Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in The Blair Hippo Project's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, August 19th, 2008
1:34 pm	Party, Friday Friends -- This Friday, 22nd, I'll be hosting a party at my place to welcome my new roommate, Linda. Come by and make her feel welcome -- with drinks! And food! And games! And -- if we have enough people -- a basement fulla Whose Line Is It Anyway! So, come on down. I'll have the doors open at 6:00 for any early birds, and if this goes like previous parties, we'll be up until stupid o'clock in the morning. If you plan to come, please let me know -- or just show up and surprise me. Surprises are fun. Feel free to bring friends. If you've never been to my place before, ping me and I'll send you my address. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
10:54 am	Professionalism: You're Doing It Wrong Ever want to see an on-line fiction mag self destruct? William Sanders, editor of Helix, sent out a rejection letter that, at best, could be described as coarse and ill-considered. A lot of folks are simply saying it's racist -- and I'm inclined to agree with them. Dude, seriously; "sheet heads"? So, pretend you're the editor of a short fiction market. Somebody has posted a rejection letter you sent them that casts you in a bad light. How would YOU respond? A) Swift and unconditional apology. B) Conditional apology copping to the fact that yeah, it does sound kinda racist, but that's not how you intended it and if you'd known the damn thing was going to be republished on-line you would have spent more time making sure it reflected your true intentions. C) Full-on self-righteous hissy fit. If you're William Sanders, you go with choice C. Past contributors have decided -- surprise! -- they'd rather not be associated with this idiot. But they must now pay $40 for the privilege of having their stories removed from the archive. For continuing coverage, consult the LiveJournal of -- who else? -- Nick Mamatas. Never let it be said that Nick only picks on moron writers; Nick will point at and publicly mock ANY variety of self-immolating retard. My own take on this nonsense? Sanders does have a shadow of a point; being oversensitive and quick to take offense should not automatically be praiseworthy qualities. There are indeed people out there who will gleefully scream "[fill_in_the_blank]ism!!!" with minimal provocation. But when the missive in question contains gems like "worm-brained mentality of those people" and "like all his kind, he’s incapable of honesty", getting huffy about the PC Police kinda turns into a tough sell. Acting like a toddler standing in the middle of K-Mart throwing a temper tantrum doesn't do a lot to sell the argument, either. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
10:42 pm	It's Like Watching Your Parents Calling Your Teachers A Bunch of Doody-Heads I found the damnedest thing on-line today. There's this blog I (and vast swathes of other people) like called Boing Boing. It bills itself as "A Directory of Wonderful Things," and is a reliable source for fun links and the incredibly Internet-savvy writings of author Cory Doctorow. There's this writer who goes by the name Violet Blue who I (and vast swathes of other people) like who has a (not-remotely-work-safe) blog called Tiny Nibbles, a podcast called "Open Source Sex", and a bunch of nifty books. If you like intelligent sex-positive writing, Violet rules. And there's this site called Making Light that I (and vast swathes of other people) like. It's run by a couple of Tor editors, and not only are a bunch of the articles pretty much required reading for any aspiring writer, it's also the most perfect discussion environment you're going to see this side of Paradise. The community is generally articulate, considerate, and well-informed, and moderator Teresa Nielsen Hayden may be the world's leading expert on how you encourage discussion without taking any shit from trolls. So, what happens when you combine the three? Would you believe a high-drama Internet clusterfuck? Boing Boing used to have a whole bunch of articles very favorably mentioning Violet Blue -- it's how I found about her in the first place. Boing Boing is also very strongly anti-censorship and tends to act as a media watchdog, calling attention to various dodgy actions by powerful folks who ought to know better. For reasons known only to their core contributors, Boing Boing took the (for them) unprecedented move of removing almost all articles mentioning Violet Blue from their archives. They did it without any sort of fanfare about a year ago, and Violet herself only just noticed. Violet noticed it here (NSFW ads, article on a very NSFW site) and talks about it in more depth here (ditto). Tomorrow Museum (a blog I only discovered as a result of this kerfluffle) wrote an article that was a leeeetle bit hot under the collar about it here. And Eric Burns-White, a blogger/essayist I enjoy very much and wish was as prolific as he used to be, wrote an oblique but very insightful article about it here. So, we start of with something ... weird. Not sinister, not worthy of outrage, but definitely very strange. Boing Boing are usually the Good Guys -- there's a reason XKCD typically depicts Cory Doctorow as a kind of blogger superhero, after all. They've called other media outlets to the carpet for this kind of behavior in the past; hypocrisy is hardly the biggest sin in the world, but surely now that people have noticed, some kind of explanation is going to be forthcoming, right? Uhm, no. Thus far the only explanation has been offered by Boing Boing's forum moderator Teresa Nielsen Hayden here. Not only is it unsatisfying, not only does it fail to acknowledge the fairly obvious hypocrisy that raised peoples' hackles in the first place, it's actually a tad misleading. Consider this sentence: "Bottom line is that those posts (not "more than 100 posts," as erroneously claimed elsewhere) were removed from public view a year ago." So, how many posts do you think were removed? Obviously, she doesn't specify, but to me, the tone is unmistakable -- it was just a handful. Silly internets, always blowing everything out of proportion! Except ... it wasn't a handful. According to the LA Times blog, it was somewhere in the ballpark of 70. Now, did Teresa lie? Hell no. It was, indeed, NOT more than 100 posts, as she claimed. But 70 is nothing to sneeze at, and is a stark contrast to her very dismissive tone. It gets ... not "better," not by any sensible definition of the word. But it gets stranger. Teresa's husband Patrick made a post about it over at Making Light. "Aha!" one familiar with Making Light and the Nielsen Haydens might think. "Now we'll get some sensible perspective on this! Surely this will be the most informed and level-headed discussion one is liable to find in any of the internet's many tubes!" Except ... it really wasn't. Oh, some very good posts were made, some excellent points raised, but the level of discourse fell well below what I normally expect from ML. It wasn't a flamewar -- it was still on the whole quite civilized, particularly compared to the wretched cesspit that is most on-line discussion. But ... people were talking past each other to a degree that made my head spin. Guys like Patrick, guys like John Scalzi, were getting bogged-down in bickering over semantics, bickering over whether an LLC is a corporation, bickering over ad-hominum attacks and whether people had been indulging in them, rather than addressing the central issue: Boing Boing acted in a way that was starkly counter to its publicly-declared sense of ethics and that inspired an internet-wide "WTF?" from everybody who noticed. And the thing was, when people tried to put them back onto the real topic, they ignored it. The discussion is over now. Patrick shut it down. He did so in response to one poster (Zota) pretending to be Boing Boing contributor Xeni Jardin in order to make a point. Which again strikes me as very strange. Now, I'm not going to defend Zota. Faking a post under Xeni's name was a blockheaded move and deserved a response. But the thing is, it's a move I understand on some level. It's something I've done in the past, actually -- at a baseball discussion forum I used to hang out at, I made a few very tongue-in-cheek posts under the name of former pitcher Jaret Wright as part of a point I was trying to make. It was actually considered standard practice on that board and nobody took it seriously -- c'mon, why would honest-t'-gawd major-league ballplayers give a shit about what we're babbling about over here? (Needless to say, this was years before Curt Schilling became a blogger.) I got a similar feel from Zota's "Xeni" post -- off the cuff, trying to make a point, not meant to be taken seriously. Problem is, 1) faking the name of somebody famous is not standard practice at ML because 2) moderately-famous writer-types (like Xeni) do indeed drop in all the time. Zota fucked-up, no question, but it didn't strike me as malicious; it just struck me as stupid. So when Patrick's response was to shut down the thread and hand Zota a lifetime ban from the site's forums ... dude. I mean ... seriously. Dude. As internet outrages go, the whole thing is pretty weak sauce. But a whole bunch of people I admire and respect are behaving in ways that run 180-degrees counter to why I admire and respect them in the first place. It's not upsetting, it's just damned perplexing. I have to assume there's a reason folks are being so evasive, obfuscatory, and short-tempered about the whole thing, but if they're not going to say what that reason is -- or even cop to being evasive, obfuscatory, and short-tempered in the first place -- then the internet will, as it is inclined to do, start trying to make up its own answers. Boing Boing, Violet Blue, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Patrick Nielsen Hayden ... these are the good guys, goddammitalltohell. Seriously, WTF? Teresa herself made a concise and very insightful post about the proper way to handle on-line scandals and other such PR disasters here. I sincerely hope that, in private, she's giving the Boing Boing crew a royal ass-chewing for not only ignoring her excellent advice but for putting her in a position where she has to ignore it, too. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 30th, 2008
12:28 pm	Random Thought of the Day While Procrastinating Paying Work and Triangulation Contract Stuff When people start getting nostalgic about '80's video gaming, they tend to gravitate towards Tecmo Bowl for the Nintendo, rightly hailed as one of the first great sports games for home consoles. And by law, any Tecmo Bowl reference has to include a Bo Jackson reference, who was portrayed as a nigh-unstoppable force of nature. But why doesn't Lawrence Taylor ever get any love? LT was an unholy monstrosity in that game. He could blast through anybody's offensive line like an elephant through a picket fence. If you were playing against the Giants in the hands of somebody who knew what he was doing, your offense was passing ... and that's it. Running? Puh-leeze. You won a moral victory if LT didn't smoke your ass in the backfield. Place kicking? LT spent the game bitch-slapping your kicker every time he took the field; there will be no extra points or field goals today, sparky. No, every situation was a passing situation -- and get rid of that damn ball fast, because LT's on his way. What made it worse was the Techmo Bowl mechanic where if the defense guesses your play (and you only had four to choose from), you were screwed. On a running play, you were lucky to make it back to the line of scrimmage. If you were trying to pass, just eat the sack because if you threw, it would be picked-off. Most teams had two running plays and two passing plays. If you're the Giants, you never bothered having your defense guess one of the running plays, because LT made that a non-starter. So your opponent only had a 50-50 chance of selecting a play that might conceivably work, assuming he could throw before LT pile-drove the quarterback. And remember, even if your opponent got lucky and cranked-out enough Hail Marys to get into the end zone, his touchdowns weren't worth as much as yours, because LT always made the extra point an exercise in futility. So, apropos of nothing, this is my nod to Lawrence Taylor, nostalgia's inexplicably-forgotten video game god. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, May 5th, 2008
5:43 pm	Now That's The Randy We Love *blink* I just read the latest Super Stupor. I am disturbed. Also, amused. And very, very impressed. But definitely disturbed. (Comment on this)
10:18 am	Triangulation: Now With More Awesome I'm dying to get my hands on the July 2008 edition of Asimov's, which has been mailed to subscribers but isn't out on the newsstands. Simply dying. My friend Chris, a subscriber, sent this message to our writers' group: "Paul Di Filippo has a review of Triangulation: End of Time, edited by none other than Pete Butler, in the July issue of Asimov's. He comments that it's equal to any issue of a prozine and would reward your investment." Whoo-hoo! I knew they were going to review us, and thinking about it, it's not like I expected a negative review. Let's face it, we're such small potatoes that if you don't like us the most damaging thing you can do is simply ignore our existence. But "equal to any issue of a prozine"? Hot damn! Chris said she'll bring her copy to the meeting on Wednesday. I can't wait to read the full review -- if only to figure out the precise quote I'll be putting on this year's copy. Because Mr. Di Filippo's name will be appearing on it -- the only question is if it will be on the front cover or the back. Because I just got the front cover this weekend, and it's so freakin' sweet it almost seems a shame to clutter it up with text: That's Vincent Chong's artwork. Vinny came through. Oh, yeah. This is gonna be a good year for the anthology. (14 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, April 28th, 2008
1:08 am	Back In The Game I'm back from the writing retreat. I spent the entire weekend working on a new story -- my first new story in ... shit. Too long. Much, much too long. Anyway. It had 500 words worth of opening when I left on Friday. It is now 12,000 words of completed first draft. The length has me nervous. Artistically I'm cool with longer stories, but I want my short fiction to actually get read and anything over 8,000 words is a real bitch to find markets for, especially for a semi-pro like me. I'll see what my critique groups have to say. And I need to do some research before either group sees it. The setting is based off of a friend's anecdotes, but in the course of writing the thing there were a lot of gaps that I had to fill with my own imagination. I'm sure that in this version, there are some howling mistakes that will have members of either the search & rescue or dog training communities rolling their eyes. So, the next step is to identify the bits I bridged with bullshit and ask the questions I need to fill them. In the improbable event that I become a Famous Author Person to the point where somebody cares enough to write my biography, this will be known as "Pete Butler's Divorce Story." The emotional core is unapologetically drawn from the recent events in my life, as were certain select details. I didn't realize it when I started, but I actually set the bar pretty high for myself on this story; I was trying to depict the aftermath of a failed relationship between two well-intentioned people in a way that was fair yet didn't hide from the terrible hurt involved, and that didn't read like the author's therapy session. I think I'll need to hear what other readers have to say before deciding whether I pulled it off. And more than any other story I've ever written, I want to hear the opinions of people who DON'T know me well. Oh, and it's also a tribute to my dog. My time as the Katie-beast's guardian will be coming to an end in a matter of months; this story is, in part, my way of saying goodbye and thanks for all the lols. Anyway. I'm back. I'm a writer again. Now I need to knock-off this writing shit for a while and get back to work on the anthology. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
4:32 pm	Pull Quote Frenzy As an antidote to yesterday's downer post, let's spend a moment reveling in one of last year's successes -- I did indeed get Triangulation: End of Time finished and got it reviewed by a whole bunch of people. Didn't translate into bustling sales, exactly, but at least the brand name is out there. Let's look at what people had to say while I practice harvesting pull-quotes to put on the cover of this year's edition, shall we? "No two stories are alike; no two authors have approached the theme from the same direction. Well worth a read." -- Kaolin Fire Debbie Moorhouse, GUD Magazone (Note: Kaolin is a fairly assertive reviewer; you'll also find this review on the Amazon.com site and a few other places.) "The best thing about Triangulation: End of Time is its breadth. With 20 authors offering up their personal takes on "the end," each story is distinctive, and the whole is well worth a read, especially on a rainy or snowy winter afternoon." -- Nicole McClain, The Fix "The stories collected in Triangulation: End of Time will help expand your reading horizons, and they will help scratch your very particular, hard-to-reach, highly personal speculative fiction itch. Not bad for $12." -- Jeremiah Sturgill, Son and Foe "Overall, it’s a good selection of stories. The weaker ones tend to be the shorter ones, so even at its worst, it’s not hard work. And there are around half-a-dozen stories of real quality that stand out." -- Jim Steel, Whispers of Wickedness (Note: One of the things I find amusing about these reviews is that while most of them identify "standout" stories, few of them agree on just what those standouts are. I choose to take this as a compliment.) "Triangulation: End of Time offers an interesting spectrum of approaches to its theme, combining the work of experienced and relatively new talents and for the first time opening the anthology series to members outside of PARSEC." -- Dru Pagliassotti, The Harrow (Note: That's another thing that made me do a little self-congratulatory fist pump; most of the reviews took note of the variety of stories I included and flagged it as a Good Thing. It was also a very intentional thing.) "It would be fair to say that there are stories in here that should please everyone. Those that don't appeal are certainly readable." -- Geoff Willmetts, SFCrowsnest.com (Note: It's a largely-favorable review, but Geoff takes me to task for flagging a few of the stories with mature-content warnings. Eh, he's probably right.) "The aforementioned stories are the ones picked out for particular praise at a quick re-skim of the volume. The other stories vary from short shorts, to a couple of other substantial stories - mostly pretty fine and dandy, in a volume that gives pretty good value for $12.00 for the deadtree version, and especially good value for $4.00 for the PDF version." -- Mark Watson, Best SF Reviews (Note: Something else in the review that tickled me personally, for obvious egotistical reasons: "It's also notable in that Pete actually took the effort to email an offer of a review copy, and followed up with posting a copy with a personalised letter. It never ceases to amaze me just how little effort a lot of publishers, both large and small, appear to make in promoting their anthologies - so kudos to Pete for going that bit further to get this volume some publicity." Thanks, man.) "At best some of the stories will stay with you. Though there is a number of old concepts rehashed and some stories are at best competent, overall it's a nicely satisfying read." -- Charles Packer, Sci-Fi Online "Edited by Pete Butler this book contains some great stories by some of the most talented people out there today. From Jessica E. Kaiser's ICE AGE to Jeff Parish's THAT AINT A MOSEY, Triangulation is filled with stories that will entertain, repulse and leave you unsettled. All of these authors weave tapestries that will leave any avid reader wanting more." -- Michael Lovell, Magus Press "Triangulation: End of Time, wasn't as satisfying, but there were good stories from Matthew Johnson ("When We Have Time", about using time travel/parallel worlds to deal with raising children), Tim Pratt ("Morris and the Machine", about a hapless inventor and his problems with his wife), and Jetse de Vries ("Near Absolute Zero", about deciphering a scary message found in space). Plus some nice stuff from Rebecca Day, Terry Hayman, and Katherine Shaw." -- Rich Horton (Note: Okay, this one's too lukewarm for me to use as a proper pull-quote, but do note that the anthology we weren't as satisfying as was Writers of the Future Volume XXIII -- that's scrapping with the big dogs, baby. And he liked us a lot better than the other two anthos he mentioned. On the whole, I'll take this review as a win.) Anybody know of any that I overlooked? (Other than Bill Moran's review. No offense, mate, but you're going to be on the credits page this year; as an assistant editor, your recommendation isn't as unbiased as some others might be. :-) ) Oh, and I've also heard that End of Time is getting reviewed in Asimov's this summer -- just in time for the release of the next edition. Let's hope the trend continues and they have nice things to say about us. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
9:21 pm	Breaking Radio Silence So, it's been two and a half months since I posted. How's that for a fuckin' LJ strike? I was doing a vanity search on Google to see if anybody had said anything on the internet about my latest publication credit, The Hole in the Sky over at Tetragon SF. (Turns out nope, nobody has.) That's when I found out something very sad: Tetragon SF is done. Quoth the editor: I intended to publish four novellas in each print issue, making each story available online as well. The theory was that since novellas can be extremely difficult to sell, especially for non-pro writers, there might be a lot of good ones out there that I could provide a market for. ... I got a flurry of submissions at the very beginning, and then after a few months the stream dried up. I bought one story, Pete Butlet's "The Hole in the Sky," out of 13 submissions, and since the rate of submissions is now running about one every couple of months it's become clear that I won't be able to put out a four-story issue in any reasonable amount of time. Pete's story will remain online, but I'm now closing the magazine. So, that's all she wrote for that market. I'm not just the first author to appear there -- I'm the only author to appear there. It's a pity, too. Ben Crowell was a good editor to work with, and he made my story much stronger than it had been when I first sent it to him. Still, there's more to being an editor than massaging stories. I don't know what Ben was doing to promote the magazine, but whatever it was, the results aren't readily apparent. I feel bad about not doing more to promote the 'zine myself, given that I've compiled one hell of a long list of potential reviewers while working on Triangulation. Yeah, I know that was more Ben's responsibility than it was mine, but I'm proud of that story; I had a vested interest in seeing this market succeed. But ... I couldn't, man. I just couldn't. It's been a rough four months. This is just all a roundabout way to lead into the question of "How am I doing?" And the answer is, not great. Things could be and have been much, much worse, but this is no picnic. I have my up-cycles, but for the most part I seem trapped in a low-energy mode where doing anything of substance seems like more than I can deal with. Tetragon isn't the only place where I've dropped the ball. I've gotten "Triangulation" rolling again, but only just barely. I didn't have us ready for submissions until frickin' January, and the contributor guidelines page still looks like ass despite promising myself that the bare-bones style was temporary. I'm putting myself in a position where I'm going to have to scramble for cover art again, and rejections/acceptances are going out in spurts when I can hit an up-cycle. (Thank God for my assistant editors; I don't want to think of how far behind I'd be without them). But what's immensely more problematic are the near-miss stories that appear in the slushpile. One of the things I've learned is that when you're as small and far below the radar as we are, you're going to see damned few stories that are perfect. If it's perfect, it probably would have been published elsewhere.* I have to be a very hands-on editor, and that's a challenge because my faith in my own judgment is shot to hell. That's the aspect of this whole ordeal giving me the most trouble -- the loss of faith in myself. My marriage was important to me, as was my wife; I loved Melissa, and I was content being with her. I got up one fine September morning knowing I was going to grow old with her, and went to bed knowing that it was over. And a couple of months later, I learned that things weren't as bad as I thought -- they were worse. Much, much worse. My marriage wasn't what I thought it was. Melissa wasn't the woman I believed her to be. How could I have been so wrong? How could I have been so desperately, completely wrong about a woman and a relationship who both meant so much to me? The answer is, of course, some variant of "I'm human, she's human, and humans fuck-up." Oh so many things I should have seen, but didn't. Oh so many choices I shouldn't have made. Really doesn't matter for the short-term; right now, the important detail is that all too often I feel like I have damned little reason to trust my own decisions. That's a problem for ... everything, but the anthology in particular. Editing somebody else's work requires a minimum level of chutzpah that's tough for me to muster at the moment. Who am I to say it would be better to condense that paragraph down to a single sentence, or cut that other bit altogether? Who am I to rearrange the order of a couple of sentences, or -- holy shit -- actually insert my own words? Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm the goddamn editor, that's who. Being an arrogant meddlesome prick is job requirement. But it's tough for me to get into that mindset right now, and even tougher to hold onto it. There's been other incidents, too. About a month ago Melissa accidentally rubbed my nose in a lot of the stuff I was struggling to deal with, and then not-so-accidentally picked a fight with me when I took exception. A few weeks ago I got Friend Dumped. A friend of mine, who had previously been adamant that I could lean on her for support, called to let me know that she no longer wanted anything to do with me. I suspect her fiance's hand in the matter, but it was her decision. On the one hand, I could understand; our friendship has been rewarding but occasionally challenging, and sometimes you find yourself at a point in your life where you just don't want to deal with "challenging." (Lord knows it's a decision I've made myself in the past.) But on the other ... it hurt. Damn did that hurt. Again, maybe I should have seen it coming ... but I didn't. Part of me wanted to fight her on it. The reasons she gave were, by and large, bogus; I could have refuted them. That's not to say things would have turned out any differently, I suspect that there were some valid reasons underlying the ones she actually gave, but shouldn't I have at least forced her to confront those reasons? If our friendship mattered to me, how could I have let it end without a struggle? How could I just walk away? I walked away because I didn't feel like I had any other choice. I walked away because I didn't have the energy to anything else. Besides, as much as I valued this friendship, how much had I valued my marriage? And how hard did I really fight to preserve that. Yeah. These are the kinds of places my head likes to visit nowadays. Anyway. It hasn't all been misery and suck over here. From a legal nuts-and-bolts standpoint, the divorce has actually been proceeding about as smoothly as these things go, and will likely be official come summer. Melissa and I have figured out that the best way to not antagonize each other is to limit our communication to the bare minimum, and that's been getting the job done. Most of my friends have been great, and I've been enjoying the hell out of a D&D campaign my friend Mike is running. (Real-life decisions may tend to overwhelm me, but deciding what spell to use against the onrushing horde of lizard-men or deciding whether to flirt with the pretty hobbit lady? Turns out I can handle that quite well, actually.) I've been getting the itch to write again; once I'm done channeling that itch into my editorial duties, I may finally get back in the groove (and get some loooooong-overdue Squonk stories written). Hell, even the anthology will probably be okay. We have some solid stories despite my best efforts, and if I can get my head out of my ass long enough to help the writers polish a few of 'em, this year's edition should compare very favorably to last year's. But on the whole, it's still not fun. I'm taking a leave of absence from work -- my fits-and-starts work schedule is brutally unfair to people who need to know when I'm going to get done crafting the virtual widget I've been assigned. I'm not sure how long it will last -- a few weeks, maybe? Maybe long enough to get the rest of my life caught-up a bit. The healing will take as long as it takes, I suppose. Just wish I didn't have to be here for it. *Which is one of the reasons we accept reprints. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 7th, 2008
4:19 pm	Doggy Under The Chair There's a doggy under my chair. At my New Year's Eve fest, I got to talking about better house-training my unruly mutt with Heather, who (along with her husband Ken) trains and handles search 'n' rescue dogs. You could say she knows a thing or two. Anyway, her hunch (which I think is accurate) is that Katie's frequent soiling of the bathroom rugs is in part editorial comment -- it's not just ignorance or inadequate walkies, she's expressing annoyance with me. Heather also warned it won't be an easy thing to break her out of; Katie's eight years old and fairly set in her habits. Heather's advice was a bit labor-intensive, so I balked a bit at it. But since New Year's, Katie has piddled on a bathroom rug every day. All right, mutt. You asked for it. Katie is on her leash right now. Right next to me. Where she'll effing well stay whether she likes it or not. All day. Every day. For months. I had to replace my comfy office chair (which could roll and hurt Katie) with a less-comfy kitchen chair. And Katie does not like this arrangement. She'd much rather be staring out the window barking at things. But sooner or later, she's going to need to go out. And when she does, she'll need to tell me about it. And she will not get the opportunity to soil the bathroom or anywhere else. So. The dog is attached to me. And will remain so for a few months, until we can establish a bit of communication. And establish who's freakin' in charge around here. Hopefully, it won't take her long to realize that's me. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, January 6th, 2008
6:37 pm	The Pete And Melissa Anti-Drama Thread I just heard a very interesting rumor. Apparently, I threw Melissa's ass out of the house because I caught her banging my best friend, Joseph. For the record, this is not true. I suppose I should have expected something like this (and not just because Joseph is such an irresistible babe magnet). Nature abhors a vacuum, and by keeping the gruesome details of our break-up private, that's exactly what Melissa and I have created. We now have an information vacuum waiting to be filled by the first plausible (or semi-plausible) rumor to come by. So, this rumor? It's bullshit. But in the interest of efficiently whack-a-moling any future rumors the moment the vile little bastards stick their heads out, I offer ... this thread. Is there something you'd like to know about our relationship or why it ended? Ask it here. The rules of the thread are as follows: 1) Anything goes. Anything. Ask whatever you want, and I promise I will not mock you, or berate you for asking the question, or give you the stink-eye the next time we see each other, or subject you to any negative consequences for daring to ask whatever it is you asked. Want to know the truth of a particular rumor? Ask. Is there some detail you're dying to know but don't want to bring up with Melissa or me because you think it might be rude? Ask. Hell, feel free to ask anonymously if you'd prefer. However.... 2) I make no promises regarding the completeness of answers. I still see this as fundamentally a private issue between Melissa and myself, and as such have no interest in publicly airing each and every tawdry detail. So the answer to the question you ask may well wind up being "I'd rather not say." Or "I'd rather not say in detail, but I will say [blah blah blah]." Note, however, in keeping with Rule #1, I will do my best to not phrase "I'd rather not say" in such a way that it comes across as a rebuke. The boundaries on what I will and won't talk about are, I admit, a touch hazy; I'm not going to slap you if you cross one of them. 3) Be nice. Be nice to me, and be nice to Melissa. This is still a painful subject for the both of us, and even though our original plan to keep things as amicable as possible has suffered significant damage, I still have no interest in hosting a "Let's Bash Melissa" session. Don't let this stop you from asking questions about sensitive topics -- that's the entire point of this thread, after all. But at the same time, don't be a jerk about it. 4) I'll be maintaining this thread indefinitely. Got something you want to know six months after I made this post? Ask and I promise you'll get an answer. So. What's on your mind? (21 Comments |Comment on this)
3:07 pm	Anthology Open To Submissions PARSEC Ink's annual Triangulation anthology (which I edit) is now open for submissions. The details are posted on-line. Key bits: We're looking for short (5000-words-ish) speculative fiction stories based on the theme "Taking Flight." Compensation is two cents per word, a contributor's copy, and the right to purchase additional copies at-cost. Deadline is March 31st. Last year's edition got some really great reviews, and I'm hoping this year's will be even better. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, December 24th, 2007
2:40 pm	Santa brought me a new publishing credit! The Hole in the Sky has been posted, and is now the first (and, thus far, only) story for Issue #1 of Tetragon Science Fiction Magazine. Give it a read; I'd be happy to hear what people had to say about it. This was a hell of a lot of work. Editor Ben Crowell liked the story (duh), but requested a lot of changes. And once I got to work on those changes (which was challenging, because Ben's on-spec acceptance letter arrived just as the Year from Hell was getting into full swing), I realized that I'm a much better writer now than I was when I initially committed the story to paper. And given that the initial version was actually a bit shorter than Ben's ideal story length ... To make a long story short, I made a long story longer. What was originally a 15,000-word story I liked is now a 32,000-word story I'm really quite proud of. Like I said, have a look. And if you like it, tell people. :) This is as new as new markets get, and given that my story is Story #1, Issue #1, I want to help this market succeed. Merry Christmas! (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 1st, 2007
9:40 pm	End of an Era Melissa and I are splitting up. I'm not comfortable discussing why in a public forum, particularly given that text-only personal messages tend to lend themselves to misinterpretation. I will say this wasn't prompted by anything big or dramatic. If you'd like to know more, please feel free to ask either Melissa or me about it when you see us in person. I want to emphasize that Melissa and I are NOT at war with each other; I know a lot of people reading this have friendships with both of us, and we will NOT be asking anybody to choose. We're adults, and right now it's looking like this will be about as amicable as these things get; feel free to invite us both to any given social event without fear that we will bring OMG TEH DRAMAH!!! I can pretty much guarantee we'll be civil to each other and probably even friendly. She's still living with me for the time being, though she's said she intends to move out and let me keep the house once she finds a job. It's a lot of house for one guy, but I'm going to try to keep it. Words of encouragement are welcome, but please remember and respect that there is far more sadness than animosity between us now. Any comments with a tone of "That Bitch" will be deleted promptly. We've shared some great times together, and I'm very sorry to see it coming to an end. (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, September 21st, 2007
7:37 pm	Football! Anybody who wants to watch the Steelers with us on the big-screen TV Sunday at 1:00 is welcome to drop by. (Comment on this)
Monday, August 20th, 2007
2:04 pm	Mass Mailing Today's Big Accomplishment: Before work, I sent out 34 copies of the anthology in the mail today. Most were contributors' copies, but a few were review copies sent in the hopes of getting us a mention somewhere. (Now let's just hope we wind up getting good mentions.) Gawd damn that's a lot of books to mail at once. Also, I don't think I noticed it before, but exactly half our contributors are from outside the US. We had four submissions from Canada, two from the UK, and one each from Israel, Greece, Spain, and Australia. Not bad for an anthology that once limited itself to southwest PA. Oh, and Triangulation: End of Time is now for sale at both Lulu and Amazon. It's an awesome book, and you need to go buy a copy. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 7th, 2007
2:48 pm	That Did Not Just Happen Theater Presents: Take one tube of Hydrocortisone cream for use with vacation-induced bug bites. Put it in the same pocket as your cell phone. Wait for the cap to magically unscrew itself somehow, and voila! I now have a cell phone whose external crevices are all stuffed full of itch-relieving goodness. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 26th, 2007
10:50 am	Cyber-Squonk Forgot to mention this in all the hustle of getting ready for Confluence, but ... Squonk got mentioned in Wired last weekend! Okay, a Wired Blog. He's not yet appearing in the pages of the magazine. Not yet. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 7th, 2007
11:27 am	Get Yer Squonk On Squonk the Apprentice is posted at Escape Pod for your listening pleasure. I'm psyched. Here's hoping it gets a better reception than the last one. :-) (Also, note that my two stories wound up bookending the four Hugo nominees Steve ran.) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 30th, 2007
1:16 pm	"Grumpy Spine" Is Not a Real Medical Term, But It Should Be Had a great time at the party Melissa and I threw Saturday night. Thanks to my poor organizational skills it was more lightly-attended than it could have been (lots of folks already had prior plans by the time I told them about it), but it was a good time. We cooked on the grill, drank some beer, nuked some bunnies, mocked some terrible fiction ... fun times. But then came Sunday and ... not-so-fun times. I wasn't hung-over, like the last time we had a big party. (Learned that lesson quite well, thankyouverymuch.) No, I awoke to find I had a case of Grumpy Spine. My back was angry and was punishing me with spasms. And I didn't even deserve it! This time. This first happened to me a month or two ago, and I absolutely had it coming. Melissa and I were rearranging furniture. In a fit of ill-advised machismo, I lugged a heavy wooden bookcase down into the basement all by myself, and my back spent the next several days saying "Oh, you did not do that!" I couldn't bend over without pain. Couldn't lie down without pain, which made sleeping a bit of a challenge. But this time ... as near as I can tell, I think it came from turning our futon around and moving the dining room table about 10 feet (to prepare a space for our horrifying combination of Who's Line and Eye-of-Argon-grade fiction -- you had to be there.) Which is alarming, because that was next to nothing, exertion-wise. Certainly not enough to drive the pain I was in Sunday and Monday. And Dear Monkey Jesus was I in pain. I was so afraid of going to bed on Sunday night that I stayed up playing video games until six in the morning, and laying down was every bit as horrible as I feared. The spasms were so bad that Melissa compared sleeping next to me with lying in a Magic-Fingers-style vibrating bed. Monday was better but still stuffed to the gills with suck, to the point where if it didn't get better by Tuesday, we were heading to the emergency room. Tuesday was better. I stopped by the Urgent Care clinic in Monroeville, where a doc confirmed that it was a muscle problem and not anything more sinister. (And that's where I realized that the prior injury hadn't fully healed. The spasms were and are focused on the right side of my back, which is the side I strained thanks to the way I hauled that Buddha-damned bookcase down the stairs.) My back tightened-up as the day wore on, but when bedtime rolled around I clubbed it into submission with a fresh bottle of prescription muscle relaxants. So, that's where I'm at right now. My back is much better, and if it gets cranky again, I'll smack it upside the head with some prescription meds. But it felt better after last time, too; how long is long enough to wait before it really is better? The doc gave me some back-strengthening exercises to use once it feels all right. Being 70 lbs. overweight hasn't been enough to get me working out regularly; let's see if the nagging fear of spending two days in agony for no damn reason will do the trick. (2 Comments |Comment on this)