World Fantasy Convention 2015 Recap

This past weekend I was at WFC.  I had a lovely time, meeting many people I formerly only knew online and seeing lots of old friends.  (I would try to list everyone, except that I would inevitably miss someone.)

I also gave a reading, which was well attended despite being in the earliest time slot on the schedule.  I read two stories (“Four Seasons in the Forest of Your Mind from the May/June F&SF, and “Please Approve the Dissertation Research of Angtor” from Unidentified Funny Objects 4).  I also got it into my head that I would sing the Lovecraft …

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Come Find Me at World Fantasy Con!

Here is my schedule for World Fantasy:

Friday 8:30pm Autographing Session in City Center 2A and 2B

Starts at 8:30pm (open to signers at 8:oopm).  Bring me things and I will sign them!  I will also bring a few print magazines to give away to people who stop by and chat with me.

Saturday 10am Reading in Broadway 1

Yes, I have the very first time slot (10 am!) on Saturday for my reading.  I’m hoping people will be awake!  I will have chocolate to give away.  At minimum a dark chocolate and a milk chocolate.  Possibly several kinds of …

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“Betty and the Squelchy Saurus” at Fireside Magazine

My story “Betty and the Squelchy Saurus” is out today at Fireside Magazine, with a beautiful illustration by Galen Dara.  Excerpt:

Betty was hanging wet towels on the clothesline when a faded blue Plymouth Roadking came up the drive. Someone had donated the car to the Six Sisters orphanage back in 1952, and Sister Mary Margaret was the only nun who knew how to drive it.

A new girl got out of the car — maybe five years old, with brown hair and lots of freckles. Skittish little thing, probably terrified …

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Short story collection!

My debut short story collection SEVEN WONDERS OF A ONCE AND FUTURE WORLD & OTHER STORIES is coming out with Fairwood Press in 2016!  It’s available for pre-order here.

The table of contents isn’t finalized yet, but the collection will include between 25 and 35 stories, totaling about 95k words.  It will be a mix of science fiction and fantasy, flash fiction and longer work.  There will be at least one original story.

Want to get an idea of what the collection will be like?  The title story “Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World” …

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“The Little Mermaid of Innsmouth” at Drabblecast

My first ever commissioned story is a mash-up of The Little Mermaid and Lovecraft’s Shadow Over Innsmouth, told from the perspective of a Japanese fish-frog girl.  You can listen (or read) “The Little Mermaid of Innsmouth” over at The Drabblecast:

http://www.drabblecast.org/2015/09/13/drabblecast-370-the-little-mermaid-of-innsmouth/

To go with the story, I wrote a Lovecraftian parody of “Part of Your World,” from Disney’s version of The Little Mermaid. There’s a version of it at the end of the Drabblecast episode linked above, but I did a somewhat cleaner recording of me singing the song, which you can …

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“Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World” at Lightspeed

My 50th published story is now out!  It’s at Lightspeed Magazine, and you can read it for free:

http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/seven-wonders-of-a-once-and-future-world/

(You can also hear the story as a podcast, narrated by Karyn O’Bryant, using the “Listen” button at the above link.)

I sometimes write stories using what I call “flashmash” where I write several interrelated flash stories and mash them together into a longer piece.  In “Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World,” the story is divided into seven parts, each one focusing on a different wonder of the world.  …

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Some Thoughts on Building an Author Website

Last week Sofia Samatar tweeted that authors should have good clean websites, and K. Tempest Bradford has been signal boosting and expanding on that idea.  I’ve had a website since 2007, but seeing all these tweets about the importance of a *good* website made me realize that I was long overdue for a website overhaul.

Before I started building my site, I looked at lots of examples.  A few author websites that I found particularly helpful in getting ideas for content and layout were Mary Robinette Kowal, Cat Rambo, and Ken Liu.  When I was looking at …

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Website: New and Improved!

It’s a lot easier to update an existing website than it is to start over from scratch.   But at some point you start looking at your website from 2007 and wondering if maybe something that isn’t done with html tables might be a good idea.  Probably for most reasonable people, that point was quite a while ago.  But better late than never, right?

The first day of building the new site was immensely frustrating.  WordPress isn’t that hard to learn, but there are a lot of options for themes and widgets and it took a while for me to …

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Armadillocon Schedule!

This weekend is Armadillocon, and I'm going to be there!  I haven't been back to Austin for a few years, and I am really looking forward to seeing some old friends (and meeting new people too, of course!).  Want to find me at the con?  Here's my schedule:

Sa1000F What Sciences Haven't Been Used?
Sat 10:00 AM-11:00 AM Ballroom F
Allen, Ledbetter*, J. Moore, Simmons, Yoachim
It's not all astronomy and physics. Where are the great psychology SF novels? What else should we be seeing?

Sa1100D Learning to Write: Recommended Workshops, …

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