Category: Uncategorized

The World Fantasy Award – Let’s Make it a Book!

So I’ve seen a lot of discussion about what the redesigned WFC Award ought to look like, and I figured I’d throw out my suggestion:  Let’s make it a book.

It could be an open book, with a different artist each year illustrating the pages (much like the hugo base is different each year).  It could be a closed book, simple and elegant, with information about the year and whatever else where the title would go.  It could be a bunch of books that twirl up in a precarious stack.

Because what writer wouldn’t love to go to WFC and …

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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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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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2014 by the numbers

107 submissions (includes reprints and foreign markets)
31 acceptances (20 original stories, 11 reprints/foreign market)
33 personal rejections
39 form rejections

Submissions-wise, 2014 was an amazing year for me.  I sent out more submissions than any other year, and I had more acceptances this year than in the last 4 years combined.

46500 words written

I don't track daily wordcounts, so to get words written I added up the wordcounts for all my completed drafts.  This includes a couple of co-written stories (and yes, I claimed all the words even though my co-author wrote some), but doesn't …

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Stories in 2014

As I start my year-end frantic reading of short fiction to put together my Nebula nominations, I really like other people's posts reminding me what stories they've had out this year. (I promise myself every year that I will keep up better and not binge read at the end of the year, but do I keep up? NO. I blame other people for writing too much good stuff.) So here is my 2014 roundup post.

My very favorite of my short stories out this year (and, in fact, my favorite of all the things I've ever had published so far) …

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Stories in 2013

I had five stories come out in 2013–a slight decrease from the six I had out in 2012, but definitely not bad given that having a small baby in the house slowed me down somewhat :)

Harmonies of Time (Daily Science Fiction, Jan 1st 2013)

Ten Million Sheets of Paper, All in Black and White (Giganotosaurus, April 2013)

A Crown of Woven Nails (Daily Science Fiction, Aug 26th, 2013)

Elizabeth’s Pirate Army (Fireside Issue #8, December 2013)

The Carnival Was Eaten, All Except the Clown (Electric Velocipede Issue 27)

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