Attack of the 50 Ft. Cosmonaut

Download and have it free from Smashwords using the coupon code below:

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Coupon Code: MB57C
Expires: February 22, 2011
Expired!

Fifth story up on Smashwords now.

"Wednesday" from the Stoker-Award nominated anthology Corpse Blossoms.

It's .99¢ unless you want to get it free on Smashwords using this coupon:


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Coupon Code: BN94Q
Expires: February 18, 2011 Expired!!

A million words of crap.

Last year I wanted to figure out how much fiction I'd written in my life, so I did, and realized that by the end of 2010 I could reach a nice round total of one million words, which is the John D. MacDonald starting line. I did reach that number, on December 30th.

I'd actually written quite a bit more than that, but decided not to count anything that was incomplete. Really it's not that helpful to keeping starting stories and novels; it doesn't count unless it's finished, not even as practice, imho. Even a shitty, inept ending will teach something, even if it's only: I should have never started this.

I say a million words of crap, but I hope it's not all crap. I've managed to pursued nice editors to publish some of it, although, depending on who is commenting, a least some of that is crap too.

Anyway, I'm now a few thousand words into my second million. I'll check in with you later.

Lesson learned buying the cheapest Apple iTouch.

I bought an iTouch a few months ago, and I got the cheapest one I could find, because I didn't have a need for it. I had just bought a new nano a few months earlier, but I wanted to explored the app store and also test out ebook reading on a device without committing to a Kindle or on Nook or whatever. I got the cheapest one I could: 8 gig, previous generation, refurbish, and I love it.

Absolutely love it, but this post is not about that.

It's about this:
My 8 gig iTouch is about half full. I have hours and hours of music on it, hundred of free classic novels via Project Gutenberg, and a dozen or so books I've bought for the Kindle or Stanza ereader apps, and about 18 different apps half of which I hardly ever use. I've never had a frustration with speed or usage. This thing more than meets my needs.

I've always made an effort, when upgrading, to get the best of everything: the fastest speed, the biggest drive, etc, on the theory that it will pay off in the long run with an extended life cycle. Well from now on I'm getting the cheapest and the slowest.

Whatever I buy today will be faster and bigger than what I am using right now, and I'm most likely going to upgrade everything in a few more years again anyway, and the slowest and smallest available then will be better than the fastest and biggest available now. I'm web surfing, I'm doing very minor photo editing, I'm creating prose documents with either my ten-year-old (and therefore eminently usable) version of Word, or occasionally a version of OpenOffice for Mac called NeoOffice. I'm not editing "Lawrence of Arabia" or producing studio-quality rock albums.

So, never again.

Except for screens. I put money towards the biggest screen I can afford, because that makes a huge difference to me.

Slow and cheap, is my new credo.

True Grit (2010) Coen Bros.

I keep thinking about True Grit. I have to see it again. The thing I like more and more about the Coen's (particularly  this most recent run: Burn After Reading, A Serious Man -- both really underrated, I felt -- and now True Grit) is that they are not afraid to underplay things, and to let moments hang there, and allow event to unfold, and allow the audience to make what they will of it all. I never feel insulted by these films, never feel that the filmmakers have to tell me what to think.  Which is so much at odds with the way things are habitually done right now. Contrast with the execrable trailer that played beforehand featuring an actor as Neil Armstrong discovering Transformers on the moon in 1969. Yeah, the moon shot was too boring, it needs robots.

Free Read for Smashwords users.

Smashwords users can use this coupon code to download and read my story "Once Upon a Time ... At The Learning Annex" free.

Coupon: XY83J (use by Jan 21st.) Expired! 

However, you can still read this free online in the Strange Horizons archives.

The most important rejection I ever received.

This wasn't my first rejection letter; it wasn't even my first personal rejection letter, but it's the most significant one. It would be another six years before I sold my first story to Karen Joy Fowler for the Mota: Courage anthology, but one letter with a little praise and some very important criticism from Algis Budrys (whose few novels, which seem unjustly forgotten, I have always adored and admired) kept me going a long long time. This first paragraph was Budrys's standard rejection template, I have a few other that say the same thing, so it rocked me to see the three paragraphs that followed. Budrys wrote rejections that were turning points in the careers of many writers. Stephen King, in On Writing, wrote about one he received when Budrys edited F&SF.

Wheel of F&SF rejection slips.

Here are forty rejections I've received from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction over the years. Some of them sold elsewhere, some didn't.  The background is a ratty old bedspread, but it sort of disappeared, and I think the photo came out pretty cool.

My rejection slips.

I'm moving, and at the same time, I'm getting rid of a lot of stuff. I no longer feel the need to keep physical copies of old rejection slips. I have about 540 altogether (a ream plus a novelette of paper!) Here's a pile of them. I'm keeping exactly one, which I'll share about later in the week. You can see, in this picture, that I submit to mainstream as well as genre markets, though not necessarily the same stories. I have NO idea what I sent to Redbook though,  or when I sent it. Don't recall that one at all.

I put two more story reprints

including this one, up at Smashwords, for 99¢ each. Kindle and B&N versions pending.

1 way I'm saving time on the internet.

When Gawker Media user accounts were hacked I went through my passwords to various things, tightening up security giving some thought to all the little accounts for various bullshit I have signed up for over the past decade. I've come to the conclusion that I'll never sign up with anything for the privilege of making blog comments again. The reason has nothing to do with security, it's just the blog commenting is a waste of time. Huffington Post, Gawker, boingboing, The Daily Beast, etc all get thousands of comments a day, most of them in written to protest the point of view of the blogger or some of the other comment-leaver, and, I suppose, correct their thinking on the subject at hand. This sets other people off, who comment in outrage to correct the corrections and soon you've a threat of a couple hundred comments, that if you really want to keep up on the post you will have to scan and rescan frequently. By then, unless your comment is especially outrageous or obnoxious your contribution will be lost in the crowd. You will see that others are still making the argument the you so succinctly demolished pages earlier, and then you will consider posting again.

I say don't do it! The only way you can have an impact is if you are one of those power comment-leavers and have the time to leave dozens, if not hundreds of comments a day. I know you; you have better things to do, many more useful and satisfying ways you can contribute. If a big registration-required blog has an article you really feel passionate about just share the link on facebook, your own blog, or tweet about it. Don't sign in the blogs using your facebook or twitter: not that there is a security danger. Linking a blog to one of you existing accounts will save you time and convenience in set-up, but you'll lose more time in the end if you start leaving comments. The real danger is time-suck.