Positive Trends

Since World Fantasy I've had an unpecendented amount of sales. In the past week, this has ramped up considerably. I've had orders of one sort or another every day for the past week. I even had a lifetime subscription come through. That was really cool.

When I mentioned the uptick in sales to my wife, she said "So what do you think accounts for this?" Being a sarcastic nit, I wanted to state that it was due to the fact of people recognizing my editorial brilliance. But then I stopped and thought about it.

What did account for this uptick in sales? I'd like to keep replicating it, and if it's truly my editorial brilliance, that I can at least work with. If it's something else I did...that could be more problematic. I know that being at World Fantasy helped. It gave me a chance to be out in front of people and talk and have people want to take a look at Electric Velocipede. I hope that the mini-zines I made inspired some people to take a chance (although I've not seen any of them come back to me as completed order forms....). Many of the contributors have mentioned on their blogs that they received their copies, which I'm sure brought some people to my site to look at the issue. I also contacted contributors for future issues, which has also been blogged about and may be bringing people my way.

More importantly, I've been seeing people I don't know (i.e., not contributors, past, present, or future, nor friends of mine) talk about the zine, and this current issue in particular, in a positive light. For example, Pam McNew wrote a very nice review/synopsis of the issue. I know that Pam is a subscriber, but I don't know Pam. We've not met. But she liked this issue, and that makes me happy.

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede, Reviews

Six Weird Things Iron Chef Edition

There's been a lot of people over the past few months who've done the themed blog post of six weird things about them. I've decided to do six weird things about me that involve food. Here we go.

1. My absolute favorite vegetable is the brussel sprout; love 'em!
2. For the longest time I hated beer and brats (this is only weird because I'm from WI, home of...well...beer and brats).
3. At a new restaurant I'll talk about the things I'm thinking about ordering almost ad nauseum. Often I end up ordering something completely different from what I was talking about and I end up disappointed with my dinner. Goat comes to mind. So does a deep-fried Scotch egg.
4. While I like to try new things (in fact I often order something strange [see #3 above]) there are a few things that I will always order when I see them on the menu: chicken parmigan at an Italian restaurant; General Tso's chicken at a Chinese restaurant; and potato skins. Man I love potato skins! While I don't always get chicken parm or General Tso's, I will ALWAYS order potato skins when they're on the menu.
5. I worked for Wendy's for about 9 years (mostly part-time). Not too weird, until you start to think about some numbers. Let's say I averaged about 800 hours a year (2,080 hours being full-time). So that's 7200 hours. Knowing that I worked lunch time in a mall where we'd do $800 hours (let's call that 160 hamburgers) and I also worked $50 hours late nights (or 10 hamburgers) so we'll say that I averaged 50 hamburgers an hour that I worked (assuming more busy times than not and picking an arbitrarily low number to reflect non-hamburger orders I filled). That means I made about 360,000 hamburgers while I worked at Wendy's. Yikes.
6. Growing up we always had a goose for Thanksgiving. Since it looked like the big bird (not Big Bird) that people were eating on television (I also thought all television was set in WI, but I blame HAPPY DAYS and LAVERNE & SHIRLEY for this) I assumed that everyone ate goose for Thanksgiving. I was much older than you'd think when I finally realized that my family was special.

Now it's your turn.

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede

Free Lifetime Subscription

To anyone who does this:



Make your own image at Image Chef.

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede

Thankful

Well this is a day late, but since we made a 20lb. turkey for four adults and two children yesterday...

I'm thankful for the lovely Minz-Mahoneys who came to our home yesterday for our annual orphan Thanksgiving (both families being Midwest transplants living on the East Coast). As stated above, we had not only too much turkey, but too many potatoes (both sweet and russet), too many green beans, too much stuffing, too many wheat rolls, not enough cheeseball (there's some left, but can you ever have too much cheeseball?), and three desserts.

Yes, three desserts. A pumpkin cheesecake, an apple pie, and a red velvet cake. Mmmmm. Too much dessert.

And not once did we try to control ourselves. I didn't go overboard--today I feel normal and not bloated--but I was certainly full yesterday. It was a truly wonderful day, so again:

Thanks.

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede

10 Years of Lady Churchill

So it's come to my attention that Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet is celebrating it's ten-year anniversary with the publication of issue #19. It's just amazing that they've been able to keep going for ten years. It's also amazing to see what they've accomplished in ten years of work, and where they are now with Small Beer Press. So a big hearty hooray for Gavin and Kelly for all the great work they've done over the years.

I hadn't thought about it, but it's been five years since I started Electric Velocipede. I end this year with eleven issues of the zine (better watch out Gavin, I'm catching up with you!) and one chapbook. Exciting times, to be sure.

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede

Electric Velocipede 11

It's been going pretty slow for me to get out copies of the current issue. Of course, I think the impending holidays (starting with the little-celebrated-outside-my-home Shai's birthday on Wednesday, moving on and through Thanksgiving, John Con, Christmas, and New Year's) combined with my workplace construction finishing have given me a lot on my plate.

Nonetheless, the contributor copies have made their way into the mail. I'm hoping tonight (after a weekend Target stop for shipping supplies) to box up copies to retailers. I also put together and sent out the contracts for the Logorrhea anthology last week. So I'm keeping busy. Over the weekend I need to sort out my reviewer copies. I've sent out some, handed some out at World Fantasy, but there are more to do.

A nice thing about #11 is that orders keep trickling in, so whenever I get the feeling that I'm all set with copies to send out, there are more. Please note, this is a Good Thing. I'd love to send out all the copies I have. If you're a MySpace use (or thinking about becoming a MySpace user) go to:

http://www.myspace.com/electricvelocipede

You'll find a special subscription offer for MySpace users. This is only for NEW subscribers, not for renewals!

I'd like to make a quick shout-out to all the unknown-to-me people who are recommending the zine to others. I see a lot of blog posts about the new issue from people I don't know, and that's very cool. It takes stuff like that to keep this going, both financially and emotionally. Thanks!

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede

2007 Conventions

A bunch of other people have posted about conventions they're planning on going to, so since I am a lemming/sheep/marmot/whatever I'm posting mine tenative plans, too. It's a short list since I won't be going to Japan for Worldcon, and I won't be going to NASFiC because of the hotel policies.

• Wiscon, May 25 - 28, 2007
• World Fantasy, Nov 1 - 4, 2007

Next year's publication schedule tenatively looks like this:

1. Electric Velocipede #12, May 2007
2. Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories, May 2007
3. William Shunn chapbook, Summer 2007
4. Electric Velocipede #13, November 2007

I have some big plans for issue #14, which I was initially going to try and publish this next year, but I think it's better if I give myself as much time as possible before it comes out.

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede, conventions

Now That's Just Plain Silly

(click on the image to see a full-size version)

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede

Electric Velocipede #11

(image copyright Thom Davidsohn; click on image for a larger, cleaner version of the image)

I sent out subscriber and single-issue purchases this morning. I hope to have contributor and retailer copies out tomorrow. I'll be sending out review copies by the weekend.

If you don't see your copy by next week, and you think you should be seeing a copy, please contact me.

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede

It's REAL!!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE: Added links to the Hal Duncan and Neil Williamson pieces, which are available online.

So I was ordering books for the library when I decided to see if Logorrhea was listed in Baker & Taylor. You can tell I'm not really an author since it hadn't occured to me before to look. Well, lo and behold, there is was. With an ISBN and everything. (it's 978-0-553-38433-8 [or 0-553-38433-3 for you pre-ISBN-13 phillistines]) And, it's obviously available at Amazon, so that's cool.

I've been on the other side of things hundreds of times. But this is the first time that I've been responsible for the content of a book that's being published. I'm somewhere between excited and a nervous wreck.

I'm honestly overwhelmed. I have to thank my editor, Juliet Ulman, for making this all possible. And of course, you should all go out and pre-order your copies today. :)

Here is the final line-up, in order:

Hal Duncan - “The Chiaroscurist”
Liz Williams - “Lyceum”
David Prill - “Vivisepulture”
Clare Dudman - “Eczema”
Alex Irvine - “Semaphore”
Marly Youmans - “The Smaragdine Knot”
Michael Moorcock - “A Portrait in Ivory”
Daniel Abraham - “The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics”
Michelle Richmond - “Logorrhea”
Anna Tambour - “Pococurante”
Tim Pratt - “From Around Here”
Elizabeth Hand - “Vignette”
Alan DeNiro - “Plight of the Sycophant”
Matthew Cheney - “The Last Elegy”
Jay Caselberg - “Eudaemonic”
Paolo Bacigalupi - “Softer”
Jay Lake - “Crossing the Seven”
Leslie What - “Tsuris”
Neil Williamson - “The Euonymist”
Theodora Goss - “Singing of Mount Abora”
Jeff VanderMeer - “Appoggiatura”

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede, Logorrhea

It's Alive! (the Jim Minz edition)

So I spoke with Jim this morning. He sounds better (hell, a LOT better) than he did on Saturday when I saw him. He's basically home this entire week. He said today was the first day he woke up without a fever, so that's pretty exciting.

Jim seemed to have caught some sort of flu bug. He feels that it was exacerbated by a flu booster shot he got on Monday (perhaps some sort of reaction to it?), but he's not sure. What he does know is that he's on medication and he's getting better.

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede, Jim Minz

World Fantasy 2006 Official Report

Here is my full World Fantasy Report. I've tried to be specific without being boring (I'm sure I will fail, I tend to be verbose). I most likely will forget to mention someone somewhere, and I apologize for that in advance. I'm only posting a link as it's fairly long, and probably isn't that interesting of a read. This was not an attempt to name drop, but it reads like that to me. Halfway through, I thought about not finishing it, but I've never done a full con report before, so I thought I should complete it.

I mean, re-reading this thing and it seems like a huge cry for attention. 'I had lunch with so-and-so,' 'I met so-and-so for drink,' 'So-and-so got dropped on his head.' Blech! I'm not intending for this to be a big ego-boo and have everyone be impressed with how cool I am because of the people I know.

Or am I? Maybe I am so desperate for attention that I glom onto better known people to make myself look better. Maybe I am trying to get attention through others instead of my own merits. It could be that I just want people to love me so much that I'll do anything for their attention.

Who knows? Click on if you dare.

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede, WFC 2006

Oh God, How Weird

Here's a post that I bet you all (or y'all as I picked up in TX) never thought you'd see.

Ahem.

I just sent a submission to Rabid Transit #6. I hope that many of you consider submitting to Rabid Transit as well. It's an excellent ongoing series, edited by Alan DeNiro, Kristin Livdahl, and Christopher Barzak. This is the first time they've ever opened themselves to general submissions so be kind.

It's weird to be on this side of the table....

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede, Hell freezing over

World Fantasy 2006

I'll do a proper post later, but this photo of Walter Jon Williams and Kelly Link is a link to my Flick set of my World Fantasy photos. And you can go here for a World Fantasy 2006 Pool that I created.

Tags: Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede, World Fantasy 2006