It’s not just because she is a close friend of mine. I swear. Lady is a whiz bang writer and editor, gonna be super famous vry soon, and a kind and thoughtful teacher.
She’s teaching a speculative fiction writing class at Field’s End, and if you’ve been dipping your toes into SFF–or are even wading waist deep–I can’t recommend you consider taking this course strongly enough.
Here’s the description:
Dang, I really love this book.
“No one has ever written truly immortal poetry about how good their dog looks in knitted garments.”
Amen, brother.
So, the awesome Eden Robins (co-editor of Brain Harvest) has a story, “The Empire Builder” in Fantasy Magazine’s final three flash-fiction Halloween stories. Readers get to pick their favorite, and I think you’d really love her piece. You can go read it and vote here.
Come join me at this show. It’ll be good stuff, pinky swear.
Blackbird Orchestra, your next new favorite band, will be performing with Portland’s own The Red King. Also on hand will be Nathaniel Johnstone (of Abney Park), Finn Von Claret, and other local Seattle artists.
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
Columbia City Theater
Seattle, WA
Doors: 6:30PM
Music: 7:00PM
$10 via Brown Paper Tickets or $15 at the door the day of the show. Please 21+ with ID.
1. Thank you to all who read and voted in the Fantasy Magazine Micro-Fiction contest. My short piece, “The Ghost of Henry’s Past” won second place. There’s going to be a podcast of it sometime in the future, courtsey of PodCastle. Nice!
2. I have succumbed to being 36, constantly broke, and needing to geek the fuck out on new things by starting a garden on my patio. I now have 2 coffee cans and a long box filled with 2 breeds of lavender, basil, oregano, and mint, as well as one small cherry tomato plant (already fruiting). I have dill and garlic coming up from seed/clove, bell pepper seeds drying for cultivating, and two mega tomato plants coming in mail (gift from my dad, who wants to be kept in tomatoes).
I also started a freaking compost pile. I made a bin from an old, clean kitty litter container. Compost! But I am seriously super excited about the chemistry of it all, so I feel less like a weirdo, although I’ve been reading way too many articles about Freegans to count my weirdo-ness completely out.
3. Drunk text of the month: from my pal, Maggie, who informed me that she and Chris R. were discussing the size of my boobs in the company of Nick Mamatas, and decided that they were approximately the same size as his head. I found this text as awesome as I did alarming.
1. Off to the Friends of the Seattle Public Library book sale (it’s 1/2 off day on already cheap used books. JOY) and then to my crit group filled with smarty-pants.
2. Brain Harvest has its newest story up, a crawly piece by the uber-talented Jeremy Shipp.
3. Yes, I completely threw away 5000 words of the story I’ve been working on. Painful. But this is why I said what I did in my posting about slush (reiterated by the very talented and dashing D. Zumsteg, who, in unrelated news, is next week’s Brain Harvest pick). Now, hopefully, the little crazy Jewish lady who runs my subconscious* will get cracking on helping me right all the wrongs that spewed onto the page the first time.
*CW ’08 in-joke. Apologies.
A whole bunch of pimpage and link salad for your Friday:
–My makeover. My genius husband has done a refresh of my site’s look and I couldn’t be more pleased with it. See, I threw up this site before he and I formed 4emphasis. I’m a good developer (a much better marketer, though), but a horrible designer. He finally squeaked some time to make my site look the way I actually wanted it to look. So, thanks Chris!
(And yes—he is open for clients)
–Brain Harvest. BH launched last Sunday with a Nick Mamatas story, to unexpectedly huge reaction. Cory, being the proud papa-teacher he is, gave us props on BoingBoing and his Twitter, which was amazing and appreciated. Then, Rajan K. put together an interview with all three of us on the Tor.com blog. We’re cranking along, spending lots of time in the slush pile (yes, each and every sub gets read by an actual editor right now, and yes, we have bought from the slush pile) and are really thrilled that our next update features a completely different type of piece by Vylar Kaftan. Plus, we have big-ass plans for the site and the magazine that we are working on and can’t wait to unveil.
–Also! Don’t forget that Brain Harvest is offering a sliding-scale crit service or, for a donation of merely $10 or more, hand-knitted mustaches.
–More on genius husband. NewMyths.com has featured two of Chris’ pieces as art for their March issue (although, through an editorial snafu, at the time of writing, he is up as Chris Gussoff, not Chris Sumption). Still! Go! Look!
–On genius ex-student/pal Eliza Gauger. If you are in the Seaside, CA area, you should go see her work in “The End” gallery showing. In fact, if you are anywhere in the state of California, you should get in your car and go. Or buy some of her work. I covet “Flee” myself.
1. Your new favorite band, Blackbird Orchestra, is playing a show this Friday at the ‘Vouz. You really should come. It’s cheap, they are really awesome, and my husband’s BFF is the lead (plus, he’s hot and single*):
2. This year is the year I need to get into shape, and since I am such a list-making, goal-oriented, need-to-win kind of bleeding heart, I was thinking doing the Breast Cancer 3 Day would be a really good goal to train for. The Seattle 3 day is 60 miles from September 11 – 13, 2009. I wouldn’t do this alone, so I implore–(so soon after resolutions have been made)–does anyone want to commit to doing this with me? For real?
* He is going to throttle me for mentioning that. But whatever. He is.
1. Blackbird Orchestra played their first show last night at the Comet Tavern, and I have to tell you, even if the lead singer/guitarist/lyricist wasn’t one of my closest pals, I’d still recommend them. However, I find it near impossible to describe their sound…it’s like taking California post punk, shoe-gazing guitar-heavy college indie, Joy Division, and math rock–and smooshing it all together. Kind of.
2. One of my genius ex-students, Eliza Gauger, is, like, dominating art shows this month (which is exactly right. This thorny, dainty sprite is fucking formidable). I am definately making it to the opening of Anachrotechnofetishism and swinging by her solo show as soon as it’s feasible. I highly recc’ you do too.
3. Another brilliant friend of mine (are you starting to suspect that all my friends are brilliant? Me too), Theresa DeLucci, is now blogging for Tor.com (she’s been the Advertising & Promotions Manager there for a long time). She is also a fine ass writer of SF (one of my Clarion West classmates) as well as a fine ass lady in general.
4. My BFF has started drawing comics. Of course, I love them.
5. Today is the start of National Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week. This is a really important issue for me, for personal reasons–I live with two invisible chronic illnesses. It’s difficult, because most of the time I look fine. It just doesn’t mean that I am fine. There are many, many folks out there who have the same experience.
