Lavie Tidhar

It is with great regret that I announce the cancellation of the Lavie Tidhar chapbook Fortean Signs of Rain, that was set to come out this Fall. It is just not feasible in this economy for me to bring out the chapbook, and I decided rather than hold on to the project indefinitely, it was best to cancel it entirely.

I hope that this project can be brought to light by someone. Tidhar is a very talented author, and I think more people should get a chance to read him.

READING: Jeffrey Ford's THE SHADOW YEAR

I assume that everyone who reads this blog reads Jeffrey Ford. No!? Go read this and come back when you're done. I'll wait. OK, you have some sort of idea of the type of fiction of which Mr. Ford is capable.

In THE SHADOW YEAR we follow an unnamed narrator, his older brother Jim, and their younger sister Mary through the events of one Summer during the 1960s. A prowler has appeared on their street, causing consternation for the adults, but excitement for the narrator and his siblings as they finally are able to fill their Summer with something: they are going to discover the identity of the prowler. At the same time, the chilcren take note of a mysterious white car driving quietly around their neighborhood late at night.

The boys build a model of their home town in the basement, which they dub Botchtown. The narrator begins constructing stories about Botchtown's inhabitants, Jim adds more details to the people and homes in the model, and Mary... Mary moves the pieces around when the boys aren't around. It doesn't seem random; after she correctly predicts the future location of the prowler and white car, the boys actively want her to help.

As with any Ford piece, the prose is lucid and easy. Even the most complicated topics sound simple coming off Ford's pen. And there's a depth to his writing that is practically unparalleled. While the story moves along and the boys try to uncover the identity of the prowler and the driver of the white car, Ford paints an uneasy family portrait: the boys' father is working several jobs and the family is barely scraping by; the mother drinks herself to sleep most nights; the grandparents live above the garage in an apartment; and the boys have to deal with bullies and pranks at school. As a reader, you're torn between wanting to learn more about the family and wanting to solve the mystery. In a lesser writer's hands, this would be distracting, but for Ford, it just flows naturally.

And everything is told through the eyes of a nine- or ten-year-old boy's eyes. You never forget that it's his voice that's telling the story. So you have his sense of wonder when seeing things for the first time, his terror at events that are mundane to adults, and his unquestioning belief in the strength of his own family. He knows things aren't right, but he loves it all the same.

The only potential drawback the book had for me was that I felt the ending sort of just happened. It felt, open-ended, almost unresolved. However, I look at it as a reflection on real life. Real life doesn't tie itself up neatly; real life has all sorts of things happening and nothing comes to a solid conclusion.

This isn't a book you read for the ending, this is a book you read for the journey.

In Which Katy Perry Fuses My Synapses

Not my typical post, but hey, the last couple posts have all been unusual.

So recently I've been this song "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry. It might not be what people expect me to listen to, but it hits all the right spots for me: catchy chorus, driving bass line, a little distortion (this song could be powered up and ROCKED), and clever lyrics.

And then I saw the video. Needless to say, a pop song I was already digging combined with girls in lingerie just about threw me a short circuit.

This weekend I bought the album and I really like it. So there.

I Believe We Have Touch Down...

I've been told for a long time, that the best fruit ever is a mangosteen. But, alas, they were not available in the US. I could only dream of what they tasted like. I could only hope that I would some day travel to Australia or Thailand or some similar place and be able to try the awesome mangosteen.


Not anymore baby! I found mangosteens in my grocery store. Yes. In frickin' IA. A mango-STEEN. Holy crap, right? All I can say is, thank goodness for Melissa's; if it wasn't for them I wouldn't have HALF the produce we're able to get here in IA.

Check out that price tag, youch! Would it be worth it? (after all the build up, I don't care that they're $9.99 for FOUR, I'm buying the suckers and eating them!)

It was hard to get into, I ended up cutting the whole thing in half before I could crack it open and eat it properly. The flavour (and you have to use the proper 'u' spelling, right?) was somewhere along the line of a pineapple or a grape, but not quite either. I think the texture was more like something between a pineapple and a grape, so my mind pushed the flavour there, too.

It was good. I'm looking forward to eating the rest. I'm not a lychee fan (which were sitting next to the mangosteens, and what I saw first) so I was concerned that this would fall into the same category. Any hints on opening these better?

And no, at $9.99 for a four pack, I won't be buying them soon, but I was excited at the chance to buy them at all.

Last Lecture

Remember, you CAN achieve your childhood dreams.



Thank you Randy. You made a difference to me.

Randy Pausch, 1960 - 2008.

Worldcon in Denver

I'll be Worldcon on Saturday, August 9. I'm not sure what time, or for how long. I've already over-extended myself by telling people we should meet up while I'm there.* I'd like to go to the Hugo ceremony and see how Daniel Abraham makes out.**

Nonetheless, if you'd like to see me while I'm there, I will probably be in a bar-like area. I may contact some of before I get there to try and determine where the best meeting place would be.

I am not officially a member, but I may buy a day membership depending on what I end up wanting to do. I'll be in the area visiting my brother and his family, so I might have people with me.

Don't scare them.

Hope to see you there!
____________________________
*I think I would need to have two breakfasts, one brunch, three lunches, two high teas, and five dinners.

**That would make the first Hugo ceremony I've ever gone to.

Serendipity?

Damien G. Walter's moving poetic tale "Momentum" from Electric Velocipede 13 has been reprinted online at Serendipity Magazine.

The magazine has featured work from past EV contributors such as Hal Duncan, Jeffrey Ford, Catherynne M. Valente, Brendan Connell, Lavie Tidhar, Neil Williamson, and Neil Ayres. The magazine is a mix of new fiction and reprints.

New Poll: Short Story to Film

Following is a list of science fiction movies that came from short stories. What I want you to do is cast your vote for your favorite film from this list. And if something in this list is just WRONG, let me know that, too.

poll by twiigs.com

Cross-posted on Tor.com.

Tor.com

I have been asked to be the blogger for Tor.com and speak on all issues related to short fiction. I'll most likely also talk about small/independent press things. If you're coming here from Tor.com, welcome! Glad to see you!

For those who don't know, this is the blog for Electric Velocipede, a World Fantasy Award nominated magazine of speculative fiction. I started the magazine in 2001, and have just recently published issue #14. Stories from Electric Velocipede regularly appear in year's best Honorable Mention sections, but stories have also been reprinted in year's best anthologies.

In addition to the magazine, I publish single-author chapbooks from writers like William Shunn, Robert Freeman Wexler, and Ezra Pines.

I'm also the editor of Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories, which was a fantasy and science fiction anthology of stories based on spelling-bee winning words that came out in May of 2007.

Some of the content you find here will be similar to what you see on the Tor.com site. What can I say? It's what interests me. On this blog, you should see more of a focus on what Electric Velocipede is doing, whereas on Tor.com the talk should be more to the whole field.

How Many Books Do You Read Each Year?

A few weeks ago, I posted about how I read, i.e., how many books I had going at one time, etc. I'd like to follow that up with a question about how much you're able to read over the course of a year.

Around the turn of the century, one of my new year's resolutions was to read at least a book a week. At the time, it felt like an easy pace to keep. I figured I'd have no problem reading a book a week. I would tell people, "I read a book a week" and go about my merry business.

I know that some of you are scoffing at my one book a week. You see that and say, "What a slacker; I read a book every few days." And there are others who see that and say, "Where do you find the time?" A few more probably even say, "Where do YOU find the time?"* But you know, I like reading, and I get a lot of books, so a book a week seemed reasonable. Like I said above, piece of cake, right?

Then, in 2004, I decided to actually track what I was reading. You know, put my money where my mouth is.** Turns out I was barely making 30 books a year most of the time. Often I was struggling to meet half of my self-imposed quota. I have to say, I was surprised to see how far off I was.

Needless to say, I still felt that I could read a book a week. I just needed to step up my game. In 2006 I started working in libraries. That meant I could read for work. I had some extra justification for my reading.*** Consequently, in 2006 I had my best year since making my resolution and hit 43 books read for the year.

I'll admit, there was some hacks to this list. I did add manga titles, but with conditions. I only added them to my list if I a) read ten or more volumes, or b) read the entire run if it was less than ten volumes (OLDBOY being eight volumes, but I consider reading the whole thing reading a book). There are 12 manga titles on my 2006 list.

I was also a young adult librarian at the time (part of why I was reading so much manga; there were plenty more titles I only read a couple volumes of), so there were 12 young adult books I read, as well as a half dozen or so standalone graphic novels. The point is, the reading content was fairly quick and easy. Hence, more books got read. Last year I did what I was now thinking was my typical rate: 36 books.

This year, I've read 31 books already. According to a quick online search, we are in week 29 of this year. I'd really like to actually read 52 books this year. I think I can do it.

How about you? How many books are you able to get done over the course of a year?
______________________
* This is what I do with my time: work full-time at an academic library, work part-time at a public library (one day a week), do freelance coding and user documentation for a small software company, publish a magazine several times a year, publish a chapbook each year, write a monthly column for the Online Writing Workshop, do book layout for PS Publishing (a few books a year), blog for Tor.com, blog for Pop Goes the Library, blog here for Electric Velocipede, watch at least 40 hours of tv (this includes DVD viewing) each week, and spend time with my wife and daughter. I mostly read during my 30 minute lunch break at my full-time job. So I have about 2.5 hours of reading I can get done each week.

** I shoot my mouth off a lot, so I figured I should back it up. I try to not shoot my mouth off without knowing that I can back it up, but as I get older, I've found a lot of things I've assumed about my abilities don't reflect reality when put to the test.

*** I really had no more or less justification, I was just forcing my brain to stop making excuses for not reading.

Subscription Poll; Let's See if This Works

UPDATE: Count only the print magazines you subscribe to, or even those you buy every (or nearly) issue of. Do not count online magazines. I will have a follow-up poll on how much genre magazines you read, regardless of their physical makeup.

I'm trying out a poll from twiigs. The poll is about how many genre magazine subscriptions you have:

poll by twiigs.com

So how about it?

Year's Best Science Fiction 25th Edition

As many others are posting, here are the stories from what I published that made Gardner Dozois' Honorable Mention list in the back of the current edition of Year's Best Science Fiction:

From Logorrhea:
Daniel Abraham - The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics
Paolo Bacigalupi - Softer
Theodora Goss - Singing of Mount Abora
Jay Lake - Crossing the Seven
Tim Pratt - From Around Here
Leslie What - Tsuris
Liz Williams - Lyceum

From Electric Velocipede:
Issue 12
Jay Caselberg - The Garden of Earthly Delights
Michael Jasper - A Miracle in Shreveport
Lavie Tidhar - The Prisoner in the Forest

Issue 13
Claude Lalumière - Hochelaga and Sons

From An Alternate History of the 21st Century by William Shunn:
"Objective Impermeability in a Closed System"
"Not of this Fold"

Not too bad, considering the only true SF that I published this last year was the Shunn chapbook (from which Gardner placed both the new stories in his Honorable Mentions). There wasn't much in the yearly summation about what I published, either. But again, this is a science fiction anthology, and last year I trended towards speculative fiction and new weird type stuff.

KGB Raffle Now Live!

Pursuant to my post last week, the KGB Raffle is now open for you to buy tickets!

The raffle runs from July 14 through the 28. There are a lot of great prizes waiting for you to buy tickets. There's a gorgeous Ray Bradbury limited edition that I'm eyeing myself, plus a little prize package from me, and many more lovely things.

What are you waiting for!? Go buy some tickets!

My Locus Ballot

UPDATED: to be cleaner and nicer looking.

OK, here is what I put in as my Locus ballot. I wasn't actually going to post this, but considering the kerfuffle about the votes, and the fact that these votes counted double since I am a subscriber, I thought it would be fun to list them.

In the RARE case that I voted for the eventual winner, I've bolded that entry:

Science Fiction Novel
McDonald, Brasyl
Lake, Mainspring
Ruff, Bad Monkeys
MacLeod, The Execution Channel
Reynolds, The Prefect

Fantasy Novel
Duncan, Ink
Sedia, The Secret History of Moscow
Pratt, Blood Engines
Valente, In the Cities of Coin and Spice
write-in: Barzak. One for Sorrow

Young Adult Novel
Miéville, Un Lun Dun
Larbalestier, Magic's Child

First Novel
Barzak, One for Sorrow
Bledsoe, The Sword-edged Blonde
Armstrong, Grey
Fintushel, Breakfast with the Ones You Love
Hill, Heart-Shaped Box

Novella
Hand, Illyria

Novelette
Abraham, The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics
Lake, Crossing the Seven
Shunn, Not of This Fold
write-in: Pratt, From Around Here
write-in: VanderMeer, Appoggiatura

Short Story
Goss, Singing of Mount Abora
Shunn, Objective Impermeability in a Closed System
write-in: Caselberg, The Garden of Earthly Delights
write-in: Swirsky, How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth
Fowler, Always

Magazine
Electric Velocipede
Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet
Realms of Fantasy
Clarkesworld
Strange Horizons

Publisher
Night Shade Books
Small Beer Press
Bantam Spectra
MonkeyBrain
Wheatland

Anthology
Klima, Logorrhea
Strahan, Eclipse One
Link/Grant, The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet
Datlow, Inferno
Dozois/Strahan, The New Space Opera

Collection
Pratt, Hart & Boot & Other Stories
Waldrop, Things Will Never Be the Same
Barron, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories

Editor
Juliet Ulman
Lou Anders
Gavin Grant/Kelly Link
Jonathan Strahan
write-in: John Klima

Artist
Stephan Martiniere
John Picacio
Shaun Tan
write-in: Jon Foster

Art Book
Fenner/Fenner, Spectrum 14: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art

Out of all that, I got THREE things right. Guess my double counting votes didn't amount to much.

Bibliophile Stalker reviews PSYCHOLOGICAL METHODS

Charles Tan at Bibliophile Stalker reviewed Robert Freeman Wexler's chapbook Psychological Methods to Sell Must Be Destroyed: Stories over here, giving it a four out of five. Here's a choice quote:

"Wexler's prose is fresh and quite different, engaging in very human concerns filtered through the lens of literary style and technique that's neither condescending nor blatant yet quite accessible."

The chapbook can be ordered here (you'll actually need to scroll down a bit to see Robert's chapbook).

An Announcement about the next issue(s) of Electric Velocipede

Yes, that's Announcement with a capital 'A,' so pay attention. As I prepared to mail issue #14 this past month, I came to the realization that issue #15 needed to be at the printer by the end of June in order to have it ready for Worldcon in early August. That meant I should have already edited the issue and put it in the hands of the authors for revisions.

It was not going to be feasible for me to meet this schedule. On top of that, I will not officially be at the Worldcon in Denver, so there was no burning reason to ensure that the issue be ready and available.

I could rush the issue, I could get it ready in time. But that would put a lot of undue stress on me and the contributors. I’d rather take the time and put out a product that I’m happy with; that’s how I’ve done every issue so far.

So I’ve decided to publish a double issue. Issues 15 and 16 will be combined into one super-sized 150-page issue. Subscribers will receive the same content as if the issues were published separately, but the double issue will count as two issues. This super-sized double issue will be available closer to the World Fantasy convention this fall.

Here is the table of contents:

Cover
Thom Davidsohn

Fiction
Novelettes
Corey Brown - "Child of Scorn"
Claude Lalumière - "Destroyer of Worlds"
Darren Speegle - "Strains of the Lost Oktober"

Short Stories
Olivia Ambrogio - "Trades"
Jayme Lynn Blaschke - "A Plague of Banjos"
Terry Bramlett - "Sallie's Price"
Sheila Crosby - "Unreal Estate"
Aliette De Bodard - "The Dragon's Tears"
Catherine Dybiec Holm - "Detours"
Robert J. Howe - "Season of the Long Now"
Alex Dally MacFarlane - "Two Coins"
Michael Neal Morris - "Partita for continuo"
Michelle Muenzler - "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon"
Timothy Mulcahy - "The Tree Reader"
Patrick O'Leary - "The Oldest Man on Earth"
Erin Pringle - "The Floating Order"
Alistair Rennie - "A Doom of My Own"
Patricia Russo - "Sitting Round the Stewpot"
William Shunn - "Timesink"
Leslie Claire Walker - "The Devil Wears Combat Boots"
Jonathan Wood - "Notes on the Dissection of an Imaginary Beetle"

Poems
Catherine Edmunds - "Installation"
David C. Kopaska-Merkel - "Cher Amazon"
Shira Lipkin - "Wool and Silk and Wood"
Rachel V. Olivier - "Homemade Rosewater"
Rachel V. Olivier - "The Story"
Terrie Lee Relf - "on realizing death is a man"
J.C. Runolfson - "Now You See her"
Rena Sherwood - "The Electric Viola Player Wore Black"
Rachel Swirsky - "Remembering the World"

Nonfiction
Penelope O'Shea - "Sampling the Aspic"
Blindfold Taste Test with TKTK

So there will be two physical issues this year as I've done for the past seven years, but there will be three issues' worth of content this year.

And now for something completely different

Sometimes you need to stop and pause and think about what's truly important. Sometimes, you need to remember that when someone really wants to watch Dora and you need to get her in the car to get to daycare, it isn't worth yelling at her. Sometimes you need to laugh and giggle out of a situation rather than get angry.

Some day she will walk out that door and come back only when she has time. Make sure that she wants to come back. Make sure that she knows you love her and that you'd do anything for her.

Not that you can let her stay and watch Dora. You don't have time, and she needs to learn that sometimes it's not about her.


You need to remember, no matter how frustrating, how irritating, how angering she can be, it isn't done out of malice (that comes later). You don't need to teach her that it's ok for someone to yell at her.

No matter how much you dislike hearing, "I just peed in my pants," know that the days of hearing that are numbered. And even though hearing, "I need to go pee pee," every 30 seconds (whether she needs to go or not, and you can't afford to decide, 'this time she doesn't need to') is nearly as frustrating, that, too will pass.

Be patient.

She looks up to you; she takes you as her earliest marker of what a man should be and how he should act. Don't create a bad precedent, don't be a bad example.

This is a lot of pressure. But that's exactly what you signed on for when you decided to have her. She's a lot of responsibility. A lot of work.

She's worth it. Every bit.

_______________________________
NOTE: If looking for Monty Python things, go here instead.

KGB Fantastic Fiction Raffle

UPDATE: The raffle begins in a one week, so you won't be able to buy tickets until then!

For people who don't live on the East Coast, you've probably never had the chance to enjoy the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series. To give you a little background, from their site:

About KGB Fantastic Fiction
KGB Fantastic Fiction is a monthly reading series held on the third Wednesday of every month at the famous KGB Bar in Manhattan, hosted by Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel. The reading series features luminaries and up-and-comers in speculative fiction. Admission is always free.

Some of our past readers
Joyce Carol Oates, Lucius Shepard, Jeffrey Ford, Scott Westerfeld, Kelly Link, China Miéville, Nancy Kress, Jack Ketchum, Jack McDevitt, Stewart O’Nan, James Patrick Kelly, Barry N. Malzberg, Samuel (Chip) Delaney, Holly Black, Michael Swanwick, Kit Reed, Peter Straub, Andy Duncan, Richard Bowes, Catherynne Valente, Ellen Kushner, Jeff VanderMeer, Naomi Novik, Elizabeth Bear, and others.

A Brief History of the Series
Terry Bisson and Alice K. Turner started the KGB Fantastic Fiction reading series in the late 1990s, attempting to bring together mainstream writers with writers of speculative fiction in order to show, in Alice Turner’s words, “that at a certain level they were plowing exactly the same field.” In the spring of 2000 Ellen Datlow took over for Alice K. Turner and in August 2002 Gavin J. Grant, publisher of Small Beer Press, stepped in for Bisson when he moved to California. Matthew Kressel stepped in for Gavin in April of 2008.

I tried to make it to as many readings as I could when I lived out east. It was always a good time. It's one of the many things I miss having moved so far away.

That's why I'm really excited to post about a raffle they're holding to help support the series. There are a bunch of great prizes, including:

• Story in a bottle by Michael Swanwick
• Tuckerization (your name in a story) by Lucius Shepard
• Pen & Ink drawing of an animal-your choice- by Gahan Wilson
• Original art for a George R. R. Martin novel by Tom Canty
• John Picacio signed print of art for Michael Moorcock novel
• Naomi Novik signed TEMERAIRE first edition
• Your very own wormhole from physicist Michio Kaku
• Critique of a short story by Ellen Datlow
• Ray Bradbury limited edition worth $900

You can see the entire list here. I know that for people not on the east coast (or who don't travel to the east coast) supporting this series may seem a little frivolous. But you could win a great prize. Plus, lending some support will help keep this series going, and if this series keeps going, perhaps other people will be inspired to start their own reading series. Or some day KGB Fantastic Fiction will be proud to present you and your new novel in a reading.

If you ever do find yourself on the East Coast the third Wednesday of the month, do yourself a favor and stop by the reading. You won't be disappointed. Upcoming readings can be found here.

But make sure to get there early or you won't find a seat.

How Do You Read?

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm typically reading a couple books at once at any given time. Right now I'm reading:

THE SHADOW YEAR by Jeffrey Ford
MEAT by Joseph D'Lacey
THE AUDACITY OF HOPE by Barack Obama
STRANGE TOYS by Patricia Geary

And in the past five days I've finished MAKE LOVE NOT WAR by David Allyn and SHINJUKU SHARK by Arimasa Osawa. At one point I was reading all six of those books. The current four I've just started. That is to say, I'm not very far into the book, as opposed to I just pulled the book out and started reading it recently.

Now, in some ways I was reluctant to list the books I'm reading, as I don't feel like I'm really reading any of them at the moment. For me, I need to be at least 100 pages into a book before I really feel like I'm reading it. At the moment, I'm not 100 pages into any of the books I'm reading.

For some reason, once I get past that 100 page mark, I feel like I'm really into the book. I remember what's going on every time I pick it up, I don't need to skim back a few pages to catch myself up on which book this is, and I'm usually sucked into the story to want to keep going.

Sometimes I don't get to that 100 page mark. Sometimes that mark comes much later. Rarely, it comes sooner than that. And, I try to not have more than five books in which I'm past the 100 page mark. That's just too much to try and handle.

However, until I start getting some books at the 100 page mark, I will keep adding more and more new books. I have the following books queued up: BLOOD ENGINES by T. A. Pratt, THE BAUM PLAN FOR INDEPENDENCE by John Kessel, THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY by Bill Hussey, and SHARP TEETH by Toby Barlow (I think there are others, like A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, but I'd have to look at the my to-read stack to be sure). Any of these books could suddenly get added to my currently reading stack.

How about you?

Looking for Reviewers

For people who are interested in reviewing either Robert Freeman Wexler's Psychological Methods to Sell Must Be Destroyed: Stories or Electric Velocipede #14 and are willing to read PDFs, please e-mail me: editor [at] electricvelocipede [dot] com.

I've disabled comments on this post because I want people to contact me.