Meanwhile…

A Thousand Faces is having a sale for today only – everything is 25% off with the coupon code CYBERBOOKS. If you have any interest in superhero fiction you should check it out. Issue 4, featuring my story “Shades of Red” (as well as some great stories by Erin and Jens), is only $8.97, before the discount! These are great deals, people.

What also may be of interest is that the latest issue is out, featuring a story by Erin and holy cats now I see one by KC Ball as well.

Man alive. I’m the superhero guy and you’ve all left me in the dust. I need to get back on that.

(Evidently, Smallpox Blanket-Giving Day was taken already? I dunno.)

Hope everyone is (or will be) having a good Thanksgiving weekend. Ours should be fun – the wife and I will be hosting her family this year, and visiting my family (including a cousin who’s on leave from Afghanistan) on Saturday, then probably hanging out with some friends on Sunday. These friends have recently produced offspring which I’m told is “cute” and “life altering and/or affirming.” I shall put the new heir to the test! If she doesn’t bring me my food fast enough or change the television channel properly it won’t speak well of the reproductive process. And I don’t want to hear some “she’s only a few months old” nonsense!

Anyway, since you are just laying around in a turkey coma, you should go read this story by KC. It is excellent!

And also this one, by JR Hume, because it’s probably the best piece of flash I’ve read in a while.

I also found this article to be interesting. I have my own thoughts on sexism in genre fiction (which I think is often unfairly singled out for being sexist despite it simply being a reflection of our society as a whole). I may gather them up over this long weekend and post about it next week.

Lest you think I was murdered at the horror festival last weekend, I do indeed still function!

I finished reading Mainspring, by Jay Lake. It’s pretty okay. It’s a fast read, and I enjoyed it well enough, but I felt like there wasn’t quite enough there for me to really sink my teeth into. The setting holds a lot of promise but the story didn’t end up exploring the parts of it that I was most intrigued to see. The villain, insofar as there was one, wasn’t particularly developed, either.

Anyway, if I can find it I’ve got a list of books I’ve been meaning to read. Onward!

Work should be returning more or less to normalcy next week, so I’m hoping to get back to writing. I have several stories that have been bugging me to be written, including one that is an expansion of the universe I created in “With the Band.”

In other news, my wife has fallen victim to the Twilight craze. I let her know that was like punching Shakespeare in the balls, but my anguish has gone ignored.

And just because it’s been a bright spot in my otherwise dreary week, I present the latest issue of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s Phonogram.

I’ll be at the Texas Blood Bath Film Festival this weekend. A friend was DP on Brain Dead, which is being featured on Saturday. Should be fun! If you’re in the Waco area you should check it out.

I’ll be taking my laptop along, in the hopes of getting a little writing done, but I’m not holding out a lot of hope. It appears that the work load at my day job is finally lightening somewhat, so maybe I’ll have a chance to get writing again soon. Of course they just laid another person off, so that could go either way I suppose.

Speaking of despair, a Twitter account is getting its own television series. In other news, I give up.

Work is killing me, so I really haven’t had any time to get much done. I have, however, managed to squeeze out an article for the Flash Fiction Chronicles. You can read it here.

I’m thinking of making a regular series of articles here about the sort of thing featured in that post. Each week feature something that I think is awesome to write about. I’d talk about why they are important to storytelling and point out what I think are a few good examples. Any interest in that?

Whatever attempt at NaNo I might have made is a complete bust. I simply haven’t had any time with all this overtime at work. But at lunch last week I managed what may be the first rough paragraph of a Chuck Chaykin novel. Enjoy. Continue reading

My rock ‘n roll story IN SPAAAAACE! story is up over at Every Day Fiction. Check it out. Let me know what you think.

And now I’m off to work for another 11-hour day. Guh.

Update – I immensely enjoy that Jim Hartley left a curmudgeonly “get off my lawn, damn kids!”-style comment. It fits the story perfectly.

I have a ba-billion (which, I believe, is slightly more than a gajillion) things to do, so I’ll make this fast!

Stephanie has a new story up over at Every Day Fiction. It is fun!

My new story, “With the Band,” will be up Friday!