PUGGY'S HILL

My Post-Apocalyptic Barter Skill - can you guess? Guess, then click on this delicious compilation by Liz Gorinsky for Tor.com (which includes a KGB report) and let her know yours.

Why isn't my website as clear & gorgeous as Michelle Shocked's?

$50,000 fourth novel prize for works published Jan 08-July 09, juried by Michael Chabon et al! Deadline July 1, so hurry up.

4 days left to listen to BBC's radio drama Darger and the Detective: "A play drawing on the writings of reclusive artist Henry Darger, imagining his inner life....Recorded in Chicago by actors from the Steppenwolf Theatre Company" by my radio pal Judith Kampfner!

MythPunk Army shirt from Zazzle by Cathrynne Valente (want! want!!)

Indie SF/F/Horror publisher Night Shade Books is having their annual 50% off sale on all current & forthcoming books(4 book min) thru June 17. Coupon code 50NSB2009. Check out their catalogue - great stuff by hot authors.

New to all this? Or not so new? How about people recc. their favorite Night Shade books in the comments?

This is where I put in a plug for forthcoming anthology Eclipse 3, to which I just sold a new story, "Dulce Domum." Editor Jonathan Strahan asked me for a story about a year ago, and really encouraged me to finish something I'd had in the works for some time. I'm really proud to be in the distinguished Eclipse series; volumes 1 & 2 have includeded award nominated stories, with work by Ted Chiang, Jeffrey Ford, Nancy Kress, Margo Lanagan, Peter S. Beagle, Andy Duncan, Garth Nix, Maureen McHugh, Ysabeau Wilce, Ellen Klages, Lucius Shepard, et al . . . . a host of writers I admire. The stories are pretty interstitial - mine sure is.

Eclipse 3 is coming out in October 2009 - just in time for pre-ordering now! Here's some of the first page of the story, if you want to get a feel for it. It's the story I read most of at the Wiscon reading:

( Read more... )

How much would you pay to hear
Peter S. Beagle read you
The Last Unicorn or A Fine & Private Place
aloud?


Yeah. I know.

There are also sample free downloads. And lots more stuff.

ADDED: Some folks have commented that they've had trouble with this site. See connorfc's comments, below, on what's going on & how to contact him directly for satisfaction.

I'm a big fan of Dylan Meconis' online graphic novels. But I have trouble reading comix online on my screen. So I'm delighted to learn (thanks, pamola!) that the wonderful Bite Me ("Vive les Vamps!") is now available in folding version, suitable for bathtub, subway & kitchen table reading. So Go Buy Bite Me!

Happy new discovery: THE JIMMIES - a hot, tight band for the preschool set. I think my favorite video so far is It's Cool to be Uncool - with Bedhead a close second. I suspect this is one kids' album you won't mind hearing the 501st time the little one hits Play.....

Finally, the enterprising shadesong is raffling off some very cool stuff to raise $ to send her smart, adorable daughter (whom I've met at Readercon) to a special Summer Program for, well, smart kids.

Enjoy!

My cousin Susan, the jeweler, sent me a link to Anne Choi's handmade beads with words on them, thinking I'd like them. She was right! I bet you will, too. (My favorites, of course, are Out of Stock.) Need more jewelry? Aragona (remember Aragona?) is having another Blue Moon Sale!

Lessee, what else . . . . Came back from Santa Cruz with a headcold. A very mild and pleasant headcold, consisting only of a stuffy nose. When's the last time I had a cold like that? Can't even remember. Colds the past few years have been accompanied by such miserable sore throats, coughs, aches and pains . . . I was beginning to think I had made up the kind of cold you could just bluff your way through with decongestant. Or that age had robbed me of the ability to endure. Ha. (Snort.)

But I relish the excuse to lie around and read, and I took it. As a result, just finished two really, really terrific books, which I am glad to recommend to all! The first is Flora's Dare, sequel to Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau Wilce. Best YA fantasy I've read since Philip Pullman, and fills me with similar delight, for entirely different reasons. Or maybe not: world an entertaining sidestep or two away from our own; tangled, sparky (& in this case, hilarious) heroine . . . . not to mention a City. How I love cities. Unlike me, Ysabeau has named hers. And I want to go there. (But not when there's an earthquake caused by giant underground squid.) The other book is We Are Gathered Here by Micah Perks (who, as the head of the Writing program, was our host at UCSC). I can't wait for Delia to read it: it's about Victorian women's friendship between a "lady" and her "maid," but set in the Adirondacks, and includes visits to a Gypsy camp, a Shaker women's settlement, and a miners' strike. Perks has also written an essay about her inspiration, Searching for an Ending, which is worth reading. Actually, there's a third novel I read, out at Big Sur: The Scarlet Rider, by Lucy Sussex, in which an Australian scholar tries to find identity of a 19c woman author from the Outback. Both Scarlet Rider & We are Gathered Here include lesbian couples - not as a big deal, but as part of the landscape of the protagonists' lives. Interesting to note that both first appeared in 1996. Yay. And 'bout time.

Hope you get some happy reading! But without the headcold.

I may well be the last to have heard the news that author & small press publisher Vera Nazarian needs our help - thanks to mroctober for alerting me! Wonderful online friends are doing a fabulous job of raising money to keep her and her family safe by December 20th - which also happens to be the night before the first Chanukah candle is lit. What a wonderful present to be able to give!

Read the whole moving story here.

And bid on the many cool things people are offering for the auction to Help Vera here. (I'll be putting up something myself very soon.)

From Adrienne Martini's blog, Martinimade: There is now Steampunk yarn. And yarn based on Sweeney Todd.

It's enough to make me wish I could knit.

HOLY CRAP!!! Their "Urban Poetry" line has a yarn called . . . Riverside!!! Right adjacent to Urban Decay . . . You don't suppose--? Could it be--??
(And are you all too young to remember the routine:

- My mother made me a homosexual!
- Gee...If I gave her the yarn, would she make me one, too?

Well, would she?)

Sorry I haven't caught up with all your fabulous Japanese comments & translations, which I loved exceedingly - I've been trying to use my writing time to, well, write. This story is really kicking my butt - I'll write up another Process Report when I'm a little further in. It's altogether different from the last one I told about. F**cking Riverside. Fitting it into a short story is like trying to fit an elephant into panty hose.

Also, I'm planning our trip to Paris in Oct/Nov because we're going to Utopiales in Nantes - if anyone has a lead on a 2-bedroom flat to sublet in Paris for us + another couple, probably Oct. 24- Nov. 5, please let me know. And also Amsterdam, which we're going to try to visit Oct. 21-24 - hoping to do another event at American Book Center, if they can fit us in. . . . We used to love Hotel Seven Bridges, but they appear to have tarted it up considerable (yes, that is our old room! the big one right there on the front page under "Our rooms"!), and the Euro is kicking my butt even worse than Riverside.

Oh, and my bestest friend is coming to NYC to get married next week, and everyone's staying in my apt and I'm organizing everything from cake to theater tix for the in-laws. I'm, like, all Mother of the Bride. Yeeech.

I haven't read my FList in a million years and have no idea what anyone's up to. Sorry. If you're sick, I hope you get better. And if you're happy, I'm happy for you. (And if you're writing up an effortless storm . . . I hate you.)

Artist Craig Hamilton is having a Fire Sale to raise money to keep from being evicted. He's selling off pretty much everything. Some pretty amazing stuff, there, especially his Neverland series. I first met Craig when a friend commissioned a Richard & Alec drawing from him - but as far as I know, it's not up on his site . . . yet.

Our beloved pal Doselle Young (and friends) are signing The Darker Mask ("a collection of original prose stories recalling the derring-do of the beings we call Superheroes...[but in] a literary universe outside of what has been predominantly white... and male...") in LA this Saturday 8/23, 3-5 pm.