Saturday, July 2, 2011

BeneFictions

On Thursday, 6/30, Horrific Miscue, a group of Seattle speculative fiction writers to which I belong, held a reading of prose at the awesome  Inner Chapters cafe (which is also a bookstore!) The proceeds from the reading go to support Japan's recovery efforts.
I think I will express everyone's opinion if I say that the event went incredibly well, and was fun and rewarding both for the writers and their audience. No matter how small such events may be, they require a lot of organizational work, and nothing would have happened without contributions of effort by many Miscue writer-members. Big thanks are due to Liz Argall, Cat Rambo, Vicki Saunders, Tod McCoy, Randy Henderson, Dallas Taylor, and Rashida (Eddie) Smith, who volunteered their time to make things happen: the venue, press release, web publicity, artwork, chapbook printing, audio/video support, donations management. Most of the above-mentioned folks also read their fantastic prose (also available as a chapbook). Others who joined in reading were local authors K.C. Ball, Keffy Kehrli, Sandra Odell, Kris Millering, and myself. Our emcee, the incredible Caren Gussoff, introduced us so imaginatively, that those introductions alone could be considered her flash fiction improvisation -- a special for the event.
In short, if anybody out there is reading this blog post because of the BeneFictions reading by the Horrific Miscue -- thank you. We just may do it again sometime in the near future, and we will keep you posted.     
My sci fi story Death, Rebirth. An Heir, a Karakuri is out in Abyss and Apex this month. I read from this story at this year's Norwescon. I am delighted by the choice of artwork, and the little lily flower section dividers are an awesome touch, considering that there are some -- well,  unusual lilies in the story. 
Thanks and compliments to the editors and staff of Abyss & Apex!

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Internet is the greatest humbling device of all times. Have an "original" idea? Just type it in, and you'll know in a second how many people worldwide thought up exactly the same thing.
For a while, I have been joking how one or the other of my scientific projects would end up published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results. Whenever the results were... well, not reproducible. Then I thought, why not call a blog that? So I did, for about a month.
Just now, someone who has apparently been misdirected to my blog in his search for Irreproducible Results on the Internet, politely told me to rename my blog because the REAL Journal of Irreproducible Results already exists and is trademarked. Oops, sorry, my mistake. Didn't mean to hijack anybody's search for the magazine of science humor and trick them into winding up in my blog.
So back to the old name it is. That one has not yet given anyone any trouble. I think.
     

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Okay, so this is the opening blog in this blog and the first blog in my life, so let's see how it goes. First, a bunch of thank yous: the list of people I'm grateful to for making my past year and a half very much up there among the "best ever" category is getting longer and longer.
 The list starts with the Clarion West 2009 workshop organizers, instructors, and classmates.  From there on we move to the local speculative fiction community and the gang of writers called  Horrific miscue. Then -- to Sheila Williams and Neil Clarke, editors of Asimov's and Clarkesworld.
I am thankful to those of you writer-colleagues, friends, and strangers who took time and Tweeted or Livejournalled or otherwise blogged or commented on or reviewed my work -- each one of these mentions is welcome and important to me. And last but not the least, it was and always will be a great pleasure to see feedback from readers -- questions, thoughts, emotions.
Thank you all.