I had a blast at ReaderCon last weekend.  Among the many, many highlights:

-the Naked City anthology reading Thursday night in Cambridge, with readings by John Crowley, Jeffrey Ford, my buddy Matt Kressel, and post-reading beers with Jed Berry and Mike DeLuca

-panels Friday, including on anthologies

-drinking Friday with many, including Claire H., Maggie R., Jenn B., Renee B., and Mike DeLuca

-my reading Saturday morning–I read “The Very Strange Weird of Endart Sscowth” in the current Space and Time and a bit of my Homeless Moon chapbook 4 story.  A nice crowd, who were treated to back-issue copies of Space and Time #108 and #114 and Weird Tales 347, all containing stories by me.

-the BCS reading Saturday afternoon, with Matt Kressel, Margaret Ronald, Marko Kloos, and Mike DeLuca

-dinner and more drinking with many, including Marko, Chang T., Abby, Dave B., Claire H., Maggie, Jenn, Renee, and Mike DeLuca (anyone detecting a theme? :) )

-chats with and meeting of cool people, like Leah Bobet, Ellen Datlow, and Ellen Kusher

-drinking Sunday and Monday with Mike DeLuca (that theme again…)

It was awesome, all of it–fascinating discussion and delightful fellowship.  Woo!

…and what happens after your mentor is killed.

My story “Of Casting Pits and Caustic Salts” is now live in the e-zine Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.  It’s about a lady spy, in a land where giant insects are the beasts of burden, who must complete her sabotage mission after something happens to her mentor.

It’s the first of my “literary adventure fantasy” stories to see print.  Readers familiar with my ethos for Beneath Ceaseless Skies know that I see no reason why stories set in fantastical worlds can’t convey just as much about the human condition as literary stories set in the “real” world.  Giant beetles are awesome, and surviving after your mentor is gone is a very human struggle.

It’s also my first story to appear in an e-zine.  Ironic, isn’t it, for a guy who publishes an e-zine and says that online magazines are the future of short fiction. :)  I’m happy to be appearing online, where readers will be able to find the story for free and at their convenience.  I’m also happy to be appearing in HFQ, a stalwart semi-pro zine offering adventure fantasy short fiction for free online.

So check out HFQ and  “Of Casting Pits and Caustic Salts”.

Want to win a free copy of Space and Time Issue 114?  The one that has my story “The Very Strange Weird of Endart Sscowth” in it?

I’m going to give away a free copy tomorrow afternoon, on my Facebook page.   I’ll ask a question about something from the story (you won’t need to have read it to figure out the answer).

For the first person who leaves a comment with the right answer, I’ll send you a free copy of the issue.  Hell, I’ll even sign it if you like, but that might lower its value rather than increasing it. :)

So drop by my Facebook page tomorrow (Wednesday) around 2pm Eastern time.  Good luck!

Want to win a free copy of Space and Time Issue 114?  The one that has my story “The Very Strange Weird of Endart Sscowth” in it?

I’m going to give away a free copy tomorrow afternoon, on my Facebook page.   I’ll ask a question about something from the story (you won’t need to have read it to figure out the answer).

For the first person who leaves a comment with the right answer, I’ll send you a free copy of the issue.  Hell, I’ll even sign it if you like, but that might lower its value rather than increasing it. :)

So drop by my Facebook page tomorrow (Wednesday) around 2pm Eastern time.  Good luck!

My short satire piece “The Very Strange Weird of Endart Sscowth” is forthcoming this summer in Space and Time #114.  You Clark Ashton Smith fans (and Battlestar Galactica fans!) may recognize some of it.

The cover has been released, posted on Space and Time’s Facebook page. Hey, look whose name is there on the cover? :)

Underneath my fellow Odyssey grad Larry Hodges, who earned the top billing.  It’s actually the second time that Larry and I have shared a TOC in Space and Time.  He had a piece opposite my story “Ebb” in S&T #107.

So check out S&T #114 this summer, and grab a copy of #107 if you don’t have it already.  Larry’s eager humor and my strange worlds both lie within.

My story “The Halberdier, by Moonlight,” has been bought by the Canadian semi-pro SF/F magazine On Spec.  Woo!

I wrote the story three years ago as a bit of an experimentation.  It’s much shorter than my usual, and quite a bit more “literary fantasy”, almost even “slipstream”–it has an omniscient point-of-view that’s centered around the protagonist but also drifts into each of the people he meets, as he walks home after a war.

It also features a halberd, of course, and icewine–a type of wine made in cold climates (such as Canada, ironically) by letting the grapes freeze on the vine and pressing them while still frozen.  The freezing, like the old Appalachian way of making apple jack by chipping ice off the top of cider, removes water and thereby concentrates everything else.  So icewine tastes very sweet and rich, almost syrupy–unique.

On Spec is a long-running and well-respected ‘zine.   They don’t seem to get much attention, maybe because they’re out in western Canada, but they certainly deserve it.  They’ve published Leah Bobet and Tony Pi, among many others, and I’m delighted to be appearing in their pages.

I’m delighted to report that another story of mine has sold to the good folks at Space and Time Magazine. They published my story “Ebb” last year, and now they’ve bought “The Very Strange Weird of Endart Sscowth.”

This story is an homage to Clark Ashton Smith, a great writer of the 20s and 30s pulp fantasy era, who is often lost in the shadow of his colleague Robert E. Howard and his pen-pal H.P. Lovecraft. It’s also very different from all my published stories to date–quite short, under 2000 words, and not quite so serious; actually rather droll, if I may say so myself.

The title includes an archaic usage of the word “weird,” as he once used it–an old Scottish one that means fate or destiny. Hence the adjective “strange” that I inserted before it, to show that this weird is a noun and not our more common adjective interpretation of that word. A strange weird, indeed. :)

Space and Time tells me that “The Very Strange Weird of Endart Sscowth” should see publication in late 2010 or early 2011. I hope you will find it droll as well. ;)

Issue #14 of M-Brane SF magazine is now out, featuring my hard-SF baseball story “Picking Up the Spin.”

If you’ve always wondered what SF written by me would read like, given that I have a chemistry background but always write fantasy, this is your chance to find out. :)

M-Brane is a great indie mag, now in their second year (not unlike my mag BCS). Among the many other authors in Issue #14 is my friend and colleague Cat Rambo. So definitely give this issue a look.

I’m delighted that my hard-SF baseball story “Picking Up the Spin” has found a home at M-Brane SF, an up-and-coming online SF magazine that got very good compliments in Rich Horton’s year-end review.

The story is a near-future look at what might happen to a ballplayer who had to undergo a genetically engineered treatment for retinal disease. It has lots of cool baseball jargon and my near-future baseball speculations (maybe someday there will be a major league team in Havana?).

The science is extrapolated from the retinal signal-transduction pathway I assisted with research on during an undergraduate summer. The scientific approach in the story also features a different angle than I’ve seen in SF before.

[Warning: Science Content! Many science fans don't realize how massively difficult it is to modify a biological system by changing or adding a gene. Specifically targeting one gene is trying to access a thousand base pairs of DNA among 3 billion. Even if you add a new gene, the old one is still present. The problem expands from there, as RNA transcription and translation and protein mechanics are exponentially more complex and less well understood than DNA processes. To see my neat approach that circumvented all that, you'll have to read the story. :) ]

Despite my science background, this is the only piece of true SF that I’ve ever written. I think that may be because for me, scientific concepts and personal or character things rarely mesh for me. Character is always the most important element of a story for me, so, even in hard SF, the science must take a back seat.

The good folks at M-Brane tell me that “Picking Up the Spin” is slated for the March issue. Right around when spring training games will be starting for the new season. Play ball!

My story “Keeli’s Ordeal” is now live at Crossed Genres magazine, in issue 15. Here’s the direct link.

The magazine looks quite nice! In addition to online text, it’s also available in paper format and in several ebook file formats–visit their web-store for all the options.

I’m sharing the TOC of this issue with Barbara Krasnoff, a good short story writer I met at ReaderCon last year, and my Homeless Moon cohort Jay Ridler. If you check out my story, be sure and check out theirs as well.