Good News

This week has been deemed Awesome.

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This is not the blog post you were meant to be reading today.

Not that you’d know this if I hadn’t told you, but there it is. The blog post I had planned for today was inspired by a question Karen Miller asked earlier this week (“isn’t it time the boys of the Science Fiction grew up”) and put forward a bunch of thoughts about why they wouldn’t, because not growing up is kinda integral to the contemporary cultural narrative of geekdom and folks seem to be unwilling to change it in any significant way. You’ll probably still get that post, sooner or later, since I’ve half-drafted it in my head and it’s still kicking around and gathering arguments, but I just don’t have the energy to unleash snark and ranting on the world today.

‘Cause this week, really, it’s been rather awesome. How awesome, I hear you ask? This awesome:

  • I had two three short stories accepted in the space of four five days. This, as you might expect, is the kind of start that makes my week awesome.
  • I had a project pitched for 2012 that I can’t talk about; I pitched an idea back that may well see me talk about it much earlier than that; nothing set in stone yet and we’re still hammering out the finer details, but overall, this is looking pretty cool.
  • Completely trashed the current draft of Clawafter having a chat with Twelfth Planet Press about how to proceed with a series of Aster book. This is my call, incidently, not something they asked for., and on the whole I’m happier with the book Claw will turn into (currently using the working title Cold Cases) than the version of Claw I’ve got. Not that the current version of Claw is a bad book (once you get past the drafting issues), it’s just that there’s a more sensible way to approach the series and make sure I get to write all the stories I wanted to write in Aster’s world, and the current version doesn’t fit the structure well enough to stick around. Oddly, this feels like the most awesome thing I’ve done in the entire week 🙂
  • Speaking of Aster, the latest out of Twelfth Planet suggests that Horn sales have been rather good. As in “we’re down to the last box of books” kind of good (and hopefully that’s sufficiently ambiguous that I won’t get in trouble for saying it in public). This kinda flabbergasts me in its awesomeness, both because it confirms that there will be as a second Aster novella and because I had many paranoid nightmares about releasing a book no-one wanted to read. I feel I should say a heartydanke schoen to all the peeps, reviewers, and readers who have recommended a little noir/urban fantasy about rogue unicorns and pornography to friends and family, then convinced them to spend their hard-earned money on it. You folks rock.

The Catch-up Post

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My brain is full of much-ness today. As in there is much I want to blog about, but little time and space in which to achieve this, so things kind of bump up against each other and nothing gets written. As always, I blame the thesis – in some ways it feels like I’ve been talking about it for so long that the opportunity to talk about something else triggers this rush of “oh, and that…” (I shall stop that train of thought there, I think, lest I start rambling; rambling is the symptom of a brain full of much-ness).

Okay, lets focus on the news in short form:

  • On the writing front, some good news – I sold a story, Clockwork, Patchwork and Raven, to Apex Online. This was the source of much huzzah around the writing the desk, as one might imagine.
  • Also on the writing front – the Black Dragon, White Dragon anthology is available now. It’s one of the debut anthologies from Ricasso Press which has had a long and windy road to follow in order to reach publication (Ricasso were the source of my favorite acceptance letter ever, as I blogged about back when they first accepted The Dragonkeeper’s Wife for the anthology back in April of 2007). I’ve barely had time to flick through my copy, but it looks like fun.
  • The workshop which changed my life as a writer, Clarion South, has had a run of bad luck this year (cancelled tutors, finding a new venue on short notice) and they’re in need of donations to help them continue running. I’ll probably do a longer post on this in the future, but until then I’ll link over to the donations page for those who are already willing to sling a few bucks their way.
  • The ever-awesome Ben Francisco hit town, proving his status as a writer-geek of honor by spending much of his Brisbane vacation critting stories and putting together the a plan for finishing the piece we collaborated on back in Clarion two years ago.
  • I also got the opportunity to go see Amanda-Fucking-Palmer on Sunday night – I may still be coming down from the experience. I see many bands, artists and writers who are feasibly awesome, but Amanda Palmer continues to be one of those artists who strikes me as being unfeasibly awesome and capable of inviting people in to what she’s doing as an artist (as evidenced by the fact that the show ended with her playing a ukulele and singing Creep, sans-microphone, while everyone in the audience sang along).