Writer. Scientist. Thoroughly Disappointing Flesh Muppet.
Well, I still haven’t written anything about my trip to the Southern Hemisphere. And since then I went to Denver for MileHiCon 42, and then to Columbus for World Fantasy Convention 2010.
More later — it’s getting late — but for now I’ll simply state on the record that WFC is now my favorite convention. I made some awesome new friends and saw lots of people I don’t get to see nearly enough. Even got to see some folks I hadn’t seen in an extremely long time.
When it has me wishing the traffic jam on the way home had lasted just a little bit longer.
Few books grab me like that. Last year, it was Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, And the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language. This one might have been written for me, I loved it so much.
More recently, with regard to my nonfiction reading, it’s Sam Kean’s The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements. I haven’t finished this one yet, but I like what I’m reading so far. I have high hopes.
…rocks my world. Why haven’t I learned about this wonderfulness before now?
Behind the times as I am, I’ve only just discovered Caro Emerald’s videos on YouTube. I loves me anything that’s steeped in the style of a bygone era. So this and this kind of make me swoon.
She’s like the Michael Jackson of the Netherlands! I’m really not surprised her first album has bested Michael Jackson’s Thriller for the number of weeks on the top of the charts… in the Netherlands.
The October issue of Apex Magazine went live yesterday. I’m delighted, and more than a little honored, to have a story in this issue.
Still Life (A Sexagesimal Fairy Tale) is available online at Apex’s website, and along with the rest of this month’s awesome issue in various ebook formats. (Even if you don’t enjoy my contribution, please consider making a donation or taking out a subscription or purchasing a digital edition of an issue or two, so that Apex can continue to publish awesome short fiction and poetry from the likes of Brenda Stokes Barron, Ekaterina Sedia, Rose Lemberg, and Elizabeth McClellan.)
I am just so dang happy to see this story in a good home with such vaunted company. Editor Catherynne Valente discusses how she came to put this issue together on her blog, here. More thoughts and behind-the-scenes trivia below the cut.
Okay, so, I’ve been gone a while.
No surprises there, since I’m generally pretty awful at keeping my blog up to date. This time, at least, I have an excuse for the long silence— I was fortunate enough to get to spend all of September down in Australia. And generally having the time of my life. (Tasmanian Devils are TEH KYOOT.)
Worldcon made a good excuse for my first trip to the Southern Hemisphere. And I figured that if I was going to travel across the International Date Line for maybe the only time in my life, I ought to make the most of it. Hence the month-long vacation.
Also, the timing worked out very well, because I turned in the manuscript for the third and final Milkweed novel, Necessary Evil, a couple of weeks before I left for Melbourne on August 30 (it was due on my editor’s desk September 1). Which meant that the trip coincided with the first time in over four years when I could enjoy down time—actual, honest-to-goodness down time with no obligations or deadlines pressing on me—and relax and veg out without being stricken with the crippling guilt that I wasn’t working on Milkweed stuff right now. Which is sorta how I’ve spent all of my free time since I started planning the Milkweed Triptych, way back when.
So I spent the month traveling around Australia while not thinking about Marsh, Will, Gretel, Klaus, Eidolons, Enochian, and all the rest. And it was awesome.
I’ll try to say more about my antipodean adventure in upcoming posts. (No promises. Because as we all know, I suck at keeping the blog up to date.) But, while at Worldcon, I did get to sit down with my editor at Tor. So, speaking of Milkweed, some updates below the cut…