This week io9’s Weekend Short Story Club is throwing some love in the direction of my friend Ben Francisco and his story Tio Gilberto and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts which originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy last year. This pleases me because, lets face it, Ben is awesome and Tio Gilbertois one of those stories I patiently waited for him to get published since I read the first draft at Clarion back in 2007 (the other peice I’ve been waiting for, This is Not Concrete, appeared in the most recent issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet that arrived on my doorstep on Friday).
peeps doing cool stuff
Puttin on the Pimp Hat
1) Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet has announced the Table of Contents of its next issue due, which will contain work by two of my favourite peeps, Ben Francisco (a man oft-mentioned in this blog for his general awesomeness) and Dan Braum (a man of equal in awesomeness, although somewhat quieter on the internets and thus name-checked around these parts far less than he should be). If I didn’t already adore LCRW and subscribe, this would be the kind of one-two punch that’d convince me I need to pick up an issue.
2) Ellen Datlow’s released the honorable mention’s lists for her Best Horror of the Year anthologies and it includes Horn and the work of a bunch of folks such as Jason Fischer, Angela Slatter, Lee Battersby, Lyn Battersby, Chris Green, Paul Haines, and presumably a couple of other friends whose names I’ve missed in the quick skim I just did. This allows me to tick off yet another thing on my list-of-writer-goals-that-I-shouldn’t-really-keep-because-I-have-no-real-control-over-whether-they-happen-or-not (an unwieldy title, I know, but it’s still far less unwieldy that the list it accompanies; I’ll be chasing entries on said list when I’m eighty).
3) Speaking of Jason Fischer, he’s just put up a sneak preview of a comic he scripted. And speaking of Angela Slatter, she’s holding forth on the subject of her favourite cross-genre works over as part of SF Signal’s Mind-Meld. The peeps are going crazy with the cool stuff this week, so make with the checking-out and such.
And now we are thirty-three
I’ve never really known what to do with my birthday. The realities of being haphazardly employed mean going out and celebrating are off the agenda and I’m pretty sure the last time I tried was back in 2006 or so. The idea of celebrating my birthday has always seems kinda awkward anyway. Existing for a year isn’t necessarily an achievement, you know?
This year I seem to have settled upon ordering a cheese pizza and re-reading the introduction to Haruki Murakami’s Birthday Stories anthology, which will inevitably lead to the rereading of the anthology itself in days to come. Later on I’ll regret the fact that medication means I can’t drink a glass of wine with dinner, then bugger off to play DnD with friends. Given that I’m still tired and sluggish from the medication, I may even have a nap before I go.
Really, this is business as usual for a Thursday. So I took a photograph, just to mark the occasion. The look of grim boredom on my face has more to do with medication and lack of sleep than any real dislike of getting older (although this seems to be a theme with birthdays – last year I was hopped up on Ibuprofen for shoulder pain). To be honest, I *like* getting older. Being twenty was a pain in the arse and anyone who tries to tell me that my school years were the best days of my life is going to get kicked.
Of course, the cool part of my birthday is that I get to share the day with my friend, the inestimable Ben Francisco, and in that there is no mental quandary about what to do. Other people’s birthdays are easy to celebrate, for they mark a socially acceptable space in which you can gush about their awesomeness and Ben is among the most awesome of the awesome peeps.
To whit, Happy Birthday Ben, hoopiest of the hoopy froods (and if you missed it the first time around, I recommend going and listening to the podcast of Tio Gilberto and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts, for it is a fine story that should clarify why the whole damn world should be celebrating Ben’s continuing existence).