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April, 2009:

Quick fiction

There are a lot of great small online presses out there, doing interesting things in the realm of SF and fantasy. Ideomancer, Strange Horizons, and many more. One, Crossed Genres, is having an Earth Day sale on PDF subscriptions. Today only, $7.50 for a year (12 months).

Peter Beagle has begun a project to write a song, story, or poem every day for a year, to celebrate his 70th birthday and 50th anniversary of publishing his first novel. It’s $25 to get in on the fun, and have them delivered straight to you. (And it’s a worthwhile cause, too.)

Probably everyone who is interested has already heard this, but just in case: members of the 2009 Worldcon will receive a very nice electronic packet containing most of the materials for the Hugo Award nominees. I got my packet yesterday – wow! Thanks to John Scalzi, the authors and publishers, and everyone else who contributed to putting this together.

In other fictional news, I submitted my first-ever story to a real paying market. Wish me luck!

Today’s Writing Lesson

Characterization

He was a big, broad handsome man, his Greek heritage as evident in his features as the Irish: heavy-lidded and laden eyes, a thug of a nose, a generous mouth beneath a fat mustache. In a suit, he looked like somebody’s bodyguard; in drag at Mardi Gras, like a fundamentalist’s nightmare; in leather, sublime.

(from Clive Barker, Sacrament, p 257 in paperback edition)

All you need to know about the character being described, and a great deal of information about the narrator as well.

Technomancy

I have complicated computer requirements. Linux data processing software is essential to my health and well-being. (Yes, I’m serious. Don’t look at me like that.) I have a fancy expensive toy tool with Windows-only drivers, but using Windows makes me insane. I adore my Linux netbook for first drafts, email, web surfing, but it’s too small for complex revisions or graphics work.

Now there is a magical solution to my problems.

My first computer was a Macintosh IIsi, purchased in early 1991. It was sooooo wonderful: it had a color monitor, and I bought the upgraded version with 5 mb of RAM and an 80 mb hard drive. (Yes, those are both MB and not GB. GB hadn’t been invented yet.) I’d grown up on Radio Shack computers (cassette drives!), but this was the first one that I’d bought myself. I used it for years, until I developed those Linux software requirements.

Since then I’ve had a succession of PCs, both desktop and laptops. I even have a 486 IBM Thinkpad that runs Linux quite happily (actually 2, one for parts), and that I have no worries about taking into adverse conditions because it isn’t worth anything. I’ve looked at the pretty shiny Macs now and then, but stuck to my Linuxy ways.

I need a desktop computer to complement my netbook, and have been shopping around for a couple months. The new iMacs are magic: they’ll run OS X, Linux and Windows all at once. I can have the best of all worlds, in a shiny package. And as of Friday, I will! (And, in the way of such things, for rather less than I paid for my first Mac.)

Oddments

Yet another installment of “Other people’s stuff”. I’ve been out of town far too much – Saturday was the first morning in a month that I was actually at home. (Jacuzzi rooms win.) I had to make my own coffee, but the cat was delighted. All this travel and the associated preparations has put me behind on any number of projects, including (obviously) blogging. I’ve been saving interesting things, though, and will now put them here for your entertainment.

  • New episode of Shadow Unit! And how much do I love you all? I’m blogging, and I haven’t finished reading it yet!
  • From Oxford University Press: “ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment is available online for the first time in its publishing history. To celebrate this milestone, all issues back to volume 1 are currently available FREE online until 15th May 2009.” I like knowing that journals like this exist.
  • “The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research.” Planned launch is April 21.
  • StarShipSofa has put together a podcast of all the Nebula-nominated stories. That’s a fantastic idea (and they have a great name).
  • New Scientist reviews the forthcoming book The Natural History of Unicorns
    by Chris Lavers and Joshua Blu Buhs.
Forsythia

Forsythia