ICYMI: a Con and a Publication

BOSKONE 53. In case you missed it, I’ll be in Boston this weekend, doing the panel/reading/drinking thing. I won’t be hard to find, so come say hi!

COMING SOON. A short essay of mine will appear in THE CLEVELAND NEIGHBORHOOD GUIDEBOOK by Belt Publishing, which drops in May. It aims to be “… the most useful, least authorized resource for Clevelanders, Cleveland ex-pats, visitors, and potential new residents.” And to that end, I plugged a small corner of my former patch of Greater Cleveland.

Where I'll Be at #Boskone

Gonna be at Boskone 53 the weekend of February 19? I am. Here’s my mini-interview with those fine folks, and here’s where I’ll be…

What’s New In Comics?
Friday 17:00 - 17:50, Burroughs (Westin)
Accessing information about DC and Marvel releases is pretty straightforward. But what are the other must-read comics that might be flying under your radar? Whom should you keep your eye on? The comics universe is always expanding; which are the new voices you mustn’t miss?
James Moore (M), A.C.E. Bauer, Robert Howard, Don Pizarro

Reading: Don Pizarro
Friday 19:00 - 19:25, Independence (Westin)
(…wait, wut?)

Hidden Heroes
Saturday 10:00 - 10:50, Harbor III (Westin)
Sometimes the hero of a story isn’t its true protagonist. A commonly accepted example is Sam Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings, who more and more centers the action as the story concludes. What other examples occur to us? Why might an author choose to focus on someone other than the hero? Can the hero ever be the antagonist?
Michael Swanwick (M), Chris Irvin, Mary Kay Kare, Don Pizarro, Beth Meacham

How You Get the Word Out: Starting and Running a Successful Podcast
Saturday 14:00 - 14:50, Harbor III (Westin)
Podcasting gives us an outlet to share our thoughts and ideas with the world, and everyone seems to have something (perhaps a lot) to say. But is podcasting right for everyone? How do you go about “bootstrapping” a podcast? What do you need and what do you need to know? How do you attract and keep an audience? Where do you find a place to host your site? Successful ‘casters pass on their secrets.
Steve Miller (M), Kate Baker, C.S.E. Cooney, Don Pizarro, Brianna Spacekat Wu

How Binge-Watching Could Change TV
Saturday 16:00 - 16:50, Marina 4 (Westin)
The binge-watching phenomena has clearly changed the way we watch television, in-genre or out. Is it also altering the way they create it? Marathon viewers are a mindful audience, who retain more information and understand longer story arcs. Is this leading to more complex characters, more complicated plots — more compelling shows?
Ginjer Buchanan (M), Garen Daly, Daniel M. Kimmel, Don Pizarro, Steven Sawicki

Superhero Open Mic
Saturday 21:00 - 22:20, Marina 1 (Westin)
Kapow! Live from Boskone … enjoy the knock-out stylings of our program participants and audience members who share their open mic skills in the first-ever Superhero Open Mic. Each person gives his/her best 5-minute superhero performance – story, poem, song, skit, interpretive dance, or whatever! OPTIONAL: For extra appeal, feel free to come dressed as a superhero!
Walter H. Hunt (M), Kenneth Schneyer (M), C.S.E. Cooney, Carrie Cuinn, E.C. Myers, Garth Nix, Don Pizarro, Lauren Roy, Mary Ellen Wessels

Come say hi!

World Fantasy Convention 2015; Borgesian Philippines; What I'm Reading

WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION 2015. Took a hop northeast from Ithaca to Saratoga Springs last weekend, despite the Piss Poor Harassment Policy kerfuffle. Managed to not only keep my running streak of being on WFC programming (3 for 3), but I actually appeared on two panels: “Real World Nomenclature, Taboos, and Cultural Meaning” (There’s a pretty good summary here.) and “Bibliofantasies.” Or, as I call it, “Bibliofantasies 2: Electric Bugaloo” since I was also on a panel of the same name at WFC 2012. After all, how the fuck else I could I sit on a panel with Michael Dirda, John Clute, Robert Eldridge, Paul Di Filippo, and Gary Wolfe? The socializing, always the best part of any con, was more targeted now that I’ve been at enough of these things not to fanboy over everybody in the room, and to instead spend the time with people – old and new friends – that I want to spend time with. Okay fine, I finally got to meet Jeffrey Ford and squee about what a big fan I am. Happy?

Not a hoax. Not a dream sequence.

BORGESIAN PHILIPPINES. Missed a talk by Gina Apostol, author of the upcoming novel William McKinley’s World on the Philippine-American War. In it, she makes the disturbing observation about how hard it was to find first-person Filipino voices in records of the period, and where she did find it “…occurring mainly in captured documents within military records, the Filipino voice being a text within a text, mediated, annotated, and translated by her enemy.” There's a bittersweet Romantic tragedy about how this mediated story of the Philippines casts it as a place that’s as fantastic as Borges' Tlön. This is relevant to a project in progress....

WHAT I’M READING. My personally inscribed copy of Mary Rickert’s collection You Have Never Been Here, worth the cover price for the single previously unpublished story “The Shipbuilder.” Pieces of The Best American Travel Writing 2015 edited by Andrew McCarthy, for another project in progress, Laszlo Bock’s Work Rules!, and when I can, Felicia Day’s You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost). Yes, that’s an awful lot of nonfiction, I know. What's your point?

Where I'll Be at the World Fantasy Convention

Gonna be at the 2015 World Fantasy Convention? I am, and here's where I'll be...

Thursday, November 5, 3:00, City Center 2A
Real World Nomenclature, Taboos, and Cultural Meaning

The panel discusses the thorny issue of real world terms that often bear loaded meanings and concepts being transported wholesale into Fantasy worlds. Swearing, cursing, and racial epithets can cause controversy and out-cry. Commonly accepted terms change meaning over time and become taboo. As the politics of the real world change, is there a concurrent transposition into Fantasy worlds? 
A.M. Dellamonica (mod.), Didi Chanoch, Steve Erikson, Don Pizarro, Mark van Name

Saturday, 5:00, City Center 2A
Bibliofantasies

Unaccountably, there is no entry for Bibliofantasies in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy by John Clute and John Grant [Orbit 1997]. Your intrepid panel will attempt to remedy that lacuna by discussing bibliofantasies with a view to creating an entry. 
Michael Dirda (mod.), John Clute, Robert Eldridge, Paul Di Filippo, Don Pizarro, Gary Wolfe

Come say hi!

Today: New Pub at LAKESIDE CIRCUS. Tomorrow: Readercon!

A flash piece o' mine called "Life After Wartime" dropped today over at Lakeside Circus!

"Bu-bu-but... I like my stories read to me out loud," you say.  That's cool, because you can have that, too!

And, if you want to tell me to my face what you think about this story, I'll be at Readercon tomorrow night through Sunday.  Let's hang out!

"Making my entrance again with my usual flare..."

It's been a publishing dry spell, folks.  No one's fault but my own.  But now I'm back, both barrels blazing!

Because I have a face made for radio, I've made my first foray into the wide, wonderful world of podcasting with "The Naturalist Composes His Rebuttal" by Fran Wilde in the latest issue of Lakeside Circus!

I have a story in there too, which should go live next month.  And, I'll be recording that one, so stay tuned!

Bibliotheca Fantastica Is Out!

I've been remiss in announcing that at long last, the anthology Bibliotheca Fantastica, is finally out from Dagan Books!  Here's my introduction to the book.  Trust me, this one is worth the wait!  (Not that I'm biased or anything...)

You can pick it up through Amazon for your Kindle, or in a DRM-free format--the epub file epub, mobi, (which also works on your Kindle), or PDF either individually or as a bundle!

"Help I'm steppin' into the Twilight Zone..."

Just got word that my presentation proposal, "Singing the Body Electric: The Symbiotic Relationship Between The Twilight Zone and the Literature of Speculative Fiction" was accepted for the 2013 Rod Serling Conference!! Now to finish constructing it--it'd been on the back burner for a bit.

The conference, up until my previous go 'round, had always been held in town here, where Rod Serling lived and taught.  This year, the conference will be out in Los Angeles where Serling worked.  I knew this beforehand and thus, no WFC or Dragon*Con for me this year unfortunately.  But I'll still be at Readercon!

@SF Signal's Mind Meld

...I answer a question of mythic proportions!

MIND MELD: What is the Literary Appeal of Gods, Goddesses and Myths? | SF Signal

I could've gone a lot of places with my answer, starting with my extensive knowledge of Norse mythology in third grade, starting with Marvel Comics' The Mighty Thor, through my extensive cross-referencing with The Encyclopedia Brittanica and poring through the footnotes of every mythology book I could get from my grade-school library.  But, that would've just been geeking out instead of answering the question.  And when the big kids at SF Signal offer you a seat at their table and ask you a question, you best answer it!

@Functional Nerds

I'm a few days late (busy as hell), but here's my latest Retro Nerd column for Functional Nerds, in which I write about a disturbing epiphany about two of my favorite childhood TV shows.

Check out, "Knights in Shining Leather."

@Functional Nerds

Today, I d/b/a "The Retro Nerd" for the crew at Functional Nerds.

Check out "Repurposing Nostalgia!"

"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!

"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...

@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.

ReaderCon or Bust!

After tomorrow, I will be in-between jobs.  And during that in-between time, I'll be at one of my favorite places on earth, ReaderCon!  I'll be at the July 15th release party for the novel Broken Slate by Kelly Jennings, which is brought to you by the fine folks at Crossed Genres.

The party will also feature readings by folks who've published stories in Crossed Genres, such as Camille Alexa, Barbara Krasnoff and, yes, yours truly! 

The price of admission is a tweet, blog post, or Facebook update about Broken Slate.  I'm five chapters in, myself, and I'm finding myself slowly riveted by the main character and his world.  So, if you're there, click the link for details and come say hi.

Submitted For Their Approval

I'm officially listed as a presenter for the 2011 Rod Serling Conference!

The Seekrit Nonfic WIP -- Revealed!

I'll be giving my first academic presentation ever at Ithaca College's 2011 Rod Serling Conference in September.  The conference is "an interdisciplinary academic conference dedicated to the works of Rod Serling."

My Face Is Made for Podcasting

Out today: the 49th episode of The Functional Nerds podcast, hosted by Patrick Hester and John Anealio , featuring Carrie Cuinn and me talking about Cthulhurotica, which of course degenerated, uh, led to discussions of tentacle pr0n, plushie C'thulhus, and Urotsukidōji: Legend of the Overfiend.

Thanks again to Patrick and John for having us!

Listen | Download

"What is this thing called love?"

I've joked before about how I look at my last two publications of 2010, which fall under the umbrella of "weird erotica," and think to myself, as David Byrne sang, "My God! What have I done?"

Pulling double duty, Harry Markov reviews both of the anthologies in which I've appeared recently, and he does so on Valentine's Day, no less.  Because nothing says Valentine's Day like zombie sex and tentacle pr0n...

"It's what you felt, it's what you said, what you said, what you said"

Between Philcon (I'm working on that write-up, don't worry!) and Thanksgiving, I forgot to look for my Cthulhurotica writer interview, which was posted the other day.

So, here it is: everything you wanted to know about how "The C-Word" came about.

Oh, and check out the revised cover with my name on the list, there.