"And as you stay for the play Fantasy has in store for you, glowing light will see you through..."

My brain has finally recharged after my first World Fantasy Convention evar! I met so many people, renewed some old acquaintances, and once again was shown just how much Barcon and Con-Suite-Hallway-Con and people's individual readings are slowly starting to matter more to me than panel programming. Unless I'm on a panel, of course, which I was!

Here's what else I learned...

"Keep on talking all you want. Well you don't waste a minute of time..."

Next weekend, I'll be at the 2012 World Fantasy Convention in Toronto.  Won't get there until late Thursday, though.  If you aren't able to find me at the bar, or with the Dagan Books crew, you'll be able to catch me at Vaughn East at 3:00 pm Friday at my first panel ever...

You're probably thinking, "There goes the neighborh..." "How did a yahoo like you get on a WFC panel?"  Probably because of the book I co-edited, Bibliotheca Fantastica.

So yes, I am ostensibly relevant to the panel's interests.  But still, I look at that lineup of my fellow panelists, and all I can think of is...

I switched the lyric from Steve Winwood's "Freedom Overspill" that I was going to use as the title of this post.  It was originally a line from the bridge...

You got no right going around
Talking 'bout the things that you do

But screw all that because, hey, ZOMGI'mgonnabeonaPANELatWFC!!!ZOMG!!!  So, here I am--rather, there I'll be--hopefully caffeinated, fighting off my imposter syndrome, and talking about books!

"I'm just looking for clues at the scene of the crime..."

This is a "Proof of life" post.

I do have stuff I could be talking about.  Just don't quite have the wherewithal yet.  Mostly because it requires a level of organizational thought which I'm not currently capable, since I'm still recovering from whatever Andromeda Strain kept me away from the dayjob last week.

In the meantime, here's the stuff I've been marinating my brain in for the past couple of weeks...

"That's just the way it is. Some things will never change..."

Seems like a lot of PBS documentary films set in the Philippines are coming out of the woodwork lately.  A few months ago, I saw Left By the Ship on Independent Lens , and last week on POV, Give Up Tomorrow. That's awesome!!  Okay, I might be a little biased. 

Give Up Tomorrow was more relatable to me.  Not because anything in my life resembles the predicament of the film's primary subject, Paco Larrañaga... well, come to think of it, no one's life could.  Back in the late 90s, well before the social media and just before the 24-hour news cycle, I remember catching the occasional word about the Philippines' version of "The Trial of the Century."  I never took the time to learn much about it, thinking it was just some Filipino hyperbole.

"But behind the chalet, my holiday's complete..."

Popping my head out of the woodwork (read: out of my ass) again, because it's been too long.

Stuff going on that's too personal to report, but what I'd like to do is at least get to the backlog of stuff that isn't too personal.

Because, you all missed me, right?  Right?

"Funny how things come undone..."

As is typical, it's been weeks since Readercon and I've yet to post anything on it.  I have those posts in the works--it's just been an hard couple of weeks with Life, the Universe, and Everything.  I'll be honest, I've been in my own personal funk.  Given that, posting my con wrapup has been the last thing on my mind. But I find myself so appalled and disgusted with the whole Readercon harassment debacle -- I'm still a little too disgusted to rehash it, so here, just read it -- that I realized that I'd never get my con posts up unless I talked about this first.

Chapter XXXIX

It's my hope that by the time I hit Chapter XL, I'll be able to look back on the time between now and then, and have at least as many good things to say as there was about the year 2261 in the Babylon 5 universe...

And because it's a holiday weekend as well as my birthday, the peanut gallery is closed. :)

A One-Sentence Story

I woke up yesterday morning and found myself @-bombed on Twitter as I slept.  Once I had my coffee and figured out what it was all about, I saw that I was dared to come up with a one-sentence story (the longer, the better) before Wednesday.  I was going to wait until Tuesday night since I'm not the biggest taker of writing-challenges.  But then the idea struck, so I figured why not take my brain-dump now. :)

Thing was, I jumped the gun a little too fast and wrote a story that was just, IMO, too much the same as someone else's.  Kinda really ticked myself off actually, but in the end, I did (despite how often I told myself not to) the only thing I could do.

So, Anatoly, Alex, Ken, Jake, Carrie, Damien, Tom, Amanda, and whoever else I might have forgotten -- you have no one to blame for this but yourselves... :)

"Make a scene tonight, and read about it in the morning..."

The SF Signal Podcast (Episode 120) came out last Thursday.  I talked about the anthology Bibliotheca Fantastica for Dagan Books, and for which the edits are coming along very nicely.

I'm only getting around to putting this up now, since I've been busy with the edits, and with preparing for my first trumpet-playing gig in 8 years.  This is related, trust me...

"Psych one, psych two. What do you know? All your life is channel 13..."

I saw and read and watched on TV a lot of things as a kid that certainly my parents wouldn't have wanted me to see.  On the down-low, of course.  Nowadays though, the 'rents would be considered downright negligent.  Still, I relate to this, from Michael Sarko on Popdose...

I admit I’m nostalgic for the days of TV’s unbidden bizarreness, but I know each generation has its own thing. Indie theaters, cavernous book stores, random pamphlets, underground newspapers– They’re all sources of weird throughout the history of pop culture. One way or another, a kid needs to have that strange fruit to fuel creativity and open-mindedness.

"I've been one poor correspondent..." (Again)

I was tempted to call this post "Don't Call it a Comeback" and put up the video for the classic "Mama Said Knock You Out."  But that's not my style.  I do feel like I'm sort of coming home again.  That is to say, back to something closer to my normal self.

And besides that, you all know The Menahan Street Band is more my style anyway.  And, this is a bit of a homecoming, after all.

So, this is the portion of the entry where I make vague, cryptic statements about what's kept me away for so long.  How I've been, what's been going on, what unspeakable Lovecraftian horrors I've stared into which drove me temporarily insane, &c. In time, in time.  Maybe. 

Actually... probably not.  Not here, anyway. 

But the important part is, I've finally, after a few months, regained the ability to "fake it 'til I make it." Until then, I'll occasionally open up the peep hole, mutter a few things occasionally (lots going on to talk about soon!), and then close it.  Thus, comments are closed for now.

Oh, and I took the dynamic view off and put the old template back up, at least until I find something better.

@Inkpunks

From a cool t-shirt.

Galen, from the Inkpunks crew, invited me to do a guest post for them.  I did a little Sally Fields "You like me! You really like me!!" dance in my head.  Little did she know how hard I was banging said head into my desk trying to come up with a worthy post, before she mentioned, "Oh yeah, a bunch of folks are doing posts about workshops."  The big ones.  The ones all of us genre writers want to go to--Clarion, Odyssey, Viable Paradise, Uncle Orson's, &c. The ones that a lot of us can't take six weeks away from life to attend.

At least, not directly...

Check out "Autodidactic Asphyxiation" at the Inkpunks blog.