they must need bears

Because I just had to make this list for my own purposes, and I know you're all incredibly confused about exactly WHAT I am writing and when, here's the list of my recent and forthcoming work this year, for your collective convenience.

January: Dust, from Bantam Spectra: a gothic novel. With posthumans and AI angels. In spaaaaaaaaaaaaaace.

In the February Realms of Fantasy: "Hobnoblin Blues," being a not-a-rock-star-elf story in nontrad format.

In Nature for 31 January: "Annie Webber*," a very short story about a Boston coffee shop and its strange assortment of regulars.

In the March Asimov's: "Shoggoths in Bloom*," being an ironical post-Lovecraftian exegesis that explores the adventures following on a black college professor's research into wild shoggoths off the coast of Maine, on the eve of the Second World War.

Published just this week: "Knock On Coffins," which is Shadow Unit episode 2. Available as guiltware on your Internets, which means that you can read it, and also episode 1--Emma Bull's "Breathe"--absolutely without risk and free of charge, and then decide afterwards if you want to cast us a few paltry pennies dollars for our hard and painstaking work, so that we can afford to keep doing it.

Seriously, if you haven't read these two stories, I don't know why, except for maybe in that you hate my stuff, or Emma's stuff, in which case I have no idea why you're reading this journal. This is all about the five of us (Sarah Monette, Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Amanda Downum, and myself) doing some of our absolutely best work within an innovative storytelling framework. In the end, the season will work out to something of an episodic novel, sort of like (we hope) the best of series television. You guys know I am not big into shouting from rooftops how exceptional my work is. But I really think this is something extra-special.

April 13-14: Shadow Unit  episode 5, "Ballistic," which is a massive collaboration involving Emma, Amanda, Sarah, and me. Will hasn't gotten stuck with any of the work yet because he was clever enough to be too busy, but that still may change. (The alert will notice that there are two episodes between "Knock On Coffins" and this one: one is Sarah's "Dexterity" and the other is Will's "A Handful of Dust."

April 29: "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall," in ellen_datlow-edited The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, being a short story in the Promethean Age universe, starring the Genius of Las Vegas and a retired heavyweight champion of the world.

Sometime in April, though the formal release date is May 1: The long-awaited (okay, a year) trade paperback edition of New Amsterdam*, being a mosaic novel concerning the adventures of a forensic sorcerer and a Great Detective at the dawn of the 20th century, in a world somewhat different from our own.

If you want that one, you'll probably want to order it from Sub Press or your local independent bookseller, as Amazon will sit on copies until the official release date.

*despite involving vampires and New York, this book bears no relationship to the TV series of the same name, and the stories predate the TV show by rather a little.

May 11-12 (Mother's Day, an irony that will become plain when you read the piece in question): Shadow Unit episode 7, "Overkill." (The alert will notice that there's an episode between "Ballistic" and this one: It's Emma's "Endgames."

Sometime in Spring: "Your Collar," in Subterranean Magazine. Being another story set in the "Orm the Beautiful" 'verse, this one a little more Victorian in tone, and involving not so much dragons, but more Elgin Marbles and minotaurs.

Sometime in last week of May: The Shadow Unit season finale, which is, no lie, a novel, cowritten by Emma and myself, entitled Refining Fire. I am so excited about this book, you have no idea.

June 3: The mass-market paperback release of Blood & Iron from Roc, the first novel of the Promethean Age cycle. Don't worry. It stands alone. How can you say no to a book about Faerie without a single good guy in it? Also: bonus sociopathic kelpie!

July 1: The trade paperback original release of Ink & Steel from Roc, The Stratford Man Part 1, being the third novel in the Promethean Age cycle. (Book #2, Whiskey & Water, is still available in trade, and as far as I know, there will likely be a MMPB release sometime in 2009.)

The Stratford Man is a massive, enormous, gigantic, obsessively-researched two-volume duology concerning the court of Queen Elizabeth, a trio of somewhat down at the heels poets, Faerie, magic, torture, politics, swordfights, sex, skullduggery, and an angel who was once most dearly lov'd of God.

(You could complete the perfecta and also try out Marie Brennan's Midnight Never Come. It's a Volcano Movie Summer! Only with Elizabethan Fairies!)

August 1: Mass-market paperback re-release of A Companion to Wolves from Tor, the not-your-daddy's-companion-animal-fantasy novel I wrote with Sarah Monette.

August 5: The trade paperback original release of Hell & Earth from Roc, The Stratford Man Part 2. Yep, that's right. Both halves of the duology, a month apart.

September: "Boojum" in the co-VanderMeerian anthology Fast Ships, Black Sails, being a semiLovecraftian deep-space pirate story which I wrote with Sarah Monette.

October 28: Hardcover original release of All the Windwracked Stars from Tor, being the first book in the Edda of Burdens, Norse periapocalyptic noir steampunk cyberfantasy WITH A GIANT TELEPATHIC METAL HORSE! Ahem.

---

Okay, that wasted 25 minutes. And I still haven't written that novel what I'm supposed to be working on...

WIKTORY!

(sort of)

*Partial content available online

I have frosted trees, and should probably be doing yoga. However, the the new day brings a bunch of new information on what of mine you can buy in 2008, thus supporting the Presumptuous Cat (who is currently sharpening her claws on the Wentzel 1887 clapboard chest that serves as my end table).

And so, I give you the list of everything ebear in 2008.

To start off, of course, Dust will be out right after Christmas, or actually right before Christmas, probably, or honestly, probably arriving in bookstores next week sometime although Amazon won't ship it until the 26th. But it's technically a January 2008 title, due to the vagaries of publishing. Seriously, I don't make this stuff up.

Also, available any minute now is Ellen Datlow's horror anthology Inferno, in which I have a short story, "Inelastic Collisions," which is closely related to "Long Cold Day" and "Follow Me Light." They're all Promethean Age stories, believe it or not, although they brush a corner of that world that hasn't much appeared in the novels yet. Maybe someday I'll get to write Pinky Gilman and Matthew Szczegielniak sitting down for lunch. That would be interesting.

January brings John Joseph Adams' reprint anthology Wastelands, which features my story "And the Deep Blue Sea," as the least among its crew. You can of course read that story for free online, but this may be your only chance to own a physical copy. And besides, look at all the other stuff you get!

The end of April brings another Ellen Datlow anthology, The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, in which I have a story entitled "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall," which is another Promethean Age story, featuring an aging boxer... and Jackie. Remember Jackie? I'm trying to write another Jackie story now, and the little bastard won't cooperate. I'll bend him to my will, though.

In addition, the vast internet conspiracies booksellers have pre-order pages up for several novels that will be out sometime next year. The Blood & Iron mass-market paperback, for those of you who have been patiently waiting, will be out June 3rd of 2008, and the shiny small price point of Just Seven Dollars And Ninety-Nine Cents. ("It'll cost you just a nickel!" says the muppet in my head.) 

The trade paperback edition of New Amsterdam--newly affordable at $14.95 U.S., and containing all of the text of the hardcover and maybe with some of the typos corrected, if Bill got my list, (NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMMITTED [all the old people just laughed]) is meant to be available May 1. Since the out of print hardcover is going for $54.00 this week and was going for $75.00 the last time somebody emailed me to say BEAR OMG WHEN IS THE TRADE COMING OUT?!?!?!?!, I thought you would all be happy to know that. If you're Canadian, here's the Chapters-Indigo listing for New Amsterdam: The I Can Afford That! edition.

If you already have the soon-to-be-remaindered trade paperback edition of Blood & Iron, and you really are waiting with bated breath for the next Promethean Age book (you know, the one with all the smut in it), Ink & Steel is set for July 1st of 2008 and Hell & Earth will follow it in August. And then I will be nearly all caught up on my backlog and have to write some new books for a change.

Meanwhile, Chapters-Indigo, which apparently has pictures of somebody at Tor with a chicken llama goat cephalopod, already has listings up for All the Windwracked Stars in hardcover and All the Windwracked Stars in paperback (Nov. 1 of 2008 and Oct. 1 of 2009, respectively). Please note that these are unconfirmed dates, subject to change, no guarantee that there will actually be a paperback edition if the hardcover tanks, and my editor is probably fuming right now.

However, if you wanted to make a note of the ten-digit ISBN numbers for your own use, ahem, the paperback is 0765358514 and the hardcover is 0765318822, and I'm going to take a SWAG* and say that the U.S. price points are probably going to be $24.95 and $7.99, respectively.

Also, there's a mass market paperback of A Companion to Wolves listed for August 1 of 2008 also via Chapters-Indigo, ISBN # 076535778X... is that X supposed ot be there? Hmm.

Now, having pointed thase links out, I should mention that it's almost always faster (and your karma is improved, are so are my chances at the Locus best-seller list!) if you get these things from your local independent SFF bookstore, so I do in general recommend going to them. Amazon never ships anything until the day it's officially released, even if the actual object is usually available for a couple of weeks beforehand in brick and mortal stores. (J.K. Rowling, I'm not. Also, you probably notice I don't do the Amazon Affiliate thing, because I like to encourage people to shop locally and support small business.)

Anyway, most of these fine retailers are happy to take phone or email orders, and some of them even have online stores if mail order is your thing.. I'm personally fond of Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego), Pandemonium (Boston Cambridge), Bakka-Phoenix (Toronto), Forbidden Planet (London), and Uncle Hugo's (Minneapolis), and recommend them all highly.

Non-anthologized short fiction? Er. Well, let's see. "The Ladies" in Coyote Wild any minute now, "Shoggoths in Bloom" in Asimov's for March, I think, and "Annie Webber" in Nature at some point, not sure when.

And truepenny and I have a short story in the VanderMeerian Fast Ships, Black Sails anthology, but I haven't heard a publication date for that yet. (I thought it was this year, actually, but there you have it. Publishing.)

Now to feed that cat, and decide how much of a slug I'm going to be today.

---

*Scientific Wild-Ass Guess

So you know--

if you wanted to pre-order things way in advance...

Amazon now has listings for Ink & Steel and for the trade paperback edition of New Amsterdam, both due out next summer.

Because all the cool kids are doing it, I've set up a Google Page, which has actual current information about me including places you might reliably find me in the next eighteen months or so, unlike my actual pretend official web page, which is sorely in need of updating that's not getting done because I cannot face the tables, or reconstructing it from the bottom up, which is the other option...

In other news, I remember how much I love the AtWS playlist. And how much I love this book and its world. All of a sudden, like somebody lighted a light. And you know what? I can tell I have passed the halfway point in the book, because I am forgetting to eat while I work on it, and I get really cranky when the phone rings.

Here we go. Downhill slide. First though, I should make sure I eat more than 1000 calories today.

I promise some kind of actual content later.

Actually, I suspect when my brain unsticks from Sycamore Hill, there may be rather a lot of content all at once.

So, since I know Whiskey & Water is a real book now, I offer the following contest.

To the first two people who report a proven sighting it in the wild (i.e., a real copy in a real bookstore on a shelf or table or hook or crucified on a pole so you can buy it) I will send an autographed ARC of A Companion to Wolves. The ARC in question is an uncorrected bound galley, with full-color cover art. The printing is a bit wodgy on the ones I have; it's readable, but light, as if the photocopier was running out of toner.

A Companion to Wolves is the first book I've published with my friend Sarah, a/k/a truepenny, a/k/a Cambell-Award-Nominated Author of Melusine and The Virtu, Sarah Monette. It is a rather violent, extremely high-mud, deconstructive fuzzy-animal-companion adolescent-wish-fulfillment fantasy with beard lice. And "subtext." (In the anagram sense.)

Really, it's exactly the sort of book you might expect from Sarah and I if we sat down one afternoon and started parodying Dragonflight, and then things... got out of hand. (It didn't stay a Pern parody. But the bones go back to a critical assessment of the Green Dragonrider Problem. Which probably tells you all you need to know about whether or not it's appropriate for minor children.*)

By "proven sighting," I mean post a link here in comments to: a cell phone camera picture, photocopied/scanned receipt for purchase (cross out your credit card number if it's on there, hullo), scan of the book cover and your smiling face, whatever.

There will probably be other contests later on, as Sarah has a few more of these than she needs as well, and she also has another book coming out this summer, called The Mirador, which has a pretty lady on the front. You might want to watch her blog for details.

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*It's not.

Eight random links to book reviews probably don't, though.

ETA: THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR NEW AMSTERDAM IN THE COMMENTS OF THIS POST.

ContraCostaTimes reviews Carnival, and really likes it. (Also, Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Moon.)

stonehenge also liked Carnival.

allekto liked Blood & Iron.

so did asciikitty. (And "Cryptic Coloration," and apparently Whiskey & Water, too.)

rarelytame really liked New Amsterdam, and I bet I know why zie is mad at me. Sorry. Sorry.

random_alex reviews many things in lastshortstory, including "Limerent."

Read My Mind likes the first quarter of Hammered.

gcsbook has mixed emotions about Worldwired, which include some spoilers.

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Oh and but also: truepenny interviewed me for Subterranean. So you could read that if you liked.

And now I have to shower and pay bills and take the cat to my mom's and run every errand there is to run.

I hate travelling.

So I just updated my CV for Penguicon.

I, um. Well. I guess I've kind of arrived. It's really kind of bizarre seeing all this stuff in one place.

And I guess I'll put it here too, so I can find it later. It is always SO WEIRD referring to yourself in third person....

---

Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. This, coupled with a childhood tendency to read the dictionary for fun, led her inevitably to penury, intransigence, the mispronunciation of common English words, and the writing of speculative fiction.

She grew up in New England and lived in Las Vegas for seven years. She now resides near Hartford in a tiny apartment with a presumptuous cat and has no plans to leave the Northeast ever again, except on brief exploratory excursions.

She has six novels and two short story collections in print, and eleven more books under contract. She was the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005. She's a Locus Award winner, and has been nominated for several other major genre awards, including the BSFA, the Lambda Award, and the Phillip K. Dick Award, for which she received a special citation for Carnival.

---

Her available publications are as follows:

(And this list has yanno, more liner notes than the official version.)

The Jenny Casey trilogy: (Bantam Spectra) (Locus Award for Best First Novel, collectively, for all three books that are one book)
Hammered (2005) (Compton Crook Award Nominee)
Scardown (2005)
Worldwired (2005)

Stand-alone science fiction: (Bantam Spectra)
Carnival (2006) (Special citation from the Phillip K. Dick Award, nominated for the Lambda Award, nominated for the Romantic Times reviewer's choice award, Locus Award nominee, hello little book that could...)
+Undertow (2007)

The Jacob's Ladder trilogy: (Bantam Spectra)
+Dust (2008)
+*Chill (2009)
+*Grail (2010)

(Look, we have titles again. Assuming Marketing approves them.)

The Promethean Age: (Roc)
Blood & Iron (2006) (Green Man Review's Best Fantasy Novel, 2006)
Whiskey & Water (2007)
+*Ink & Pen (2008)
+*Hell & Earth (2009)

Iskryne world (with Sarah Monette) (Tor)
+A Companion to Wolves (2007)

The Edda of Burdens: (Tor)
+*All the Windwracked Stars (2008)
+*By the Mountain Bound (2009)
+*The Sea thy Mistress (2010)

Short Story collections: (Night Shade Books)
The Chains That You Refuse (2006)

Abigail Irene Garrett and Sebastien de Ulloa mysteries: (Subterranean Press)
New Amsterdam (mosaic novel) (2007)

Novellas: (Monkeybrain Books)
+Bone & Jewel Creatures (2008/9)


In addition, she's published several dozen short stories and poems in various venues.

(1995) "Transubstantiation" to Strange Wonderland (never actually published. my first magazine death!)

(1996) "Love-in-Idleness" to Midsummer Night's Dreams (this story is pretty much disavowed. but I promise if you ever find a copy, it will make you feel so much better about anything you may be unproud of in your own work.)

(somewhere in here is that part where I quit writing for a good long time)

(2000) "The Company of Four" to Scheherazade
(2000) "The Devil You Don't" to Amberzine

(2003) "e. e. 'doc' cummings" to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
(2003) "Tiger! Tiger!" to Shadows Over Baker Street
(2003) "Ice" to Ideomancer (in a much, much, much different form, this is the first chapter of All the Windwracked Stars)
(2003) "The Dying of the Light" (with Amber van Dyk) to Fortean Bureau
(2003) Hammered novel excerpt to Harpur Palate
(2003) "Speak!" in the Winter 2003 issue of On Spec

(2004) "This Tragic Glass" to Scifiction (YBSF honorable mention, Tiptree award long list)
(2004) "The Chains That You Refuse" to ChiZine
(2004) "Old Leatherwings" in Lenox Avenue
(2004) "Ice" reprint in Nowa Fantastyka
(2004) "Seven Dragons Mountains" to All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories
(2004) "Sleeping Dogs Lie" to Flytrap
(2004) "When you Visit the Magoebaskloof Hotel, be Certain not to Miss the Samango Monkeys" to Interzone

(2005) "Two Dreams on Trains" to Strange Horizons (reprinted in Gardner Dozois' YBSF, BSFA short form award nominee, reprinted in Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, James Patrick Kelly/John Kessel, ed. Tachyon Press 2007)
(2005) "Follow Me Light" to SCIFICTION (reprinted in the Datlow/Link/Grant YBF&H 2005 and Best New Paranormal Romance)
(2005) "Botticelli" to The Agony Column (this is reprinted in The Chains That You Refuse with what I think is a vastly improved ending, as the first was apparently too obscure. But it is, you know, thinly disguised and very thinky Man from UNCLE meta-slash, so go team me.)
(2005) "One-Eyed Jack and the Suicide King" to Lenox Avenue (this is chapter one of One-Eyed Jack & The Suicide King, which will be Promethean Age #5 if enough of you buy #s 1-4. *g*)
(2005) "And the Deep Blue Sea" to SCIFICTION (this will be reprinted in an anthology of post-apocalyptic SFF eddited by John Joseph Adams)
(2005) "House of the Rising Sun" to The Third Alternative (This is chapter two of One-Eyed Jack & The Suicide King. Just to keep things interesting.)
(2005) "Long Cold Day" in SCIFICTION
(2005) "Wax" in Interzone (Locus recommended list, reprinted in Fantasy: The Best of the Year, free audio version at the Subterranean Press website.)

(2006) "Los Empujadores Furiosos" in On Spec
(2006) "Wane" to Interzone
(2006) "The Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe" in Subterranean #4 (Danger, Will Robinson! That link leads to a .pdf of the entire magazine, and it is BIGGER THAN YOUR HEAD.)
(2006) "Lucifugous" in Subterranean 5
(2006) "Sounding" in Strange Horizons (nominated for the BSFA short form award)
(2006) "Ile of Dogges" (with Sarah Monette) in Aeon 7 (reprinted in Gardner Dozois' YBSF for 2006)
(2006) "Dos Sueños con Trenes" ["Two Dreams on Trains," Spanish-language version] in Cuasar #42, Marzo
(2006) "The Cold Blacksmith" in Jim Baen's Universe (Reprinted in Best Of Jim Baen's Universe, Volume 1)
(2006) "Gone to Flowers" in Eidolon, Eidolon Books, Jonathan Strahan & Jeremy G Byrne eds.
(2006) "Love Among The Talus" in Strange Horizons

(2007) "War Stories" in Baen's Universe
(2007) "Cryptic Coloration" in Baen's Universe
+(2007) "The Rest of Your Life in a Day" in Baen's Universe
(2007) "The Something Dreaming Game" in Fast Forward Pyr Books, Lou Anders, ed.
(207) a portion of the forthcoming novel One-Eyed Jack & The Suicide King, serialized in Subterranean.
+(2007) "Matte" in Fictitious Force
+(2007) "Inelastic Collisions" in Inferno from Tor books, 2007, Ellen Datlow, ed.
(2007) "Abjure the Realm" in Coyote Wild
(2007) "Tideline" in Asimov's (!Finally sold a story to Asimov's! For your reference, IA was still editing the damned thing when I started submitting to it.)
(2007) "Orm the Beautiful" in Clarkesworld
(2007) "Black is the Color" in Subterranean, Summer 2007
+(2007) "Hobnoblin Blues" in Realms of Fantasy

+(2008) "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall," in an as-yet untitled anthology from Del Rey, Ellen Datlow, ed.
+(2008) "Boojum" (with Sarah Monette) to Fast Ships, Black Sails, Jeff & Ann VanderMeer, ed.
+(2008) "The Ladies," in Alternate Earths, Jay Lake, ed.

---

Maybe I should sort out my nonfic publications, too. But I haven't actually kept track of them.

---

+forthcoming
*Titles subject to change, and all future dates are subject to change.

---

Elvis he died young.
Jesus he died younger.

               --Garnet Rogers

More Cat v. Monkey forthcoming, I promise, to make up for the spam.

It's not so much the end of an era as the changing of the guard. Although there are still two print issues to go, Subterranean Magazine is coincidentally beginning its new incarnation as a (free!) online magazine.

And you can find it here, starting with the Winter 2007 issue.

There will be new controversy content every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Currently, this includes the following features which are currently current right now:

    * Column: HARVESTING THE DARKNESS #1 by Norman Partridge
    * Fiction: MISSIVES FROM POSSIBLE FUTURES #1: ALTERNATE HISTORY SEARCH RESULTS by John Scalzi
    * Fiction: VACANCY by Lucius Shepard
    * Fiction: WANDERING THE BORDERLANDS by Poppy Z. Brite
    * Review: BOOK REVIEWS by Dorman T. Shindler

---

But soon will also include content by, er, me (including a novelette and a feminist diatribe) and a bunch of other very cool people.

And, to quote the Firesign Theatre, it's a fair to all and no fare to anyone! That's right! It's free!

---

(Did I sound enthusiastic enough? I can never tell.)

Locus poll time!

Go, on you know you want to vote for Charlie Stross, Peter Watts, Jay Lake, Vernor Vinge, Sarah Monette, Ben Rosenbaum, Ellen Kushner me!

(No, really, you want to vote for Peter. But I won't complain if you put me second.)

The final chapter of "Lucifugous" (in which guns are drawn, and Jack reveals something we all suspected) is up at Subterranean Press. You can read the whole novella here. 

You can buy the forthcoming collection/picaresque/mosaic novel here. It's over a hundred thousand words in length, and includes two never-before published stories--"Chatoyant," a novelette, and "Lumiere" (appearing on the order form there as "Les Innocents," which was the working title) a novella, which between them comprise about 40,000 words of brand new content!

Think of the children!*

---

*this is scurrilous material, after all. You'll want to protect them by buying up as many copies as possible.

Okay, man, last post for a while. Jebus, Bear.

But this is just to let you know that Chapter 9 of "Lucifugous" is up at Subterranean Press. In which Sebastien kisses a girl.

ObBuyMyBookLink

.

Back to the pledge drive!

Chapter 6 of "Lucifuguous"--in which Sebastien discovers an illicit romance he's not involved in, for a change--is up.

And of course, "Lucifugous" is only about the first 25,000 words of New Amsterdam, and you can still pre-order the whole book here.

.

And now, as Weird Al would say-- PAY THE BILLS! STATION BREAK!

So, in very good news, Eric Flint (I love his name. Isn't that such a superhero name?) at Jim Baen's Universe just let me know he's buying the Infamous Penis Tattooing Story, otherwise known as "The Rest of Your Life in a Day."

So, sometime next fall, those of you who have a subscription will be able to read all about Little Baby Matthew (who was also prone to catastrophic mistakes when he was nineteen, just saying) and his big brother Kelly, before Kelly... you know. And, um. Graphic, highly-researched descriptions of what it's like to have somebody stick ink-dipped high velocity needles into your dangly bits.

Sorry. Sorry.

Not so incidentally, Universe is in the middle of a subscription drive. It's thirty dollars for a one-year subscription, which is, I will admit, a fair amount of money. But it does get you access to fiction by some truly shiny people. And, ah. Me.

Additionally, there's one other sneaky thing, which they call the Universe Club. There are a bunch of levels at which one can join this thing. (I think the cheapest is fifty bucks. Again, not cheap, but there you go. Fiction costs money.) And there are a whole bunch of gimmicks and stuff, including, at some levels, getting yourself Tuckerized into a story by the author of your choice. (More money than I'll ever have, anyway. ) But the cool thing about this thing is that you get to read the galleys in advance. So, you can see grotty malformed pre-copy-edited versions of stuff by people like me. And mrissa. And kristine_smith. And papersky. And autopope.

And, um, famous people, too. *g*

Anyway, if you were interested in reading the stuff I have up there, or will soon have up, there are no less than three Promethean Age related stories (a short and two novelettes) and one Jenny Casey story. The first one--"The Cold Blacksmith," which is about Wayland Smith and a witch who grows roses, you know the one--is available now. It was in the first issue. The second and third--"War Stories," the Jenny story (yes, it does start "No shit, there I was"1) and "Cryptic Coloration," (otherwise known as the venom cock story, which is about Matthew and three of his students, one year before Blood & Iron ) are available now through the view-the-ARC thingy, and will be up for subscribers in February and June of next year respectively, I believe. The fourth is of course "The Rest of Your Life in a Day," which will be up in mere days, no doubt, knowing the efficiency of the folks at Baen.

Okay, there's that bit of pimpage taken care of. Now, on to more pimpage. (Good lord. There is no end. No bottom to my gall. It's true.) Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #26 is available now, and in it I have a long and hopefully erudite (but don't count on it) rant critical essay on The State Of The Fantasy First Novel. Let's be honest: it's just like this blog, but better-edited and actually thought through, rather than chucked at the page any which way. You might find it novel!

Also, last but certainly not least, another magazine that's done its part to keep my cat fed is having a fund drive this fall. Strange Horizons is free to all comers. It's a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, too, so if you live in the USA, your donations are tax-deductible. I've got another story coming out from them sometime in the next few months--"Love Among The Talus," know to readers of my blog as the Cold Rock Sex story. (Working titles. Don't you love 'em?)

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ADVERTISING ENDS HERE

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"Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?" - Christopher Marlowe

"Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?" - Will Shakespeare

---

"Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine." - Jim Morrison

"I wish I was born about a thousand years ago." - Lou Reed

"Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine."   --- Billy Idol
"I wish I was born about a thousand years ago." __|

---

So I'm listening to Billy Idol's cover of The Velvet Underground's "Heroin," which he mashes up extensively with the The Doors' "Gloria" (most famously performed by Patti Smith). It's rather good. (There's a whole bunch of samples in this thing too, but damned if I know what half of them are.)

Anyway, and again, it's got me thinking about the neatness that is the folk process, which is the fine art of taking existing material and pwning it. And using bits and pieces of things to illuminate other things. "Competent artists are influenced. Great artists steal."

Of course, as a synthesist, I would think that.

---

---

So far today I have written, gone to the gym, grocery shopped, put away the groceries, showered, blogged, fed myself, read contracts, and actually figured out what to write next in "Lumiere."

And I may wait until tomorrow to do it. Not sure. It seems I need to go back and actually write the first scene of the story, explaining what exactly the conflict is and what the characters think they're about. So, you know, I can derail it later.

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(1) The difference between war stories and fairy tales is that fairy tales start "Once upon a time..." and war stories start "No shit, there I was..."

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