Loved Up by Them Sirens

At last... really, it's only been a few days (of silent hell)... I can announce that I've been offered a two-book deal with Macmillan/St. Martin's Press' mystery imprint, Minotaur Books.

Hot damn! And I didn't even have to sell my soul to the devil.

Details to foller. 

The Black Knight Always Triumphs!

Though it is April Fools Day, I'd be a fool not to let you know about my new story, just published at Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. "Death's Last Daughter" is a short story drawn from my novel, The Sword of the Prophet, which still hasn't been published.

Go on then. Have at you!

Smells Like Victory

Excellent news, Arthur!

"Death's Last Daughter" is going to appear in the April issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. Though the story is drawn from my still-unpublished (wtf!?! I know!) historical sword-and-sorcery novel The Sword of the Prophet, it stands on its own as short fiction quite nicely, thanks to the excellent suggestions of the editors. Now if only I can talk David and Adrian into knocking the entire novel into publishable form... that would be keen.

Onward!

"Eaters of Earth" has been accepted for publication in the legendary Space and Time Magazine, which has been around since forever. In this story, there's this thing, and its buried in this hole, and this one guy wants to let it out, but this other guy... well, you really have to read it. It's about the end of the world and stuff.

Nifty New Widget and the Principles of Book Cover Design

If you notice to the right, I've installed a new widget from Amazon. It's a book carousel displaying my four novels and six anthologies in which I have stories. Go ahead and spin it. It's pretty cool.

While playing with the carousel, I noticed something quite striking about the book covers. Some of them are easy to read, even as thumbnails. Some are not. This differences provide a good lesson in effective book cover design.

No matter how evocative the art when see full-sized, no matter how clever or interesting the font, if it can't be seen as a thumbnail, it isn't a good design.

Black Dragon, White Dragon has a cool cover, but as a thumbnail it is too dark and you can't read the title. Tales of Fantasy has a better title design but suffers equally in the art department. The Thieves' Guild has evocative art, but looking at this thumbnail you would think the title is Crossroads, if you could read it. Still, it's not a bad cover. The Rose and the Skull, Relics and Omens, and Rebels and Tyrants all fail artistically because they either fail to evoke movement (R&T) or are too small and detailed to get across the message. Relics also has poor font design. Warrior Wisewoman has a nice, clear, evocative image, but the title gets somewhat lost. The Futures from Nature cover looks like it has a pile of shoes on the cover.

The best covers are Dark Thane and Conundrum. The titles are easy to read, the images easy to see. Dark Thane has a dark cover, but the artist has nicely contrasted the darker elements with a light background. There's a lot of action and conflict suggested in this cover. Conundrum is also good, even though the interesting parts are small and still, because they draw attention to themselves through the separation and strangeness of asymmetry, almost like a zen watercolor.

But a thumbnail is no way to judge a book by its cover, says you. What better way to judge it, says I? The purpose of the cover is to attract and hold the attention of a prospective buyer. You only have a few miliseconds to grab their attention as they walk through the bookstore or browse the website. Wherever they see the book the first time, more than likely they will see it about the size of a thumbnail. On a website it will definitely be a thumbnail, but in a bookstore it will appear to be about the same size, when seen from 8-10 feet away. So a book's cover simply must work in thumbnail size, if it is to grab the reader's attention.

To accomplish this, you need a clear, easy-to-read, yet unique font, and iconic artwork that is simple and engaging, easily identifiable, and instantly evocative.

Yay Me Woohoo

As I predicted several months ago, July has arrived and with it two short fiction sales. Hoodyhoo!

First up - Eating Cooks and Magic Rings, to be published in Crow Toes Quarterly. This is a Middle Grade fantasy about a girl, her little brother, their sorcerous father, their duplicitous cook, and the surprising creature who flies through the kitchen window one day. Crow Toes Quarterly is a slick kids magazine with excellent production values and equally excellent tastes in fiction, if I do say so myself. This is my first sale in the Middle Grade market and hopefully bodes well for my future designs upon Young Adult fantasy.

Next - Candy's Man, to be published in 3:AM Magazine. Candy visits the man who murdered her husband and finds he isn't quite what she imagined him to be. 3:AM is another surprising find. High quality with tons of content and a hip style (much hipper than me), this is what an online magazine should be.

For the full list of my published and to-be-published fiction, you know what to do.

What's Up, Dog

Pixar delivers again.

Saw the new Pixar movie "Up" today. I didn't want to see it. Nothing about the advertising, much less the title, made me want to see it. But we decided to take the kids, and I'm glad we did.

Pixar seems almost incapable of making a bad movie. "Cars" is the only time they've fallen flat, but that's because they chose a formulaic plot that tried to capitalize on the massive popularity of NASCAR.

Up is as far away from Cars as you can possibly get. It's an imaginative delight, unafraid of crawling way out on the limb of believability, and I mean way out. But it works in wonderful, surprising ways. Much like Wall-E, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Finding Nemo. I mean, damn, this was a good movie. And like all the best kids movies, it isn't really a kids movie. It has things for the kids, but it is written at an adult level, and that's what makes it so good.

As for the talking dogs, well, they are the funniest part of the movie. Look for them to end up with their own television show, like the Penguins of Madagascar.

Saturn "I'm Not Dead Yet"

News from Saturn - it appears that GM is going to spin them off as something almost like an independent car company, much as I suggested here.

That's good news, because as long as Saturn is making cars the way they always have, I doubt I'll ever buy any other kind of car.

Get all your latest Saturn news here.

"I'm getting better."

School Location Madness

So far, we couldn't be more pleased with our decision to move. My son's new school is excellent in every regard, and he is much happier.

But I do have one complaint. What idiot on the planning board thought this would be a good location to build an elementary-to-high-school campus? The Google picture isn't up to date, so you can see how it looked before construction began several years ago. The school is miles from even the closest subdivision. No child walks or rides their bikes to these schools. Every student has to arrive and depart via some sort of motorized vehicle.

Why would they do that? It's insane. Yet they did the same thing here - buidling a school in the middle of field, miles from everything.

Why not build the school here instead? Look, some kids could actually walk or ride their bikes to a school built here, yet there is plenty of open space in which to build and expand.

Or take a look at some older schools in the same district. Within this area, there are currently two elementary schools, one middle school, and one new high school (again, an old picture, but trust me, they're there). These schools were built to serve the community, thus they are located within the community - not a remote cotton field. What a novel idea - make the school a part of the community to engage the community, rather than the rabbits and owls.

In the future, would it be possible to build our new schools closer to the students who will attend them? And how about we build more schools and smaller schools, rather than giant mega schools of thousands of students and six or eight classes of every grade? I know, sounds crazy, but it's just crazy enough to work.

Oh the Humanity!

Sears/K-Mart, Eddie Bauer, even the venerable Wedgewood, and I hear Borders is on the short list of doom, but dear God not Starbucks, too!



I don't know. Maybe this will be the decade of the death of the chain, the withering away of the retail strip, and the rebirth of the locally-owned neighborhood store. After all, people will still need coffee, just not at eight bucks a cup. People will still need books, just not the unsustainable profit expectations of Wall Street.

Where's the Door?

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps you

from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because
you are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

e e cummings

It's a Miracle!

A "Christmas Miracle" that is, which has just been accepted for publication in Murky Depths.

What's it about? Well, if I told you, it would ruin the surprise!

But the real surprise is two stories in two days. I'm liking the start of this year.

Adventures in Food Finding

I found a recipe I want to try but it calls for Szechuan peppercorns. So at lunch today I headed over to one of the few international markets in Memphis. The place is a wonder, always something new and interesting to discover, if you don't mind the smell of fish long past its prime. It's a true polyglot, where few of the emplyees speak the same language, and fewer still speak English.

But that's ok with me. The more the merrier, I say. Until you're looking for something in particular in this vast and sprawling megastore.

After much searching, I found a package that looked like it contained Szechuan peppercorns, but the English version of the label read pericarpium zanthoxyli. So I thought I would try the customer service desk.

I found a rather lovely Asian woman working the counter, so I asked, do you know if these are Szechuan peppercorns. She looked and said, rather coldly, and in something of a huff, "I don't know. I don't speak the language."

I replied, "Well, but I thought you might know the product." She smiled at that.

So I bought it, because it was so cheap, and it turns out I was right. Confirmed by a Google search.

I have found that although the service may blow, you can't beat the prices. The package I bought was roughly a third the price of online stores. You'll die when you see the price of sesame seed oil. And they have Tupelo honey for what you'll pay for Sue Bee at Kroger. Nearly everything is cheaper, and you don't have to buy in Sam's Club quantities.

Hey Mikey!

I do most of the cooking in my house, and when I take lunch, I almost never just make a sandwich. Those green box frozen dinners ain't happening for me. Tonight I whuppt up a batch of Yangchow Fried Rice to take to lunch tomorrow.



Like any other prophet, I am not appreciated in my own home. My children don't much care for most of what I make, though they do prefer my homemade pizza to pretty much anywhere else. Neither does my wife enjoy many of the things I make. I have had to learn to cook without such basics as onions, celery, green peppers, mushrooms, etc. I'm not complaining. I'm just saying.

So tonight, I ask if anyone would like to try some Yangchow Fried Rice. My oldest son enjoyed watching me make it (just like Iron Chef, he said), but he wasn't interested in tasting the final product. I called my youngest. He took one look at it and said no. I said, smell it. He did. He leaned over and smelled it again, then looked up at me and said that smells gooooooood!

He tried it. He likes it! He's only five! There's hope!

Luke's Mama

May the Force be with her.

The Eye of Horus

This morning we had two rare visitors to the backyard. Ye gods of Egypt, this is one time I really really really wish I had an SLR.


























Tell me why I have to be a powerslave.

The Best Show on Television

You may have your America Idle. You may have your House, your Lost, your 24. You may even have your CSI.

For my money, the best show on television right now is The Backyardigans.

Yes, it's a kid show. But it's a kid show that is done right. It doesn't play down to kids. It doesn't go for flashy visuals and loud doings and quick cuts and exagerrated movements. It has things that appeal to everyone - good stories, interesting characters, imagination, intelligence, and damn good music. I mean these songs stick in your head and not in a bad way.

The premise is that you have these five kids - Tasha the hippo, Tyrone the moose, Pablo the penguin, Uniqua the ladybug, and Austin the kangaroo. They are a group of culturally-diverse youngsters living in the burbs in a sort of reverse cove. Their houses face outward, and their backyards join together to form a sort of round park. Austin's yard has a fence, but the rest of it is open. This giant backyard is their world, in which they use their imaginations to explore the jungle as Tarzans (plural, in his many manifestations), dig for dinosaurs and gold, race around the world, sail as Vikings, anything they want to do.

The stories are interspersed with music. The music has a theme for each episode, and it's usually not what you expect. The Texas cowboy episode is hip-hop and has probably their most memorable song - Riding the Range. The Tarzan episode is a hilarious take on Mozart opera. The Yukon episode is countryish. The world race episode is zydeco, for God's sake! All of it is great, and none of it sounds canned or synthesized. Those are real drums, real clarinets and guitars. Listen to the words, watch them dance, and boy can these kids dance their cartoon butts off!

The Backyardigans is what all kids shows should strive for. Remember Bugs Bunny and how great he was when you were a kid? You watch Bugs now and he's still funny, but for completely different reasons. That's the way Backyardigans is. It's great for kids - my boys love it. When it comes on, they jump up and dance and sing along. They watch the same episodes over and over (ah, the joys of Tivo), and the thing is, I watch them over and over with them.

The shows are not dummed down to appeal to kids. They are smart and sophisticated and silly, and they let kids be smart, sophisticated and silly. Because that's the way kids really are, if you just let them be. Kids aren't monkies compulsively pushing the button to get a food pellet, unless that's the only kind of interaction you offer them. George Lucas knew this when he made Star Wars. He forgot it when he made Phantom Menace.

The Backyardigans is the way television should be. It's on Noggin and Nick Jr, and CBS on Saturday mornings. Watch it even if you don't have kids. But if you do, you're missing out if you aren't sharing this with your offspring.