Seriously Dudes

(click on the images for full-size photos)

OK, this is a post that I had written at one point and then deleted without posting. It was all rambly and weird and I figured no one cared. It was originally called:

Iowa is Kicking My Ass

After last night, I decided I needed to make the post since apparently Iowa is pissed at me for not acknowledging its awesomeness as well as its ass-kicking prowess...at least where I'm concered.



When I first came down here on Feb 4 to get ready for my new job, it got to about -20 fahrenheit overnight. That's twenty degrees below zero air temperature, no wind. So the wind chill was somewhere between eyeball freezing and skin killing. My apartment has two bathrooms in it (well la dee da) and the one on the north side (the one that doesn't share walls with other apartments, i.e., it's exposed to the elements) had frozen pipes. This would have been good to notice before I went to the bathroom. Oh yeah, sure was fun getting that to work. It took more than a week for the pipes to thaw so that that bathroom was completely useable.



Then, it snowed. This is not strange, but East Coast folks know that I just spent ten years complaining that I missed the cold and snow of the Midwest. I have had enough. Please stop. Also, the windshield wipers on the car I was driving are broken. Once you start them, they do not stop until you turn off the car. (note: this is a different car than the one in the photo; the one in the photo was in a garage for the ice storm...more on that soon)



Then the movers came. Four hours late. And it took them nearly seven hours to get our stuff into our apartment. The whole time the front door was open, so our apartment was about 30 degrees inside. Not good for a 11-month baby. I had to be at work, so it's not I could send my wife somewhere warm. Nope, they got to sit around in the cold and be miserable. A few things got broken in the move, but it was not too bad overall. Of course, then we were left in a small apartment with enough stuff for a house. You couldn't move anywhere. I borrowed a hand truck from the library and rented a garage on the complex so that we could get stuff out of the apartment and have some space. There are no books out in the apartment; there are no decorations out; nothing. It's fairly spartan. We'll be looking for a house soon.



Then there was more snow. And more cold. Average temperatures below freezing, and often below zero overnight. All the Iowans claimed that the winter had been very mild up to that point. Great. Doesn't help me now. Then I got a flat tire. Correct that, when I pulled the tire off, there was a hole--on the inside of the tire--big enough to put both my fists into it. Yay! Nothing better than driving around in the freezing cold and ice with a spare tire on.

This last weekend was the ice storm where these pictures come from. A whole lot of people lost their power, but not us. The lights flickered all day Saturday. I was sure we were going to lose power but we never did. I went to take the trash out, and I couldn't get into the dumpster because it was frozen shut. So I went back out and took some pictures.

Then last night. I was digging for a recipe box behind some recipe books (hey, we're cramped for space) and when I went to stand up, I cracked (read that as: CRACKED) the top of my skull on the pointy edge of the kitchen counter. It dropped me like a sack of rocks. I tried to stay standing, but my body was like 'sorry, you need to spend some time sprawled on the floor now' and I dropped everything and flopped on the floor like a dead fish. My wife didn't know what was going on because she was feeding the baby and I couldn't formulate a coherent answer. I touched the top of my head and it was wet. Nothing better than a bloody head wound at dinner time. I never felt nauseous, or sleepy, or dizzy, just had a huge headache. It still hurts today. And I have a nice scabby bit under my hair.

So it's official, Iowa is kicking my ass. I think it's a character-building thing.

Sale Offer, Repost

SALE OFFER!
Anyone who wants to check out either of last year's issues of Electric Velocipede (#10 and #11) or the Ezra Pines chapbook, please send $10 (retail price of $13 for US, $18 for Canada, and $25 for the Rest of the World) via PayPal with the code NIPPON07 in the comments to evzine[at]aol[dot]com and I'll send all three to you. That's a nice bit of savings for local people and quite a bit of savings for people further away. Why am I doing this? There's some great stuff I published last year, and I think more people need to be aware of it. And, since the convention is outside the United States this year, I should make it easier for people outside the United States to be able to get copies of the zine and chapbook for nominating.

Please note: this offer is only good through March 3, 2007. Obviously, if you take advantage of this offer on March 3 (or the days leading up to it) you won't see the issues before the nominations are due, but I want people to be able to partake of this offer for a couple weeks here.

N.B.: I've posted this again so that the information shows up at the top of the blog page.

Special Sale Offer for Hugo Nominations

UPDATE: I've added some entires for Best Editor, Long Form, and a correction to the Tim Akers Novelette from issue #10.

Hurry, hurry! Step right up and make your Hugo nominations for all things 2006! Your nominations are essential for determining the final Hugo ballot which will be awarded at Nippon 2007 this Summer! You gotta act fast, because these nominations are only good if you get them in by midnight (PST) March 3, 2007!

You can nominate online here (you'll need your Hugo PIN from Nippon 2007 as well as membership info for either Nippon 2007 or LA Con IV) or you can print our a PDF file and mail it in.

Who should you nominate? Well anyone/anything that was published in 2006 that you think was really good. To work for the cause of pimping myself and my products for the Hugos, here's what I worked on/published last year and what awards they are eligible for:

Best Editor, Short Form:
John Klima

Best Editor, Long Form:
Juliet Ulman
James Minz

Best Fanzine:
Electric Velocipede

Best Novelette:
Tim Akers - A Walking of Crows (issue #10)
Rick Bowes & Mark Rich - Jacket Jackson (issue #10)
Tobias Buckell - The Duel (issue #11)

Best Short Story:
Jeffrey Ford - The Way He Does It (issue #10)
Andre Oosterman - The Navel of the Universe (issue #10)
Alistair Rennie - Il Duca di Cesena (issue #10)
Robert Freeman Wexler - Travels Along an Unfurling Circular Path (issue #10)
Scott W. Carter - How to Get Rid of Your Monster (issue #11)
Matthew Cheney & Jeffrey Ford - Quitting Dreams (issue #11)
Nikki Kimberling - Sweetness and Light (issue #11)
Jennifer Pelland - Last Bus (issue #11)
John B. Rosenman - Nine Billion and Counting (issue #11)
Sonya Taaffe - Bar Golem (issue #11)
Steve Rasnic Tem - Sometimes I Get Lost (issue #11)
Mary Turzillo - A Punctuated Romance (issue #11)
Catherynne M. Valente - Milk and Apples (issue #11)
Edd Vick - Moon Does Run (issue #11)
Liz Williams - Tiger, Tiger (issue #11)
Marly Youmans - The Geode (issue #11)
Ezra Pines - Antevellum (from The Sense of Falling chapbook)
Ezra Pines - Of Light and Snow (from The Sense of Falling chapbook)

And here are a few things to consider for other awards:

Best Fan Writer:
Anyone who has a blog is eligible for this award (which includes me) but I would consider nominating someone like John Scalzi for Whatever, Matthew Cheney for The Mumpsimus, Nick Mamatas for Nilihistic Kid, Hal Duncan for Notes from the Geek Show, or Jess Nevins for Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Of course, there are hundreds of science fiction bloggers out there (probably thousands), so consider them when nominating!

Best Related Book
Also, I think you should really consider John Picacio's book, COVER STORY, for Best Related Book. John has really rose to prominence in genre artwork over the past few years, and this first collection of artwork is phenomenal. John did all the layout and design himself, so it's truly a showcase of his talents.

Helpful Sources for Recommendations
And if you're looking for places with recommendations for nominations, check out the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2006 (which includes Jeff Ford's story from Electric Velocipede #10, "The Way He Does It") or the NESFA list. I nattered a little about the awards here, too.

SALE OFFER!
Anyone who wants to check out either of last year's issues of Electric Velocipede (#10 and #11) or the Ezra Pines chapbook, please send $10 (retail price of $13 for US, $18 for Canada, and $25 for the Rest of the World) via PayPal with the code NIPPON07 in the comments to evzine[at]aol[dot]com and I'll send all three to you. That's a nice bit of savings for local people and quite a bit of savings for people further away. Why am I doing this? There's some great stuff I published last year, and I think more people need to be aware of it. And, since the convention is outside the United States this year, I should make it easier for people outside the United States to be able to get copies of the zine and chapbook for nominating.

Please note: this offer is only good through March 3, 2007. Obviously, if you take advantage of this offer on March 3 (or the days leading up to it) you won't see the issues before the nominations are due, but I want people to be able to partake of this offer for a couple weeks here.

Ah crap

Neil Clarke, of the fabulously wonderful Clarkesworld Books (ne Clarkesworld Magazine) announced on his blog recently that he and his wife were going to have another child. This is great news!

It also means that Neil's virtual child (the Clarkesworld Books store) will have to go away.

This really sucks. Neil is one of the great guys of genre bookselling. His store has grown immensely over the past few years and he's always been a great supporter of Electric Velocipede.

But, I completely understand and support his decision. There's been many a time when family matters have cropped up when I've teetered on the brink of cashing in my chips. I've never had to, but I would if my family needed me to.

Good luck Neil! I'm glad to hear that Clarkesworld Magazine will still be around. Everyone go help Neil clean out his garage by doing some shopping!

READING: Grey by Jon Armstrong

At World Fantasy of last year, I was enthusiastically handed an ARC of the novel Grey by Jon Armstrong. Armstrong is a new writer, which occasionally showed in this inventive and fun first novel.

In the future, fashion and music govern everything. Corporations and their products take cues from music and magazines rather than market research or customer needs. Advertising is everywhere and is the world's lifeblood. The story centers around the love affair (an arrainged-marriage cum corporate merger that becomes something more) of Michael Rivers and Nora Gonzalez-Matsu.

The young couple are both afficianados of the uber fashion magazine GREY. In their world, you pick a magazine, or a band, or some sort of style and you live your life to its specifications and nothing else. Michael Rivers has gone as far as surgically altering himself so that he can no longer see colors through one eye.

Of course, as in any Romeo and Juliet pastiche, the parents (in this case Nora's parents) do what they can to keep the couple and, by association, the corporations, apart.

I often had trouble fixing the characters in my head. Michael seemed at times to be either younger or older than his nineteen years. Some of this was due to the insane world that Armstrong created where its people's actions are so alien to our own. Many of the characters portrayed a childish attitude; often whining and throwing tantrums more befitting a two-year old than a paragon of business. However, this helps set Michael and Nora apart from the majority as the magazine GREY lends them an almost aristocratic air of languidity.

I often wished the GREY conceit played itself out a little more strongly and was tied into the plot a little more tightly. Also, I wish the romance between Michael and Nora was either more in the forefront. If the relationship was as important to Michael as he claims, it should take up a larger portion of the book. Nonetheless, I think Armstrong did an admirable job not letting the world of his creation get away from him.

The book reminds me of some of the wilder Philip K. Dick work, and certainly reminiscent of K. W. Jeter, particularly Dr. Adder and Infernal Devices. The book is available now from Amazon and directly Night Shade Books. You might even see it in your favorite local bookstore.

If you're looking for an exciting new author, Jon Armstrong is someone you shouldn't pass up.

Jumping off a bridge

Hey why not. Everyone else is doing it.



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And I'm sure that my map of emeralds will fill slowly, slowly, slowly. Further lending evidence to my lack of self-esteem. Just kidding! What do I expect when I start aping Andy Wheeler and Chris Roberson, monsters of blogging?