossed with Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland. It's that cool. And this beautiful volume was produced via a Kickstarter project. This is exactly the sort of project that Kickstarter exists to make happen. It's not the sort of volume any publisher ever would have taken on, but it's too wonderful not to have happened. If you can possibly find a copy, snap it up.
6) Yesterday, because yesterday I had to begin a new Mars story, as there was no more fitting way for me to honor Ray Bradbury's life, I began "Martian Requiem." I want it to appear in Sirenia Digest #78, but there's no way it'll be done in time. So, I'll be including part of it, as a work in progress, then including the full story when it's done. I only wrote 650 words, between a headache, a phone call to my editor, and the shock of Bradbury's death. Anyway, yes, Sirenia Digest #78 will include the new vignette/story, "Love is Forbidden, We Croak and Howl," another piece on "Zoo" by David T. Kirkpatrick (this is growing into, at the very least, a future chapbook), the in-progress "Martian Requiem," and, also in remembrance, "Bradbury Weather," a novella I did way back in 2004, which a few of you may not have read.
7) If you have not yet ordered Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart, I urge you to do so. It would be great if the limited sold out before publication. I'm starting to feel as if some folks find Lee Moyer's startling, wonderful, sexy cover off-putting, which I don't understand at all (actually, a couple of people have said as much to me). Lee will likely remain my subpress cover artist for the foreseeable future.
And now email, and then back to Mars. Oh, and I hope that by week after next I will have my first ever tattoo, a bit of text on the inside of my left forearm: "There's always a siren, singing you to shipwreck." I'll certainly have it by Readercon 23 in July.
*Wasn't Kickstarter enough, or did indiegogo come first?