I Feel Much Better Now That My Head Has Stopped Gushing Blood

Okay, so I cut my head open with a power saw today.

I had a very productive day prior to the incident, making a lot of progress toward the completion of my ongoing porch-repair project. Everything went smoothly, except that the skies became overcast and there was some drizzle. Fearing a downpour, I moved the table saw so that it was underneath the second floor porch, right in front of the cellar steps. As it happened, there was no cause for alarm, as it never progressed past a slight mist of rain. I managed to cut more than fifty balusters without injuring myself; strangely enough, it wasn’t the power-tool portion of the table saw that damaged me–it was the table itself.

After calling it quits, I packed everything away, stowing most of my equipment in the cellar, but I left the table saw out because, well, I sure as hell can’t get it down the steps by myself. So when I went back upstairs after depositing my equipment, I introduced my forehead to a metal arm of the table saw. It didn’t really hurt that much (though it’s kind of aching now), but it did, as the title of this post indicates, start gushing blood. It stopped soon enough, after some ministrations, though I felt the need to go get some of that liquid bandage stuff to minimize the chance of scarring. But looks like I’ll probably have a lovely wound to show off at Readercon this weekend.

So there you have it. That’s how I spent my Independence Day. What did you all do?

Incidentally, isn’t it a bit ironic that it’s illegal (pretty much everywhere) to set off fireworks, considering that we’re doing it to celebrate our independence?

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Hardboiled Horror

James Van Pelt tells me he’s editing an anthology for Notorious Press called Hardboiled Horror. Here’s a bit from the guidelines:

Stories submitted for this anthology should include elements from both Horror and Mystery/Crime. How you blend the two camps will be an important factor in story selection. For example, it is probably not enough if the protagonist stumbles into a situation and discovers that it is supernatural. That realization should come as a RESULT of specific detection – not accidental encounter. Stories can also start as Horror, then add the “detection” element. Protagonists can be mortal or not, as long as you are blending the styles. You may even submit tales that initially seem like they are destined to have a supernatural conclusion, but which are resolved in earthbound ways. Stories may certainly lean more heavily on one side or the other, but should include both genres.

Other details of note: submission window is June 15 to Sept. 30, and payment is “about $50 per story, maybe more for a novella and less for a short-short.”

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How to Sell Your First Genre Novel

I thought this might be of interest to some of my readers: 

How to Sell Your First Genre Novel

a 3 hour seminar on breaking into — and staying in — genre fiction taught by editor/author Laura Anne Gilman

Learn what makes genre writing different from mainstream or literary publishing, and how to parlay that knowledge, and a love of the genre, into the start of a successful career.

-The breakdowns and crossovers of genre classification

-How to work within genre structures to create something original

-How to pitch your work to a genre editor as opposed to a mainstream house

-The important know-how that give new authors a foot in the door

-The importance of a series concept versus a stand-alone book

-How to maintain a career once you’ve had your first book accepted

WHEN Wednesday, August 29, 6:30-9:30 pm

WHERE mediabistro.com, 494 Broadway (Spring & Broome), New York, NY 10012

PRICE $65

Laura Anne Gilman spent fifteen years as an editor for major NYC publishing houses before going freelance. She is the author of the popular `Retrievers´ series from Luna Books, which includes Staying Dead, Curse the Dark, Bring it On, Burning Bridges and Free Fall (2008), the Grail Quest trilogy for young adults, and over thirty short stories. In addition, she has edited two genre anthologies, and writes paranormal romance under the name Anna Leonard.

 I don’t know more about this than what’s reprinted above, but I’ve taken a Mediabistro class before, and thought it was pretty good.

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Contest: Imagine You’re a Transformer

My pal, Jeremy Tolbert, is having a blog contest. He asks:

If you were a transformer, what object would you turn into? Assume you have a robot shape and something else. What’s the something else?

After he receives the answers, he’ll make a poll and there will be voting. The winner will win a copy of the Fantasy anthology sampler, which features his awesome  story, “The Yeti Behind You.”

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More Than Meets the Eye

Here are some of my favorite pull-quotes from the Transformers reviews I’ve seen thus far:

  • The only thing that matters is giant freaking robots. — Patrick Lee, SCI FI Weekly
  • Chikachikachika! Now I’m a dump truck! VROOM! — Jeremy Tolbert, blog
  • AHHH! AAAAH!!! ROBOTS, OMG ROBOTS and they’re FIGHTING and they’re all like, PIT-OO, PIT-OO, PIT-OO — and I’m all LIKE YEAH, THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKIN’ ABOUT, and then did you see that one over there — did you see WHAT HE JUST DID and HOLY SHIT THAT’S OPTIMUS PRIME THAT’S OPTIMUS PRIME LOOKIE HE’S GOT BIG OL’ SWORD AND IT’S ORANGE AND ALL KILLY AND STUFF, and that guy who HE’S BEATING LIKE A LITTLE TIN DRUM is MEGATRON and I think that now I can DIE OF AWESOME POISONING because that was more awesome than a whole SWIMMING POOL THAT HAS BEEN FILLED WITH AWESOME, and then someone shoves A PAIR OF GIANT DUELING ALIEN ROBOTS INTO THE SWIMMING POOL, and there’s a UNICORN STANDING IN THE BACKGROUND, GRANTING WISHES and SHITTING DIAMONDS. — Cherie Priest, LiveJournal

You know, I usually resist going to see big summer blockbuster movies in the theater. I usually end up seeing them eventually, though often grudgingly and often don’t see them all the way through. But this…I don’t think I can resist this. Dude! Chikachikachika!

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Garden State Horror Wrtiers Contest

Lookee here:  

GARDEN STATE HORROR WRITERS SHORT STORY CONTEST

Extended Deadline: August 20, 2007

The GSHW is looking for enticing, well-written speculative fiction. There is no theme this year so let your imagination run wild, but please, no more than 3,000 words.

Entries can be in Horror ~ Science Fiction ~ Fantasy ~ Mystery ~ Suspense ~ Thriller.

First prize is $100 and The Graversen Award; second prize is $50 and third prize $25. Each eligible entry will be critiqued by three published writers and/or editors.

Go to www.gshw.net for deadlines, complete rules, etc.

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Article About Writing Workshops

My article about writing workshops, “Basic Training for Writers,” which recently appeared in the SFWA Bulletin, has been published on their Web site [PDF].

[Excerpt:] Writers choosing to specialize in writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror have a number of opportunities to study with luminaries in the field by participating in writers’ workshops. These workshops are in-depth examinations of a writer’s strengths and weaknesses, and force students to both write and critique the work of others a great deal. This provides for a rather intense experience, which is why this sort of workshop is often referred to as a “writer’s boot camp.”

In my role as assistant editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, I’ve seen the results of these workshops first hand. Some writers don’t show an appreciable increase in skill or craft right away (for some it takes a while for the lessons to sink in, and for some it never sinks in at all), but for others it’s as if their writing experienced a quantum leap–as if going to the workshop turned some key and unlocked their inner writer. While examples of the former are fairly common, examples of the latter are harder to come by.

But one such writer is David Marusek. He’s what you might call a poster child for workshopping success. “I attended Clarion West in Seattle in 1992 and sold two short stories that I wrote there. I sold one on the spot to Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine. I sold the other a month later to Playboy. These were my first ever fiction sales, and I have been publishing regularly, if not prolifically, ever since,” he said. Marusek’s stories have gone on to be lauded by both fans and critics alike, and in 1999, his story “The Wedding Album,” was nominated for a Nebula Award and won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

Before attending Clarion West, Marusek says that he had been writing for about seven years on his own, with no writing classes under his belt and only a few week-long workshops. He was collecting personalized rejections from editors, but he couldn’t seem to break into print. “In retrospect,” he said, “I believe I had taught myself the basic elements of the craft–characterization, plotting, dialog, etc.–but I still lacked that certain ineffable something that makes them all jell into a story. And that’s what I picked up at Clarion West.”

Read the whole article.
Tags: writing workshops science fiction fantasy

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Header Notes

I was just reading Adrienne Martini’s review (in the Baltimore City Paper) of The New Space Opera edited by Jonathan Strahan & Gardner Dozois, which is generally positive, but ends with a negative comment about the anthology’s header notes:

While a large percentage of this collection is full of space opera goodness, Dozois and Strahan’s introductions do them no favors. Instead of interstitial bits of text that help place the writer or the tale in some sort of context, the editors have merely crafted extra long bibliographies. Dozois, who edited Asimov’s magazine for 20 years as well as more than a dozen other anthologies, and Strahan, former book reviewer for Locus magazine and an Australia-based anthology editor, have been in the field long enough to have some opinions. It’s a shame that they only provide details that you could easily find out for yourself, rather than their thoughts on any given tale. It’s also a shame that they used the same line of description–enough ideas packed into this short story “to fuel many another author’s eight-hundred-page novel”–for both Kelly’s and McDonald’s stories. That may be true, of course, but it makes the stories in question feel redundant rather than as vital and “new” as they are.

That got me thinking about what the essential ingredients to good header notes are. As it happens, I haven’t written the header notes to Wastelands yet, so this topic is of great interest to me. Any thoughts?

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Readercon Schedule

I’ll be attending Readercon in Burlington, MA next weekend (July 6-8), and I just got my schedule:

Friday 8:00 PM. Kaffeeklatsch

an intimate get-together between author and readers

Saturday 12:00 Noon.  Panel

Sense of Wonder, or Sense of Cool?

John Joseph Adams, Thomas A. Easton, Laura Anne Gilman, Ernest Lilley (M), Ian Randal Strock

Sf seeks that sense of wonder, but we think much of today’s best sf brings forth a different feeling. To some of us, stories such as those in Charles Stross’s _Accelerando_ sequence evoke a response more along these lines: “It really might be like that? Cool!” The emotion is less an awed contemplation of the universe and its inhabitants, and more the delight we have toward a new, really loaded computer, electronic gadget or online capability-what can we do with it, what are the implications? What the author shows us may be amazing, beyond present technology or knowledge, but it feels better understood and more under our control than the cosmic wonders of older sf.  Cool is more widely shared than wonder, but less, er, wonderful. Can this be part of the reason for the decline in the popularity of sf-cool can be reliably found in more places? Does fantasy supply wonder more reliably today?

I’m driving up to the con Friday morning, along with Doug Cohen, Rajan Khanna, and Jenny Rappaport. We expect to stop over at the Traveler Book Restaurant on the way, and arrive mid-afternoon sometime.

The Kaffeeklatsch is the perfect excuse to come by and say hello if we’ve never met before. So if you’re free, be sure to drop by! If that “intimate” description confuses you as to the nature of a Kaffeeklatsch, just ignore that; it’s basically going to be me sitting at a table (with coffee!) and chatting with whoever shows up. Very informal and relaxed. At least, if I understand it correctly. I haven’t actually done one (or attended one) before.

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