As I announced Monday, I’ll shortly be launching a podcast titled Eating the Fantastic. Only two things stand in the way of posting the first episode, which I hope to do before the end of the week—deciding whether or not fair use allows me to include a seconds-long food-related audio snippet from a movie—and settling on the iTunes-appropriate image which best represents the show.

I’m working on unraveling the mysteries of fair use to better understand the former, but as for the latter—I previously shared two possibilities and asked for your opinion.

But this morning, when I posted a photo to celebrate Pancake Day from my visit to Portland’s Stepping Stone Cafe, I realized I had far more choices than just those two.

If you have a moment, I’d appreciate it if you checked out the other images below, which I haven’t yet mocked up, and let me know if you think any of them would be a better fit.

Thanks! (more…)

Over on Twitter and Facebook, I’ve been teasing a SEKRIT PROJEKT which I would only unveil once I was 100% sure I was going to proceed.

And after having had lunch with Sarah Pinsker this afternoon, I have my answer—I am going to proceed!

“What,” you may be thinking, “could lunch with Sarah Pinsker possibly have to do with a sekrit projekt?” (more…)

It’s been more than four years since I added to my set of rejection slips from dead magazines, which I began so struggling writers could feel a sense of schadenfreude.

That is:

Those magazines are gone … but we’re still here.

Earlier this week, while digging out my first rejection from Analog—which wasn’t a form, so it can’t be included as part of this collection—I came across another, so decided it was time to share one more.

Oui was an adult magazine that also published fiction, and since many of my favorite science fiction writers published in those sorts of magazines at the beginnings of their careers—Robert Silverberg in Rogue, Harlan Ellison in Gent, and Avram Davidson in Swank, for example—I thought: Hey, why not me?

But it was not to be.

Oui started up in 1972, sent me this rejection some time during the late ’70s, and put out its last issue in 2007.

I’m not saying things would have ended differently for them had they bought that story of mine … but you never know.

I made my first short story submission to Analog in 1972. Seven days later, editor Ben Bova rejected it.

Why am I telling you this?

Because 44 years and two editors later, I’ve finally sold a story to Analog!

And here’s how I got from there to here.

On June 22, 1972, when I was but a wee lad, I slid the manuscript of a story titled “No Pun Intended” into a manilla envelope and mailed it off. I no longer have any idea what that story was about, and I no longer have the ability to check. Long ago, I destroyed all evidence of my first three novels and 25 short stories. So all I know is … it included a pun, because I made mention of that fact in my cover letter, and because of, well, that title.

On June 29, I received this response.

I didn’t realize at the time, since I’d only been submitting my fiction for a year or so, how rare it was for someone as green as I was to receive anything but a form rejection slip. I also didn’t realize how many years of sending additional stories to Analog I’d have ahead of me before I’d receive a second personal response.

But even if I’d known, that wouldn’t have stopped me. (more…)

While merging photos I’d inherited from my mother after her passing with my own, I came across this one of mine, which was taken nearly nineteen years ago to the day, back when I was representing Sci-Fi Entertainment magazine at a Television Critics Association press tour.

That’s me hanging out at a party with Mystery Science Theater 3000 writers and stars Bridget Jones and Mike Nelson. We were at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena, probably on the night of January 19, 1997.

We’d all been brought there by the Sci-Fi Channel. Jones, Nelson, and a few more members of the MST3K cast were promoting their show’s move over from Comedy Central, while I was present because Sci-Fi Entertainment was the official magazine of the Sci-Fi Channel. (Note that I was not yet an employee of theirs, but still worked at the time for Sovereign Media, the company behind Science Fiction Age, which was publishing the magazine under license.)

Earlier that day, we—along with Glen Morgan and James Wong of X-Files fame—appeared on-stage before a packed room of journalists answering questions about all things science fiction—including the then-upcoming 20th anniversary release of the Special Edition of Star Wars.

What I found surprising (once I dug out my complete transcript of the event, which of course I still owned, and which runs 24 pages) was that one of the questions directed toward me expressed skepticism that anyone would actually bother heading to a theater to see Star Wars! (more…)

The 42″ snowfall here in Glengary, West Virginia was so remarkable that not only did I appear live on the BBC to let folks on the other side of pond know how bad things had gotten, but a photo of me lounging on a bench out back in the midst of the blizzard was featured within the first minute of Monday night’s CBS Evening News.

When I learned the image would be used, I warned friends not to blink if they wanted to catch me. But as it turned out, I was on screen long enough that blinking was permissible.

Check it out.

If you hung in for the entire broadcast, you’d have spotted my credit during the final moments—above the credit to the Smithsonian’s National Zoo for its panda footage.

I know, I know … it was purely an alphabetical decision. But let me live the dream for a little longer that I’m more important than a panda, OK?

Artificial Intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky passed away two days ago, which immediately brought back memories of the Science Forum in which he took part in the (gulp!) March 1993 issue of Science Fiction Age.

Those memories proved not to be entirely accurate, as I learned when I thought of digging out the tapes from that session to see if any of the audio would be of a quality worth posting here. (more…)

I don’t know what other parts of the country are calling the blizzard which just finished walloping the East Coast, but the Washington Post decided its name was Snowzilla. And where I live, in Glengary, West Virginia, that name has certainly been earned, because as you can see by the final snow totals from the National Weather Service, we’re #1!

But even before it was all over, by 3:45 p.m. Saturday, the New York Times had already declared Glengary the winner.

That earlier mention of Glengary led to a several fun and fascinating side effects, beginning with a photo I’d posted online of me sitting out back on a bench being shared on Twitter by Darren Rovell, an ESPN reporter with more than a million followers. His tweet was liked and retweeted hundreds of times, eventually coming to the attention of both Good Morning America and the BBC. (more…)

I’ve been attending science fiction conventions for a relatively long time—my first Lunacon was in 1972, my first Worldcon in 1974—and I can’t remember David Hartwell ever not being there. That he will no longer be there seems wrong.

But though I won’t see him at conventions, he will live on in our memories, and in the many books he either edited or inspired.

Strangely, though it’s science fiction which has kept us bound together all these years, it was poetry that caused me to first reach out to him. I was a newbie teen back in those early days of con-going, so we moved in different circles, but I was also writing a great deal of poetry then, and David was the editor of the literary journal The Little Magazine, which published the likes of Thomas Disch, Samuel R. Delany, Joanna Russ, and Ursula K. Le Guin. (more…)

A few minutes ago, the Horror Writers Association announced the preliminary ballot for the 2015 Bram Stoker Awards, and guess who’s on it in the category of Superior Achievement in Long Fiction? Me!

Check out the ten stories which made the cut.

Braunbeck, Gary A. – Paper Cuts (Seize the Night) (Gallery Books)

Eads, Ben – Cracked Sky (Omnium Gatherum)

Edelman, Scott – Becoming Invisible, Becoming Seen (Dark Discoveries #30)

Gunhus, Jeff – The Torment of Rachel Ames (Seven Guns Press)

Mannetti, Lisa – The Box Jumper (Smart Rhino Publications)

McGuire, Seanan – Resistance (The End Has Come) (Broad Reach Publishing)

O’Neill, Gene – At the Lazy K (Written Backwards)

Parent, Jason – Dia de los Muertos (Bad Apples 2) (Corpus Press)

Partridge, Norman – Special Collections (The Library of the Dead) (Written Backwards)

Yardley, Mercedes M. – Little Dead Red (Grimm Mistresses) (Ragnarok Publications)

Fingers crossed that enough HWA members enjoy my story to vote it on to the final ballot.

If “Becoming Invisible, Becoming Seen” should make it there, that would be the sixth time a story of mine will be a Stoker Awards finalist. I’ve previously been there for “The Hunger of Empty Vessels” (on the 2009 ballot), “Petrified” (2008), “Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man” (2007), “The Last Supper” (2003), and “A Plague on Both Your Houses” (1997).

One reason I’d love to move on to the next stage, aside from what fun it is to spend a few months being a nominee, is that according to Locus, even if I get there only to lose, I’d still win!

Because I’d then be tied for the most nominations without a win ever!

Voting on the preliminary ballot will occur from February 1 through February 15, and the final ballot will be announced on February 23. If you’re an Active or Lifetime members of the HWA and would like a PDF of “Becoming Invisible, Becoming Seen,” let me know!