Yesterday, after recording a lunchtime episode of my Eating the Fantastic podcast in Towson, Maryland, I headed into Baltimore to attend the second incarnation of Charm City Spec, a quarterly reading series which takes place at Bird in Hand Coffee & Books.

Last night’s featured writers were Malka Older, Tom Doyle, and Ariel S. Winter.

Do you regret missing it? Well, you don’t have to! Because I recorded all three readings, as well as parts of the introductions by Karen Osborne. And you can enjoy them all below.

Malka Older

Tom Doyle

Ariel S. Winter

The next installment of Charm City Spec will take place on April 25th with Leah Cypess, A.C. Wise, and Fran Wilde. I’ll be there. Will you?

On Sunday, August 23, 2015 at Sasquan, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention, I watched as Pat Cadigan read her short story “Cancer Dancer,” at the time still upcoming in the anthology Dead Letters, edited by Conrad Williams. Which meant that when I posted video of the event back then on YouTube, I only shared a taste, so it would act as an inducement for you all to purchase the book.

A thing you should still do, as it’s a fun anthology!

But the fact that the book’s been out for more than a year now means it seems the right time to present an untrimmed video of Pat’s reading, including the fascinating Q&A which followed.

So here, after a two-year wait, is the rest of the story. Those of you who watched the earlier version of this have been very patient.

Enjoy!

It took me 44 years to finally sell a story to Analog—and just a few more months to sell them a second.

Last weekend at Balticon, flanked by Michael M. Jones and Day Al-Mohamed, I shared the opening three scenes of that second story—a novelette titled “How Val Finally Escaped from the Basement,” which will appear in the magazine’s November/December 2017 issue.

If you weren’t there, check it out below. Heck, even if you were there …

Want to know what happens next? Then be sure to track down that issue, which should go on sale around the third week of October.

In late 2015, a friend I’d made at the Strathmore Ukefest formed The Woods Ukulele Club here in West Virginia, and recently she decided we were up to entertaining at senior centers, independent living facilities, and nursing homes.

Which meant that earlier today In Martinsburg, as part of our hour-long set, I led the group in the Johnny Cash classic “One Piece at a Time,” which the assembled seniors seemed to enjoy. And even though I don’t think I was always singing in quite the right key, I figured I’d share it with you.

Because enthusiasm trumps talent, right?

Unfortunately, due to the angle of the camcorder, less than half the group is visible. Next time, I’ll aim to go wide, so I can inflict all of us on you!

I’ll be attending three conventions over the next two months—Escape Velocity, Readercon, and Worldcon—but before those roll around, I have a couple of things to share with you about the two most recent conventions in the rear view mirror.

First—I already shared pics of the remarkable suit I wore when the Horror Writers Association handed out its Bram Stoker Awards in Las Vegas last month. But would’t you like to see that suit in action?

Here I am with Weston Ochse, handing out the award for Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel … and immediately becoming a punchline for one of Jeff Strand’s jokes. Wait for it!

In another video recorded last month, I was captured wearing clothes of a decidedly darker hue. Check me out as I read the opening to my story in the latest issue of PostScripts, “The Man Without the Blue Balloon and the Woman Who Had Smiles Only for Him.”

And if you happen to be at Readercon next month, you might hear me read the entire thing!

Whenever I attend a convention panel or reading these days, I tend to use my Flip mini camcorder to capture the event, because I hate for the wisdom of our field to effervesce. And whatever video I record—assuming I obtain consent from the parties involved—I then toss up on my YouTube channel.

Which is what I did for Readercon, from which I returned late Sunday night. Some videos I was able to get live during the con itself, honoring Edelman’s First Rule of Convention Reporting, while others had to wait until I got back home, because I was having too much fun with the likes of David Kyle (below) to spend much time online. (Except for Twitter, that is, which is too addictive to stay away from even in the midst of the Readercon whirlwind.)

Now that I’ve uploaded all 10 panels and 3 readings totaling 526 minutes and 27 seconds, though, I’ve gathered them together here so you can experience what I experienced there … minus the time I spent schmoozing in the bar, lobby, and con suite.

So here, in chronological order, is as much of Readercon as I was able to capture last weekend. (more…)

There were many wonderful moments during last weekend’s Balticon, such as my reading, and the podcast I recorded with Brian Keene (about which more later), but the panel I enjoyed most was Saturday’s “Tales from the Slush Pile,” during which I shared a few intriguing letters I received while editing Science Fiction Age from 1992-2000. (I almost wrote “amusing” rather than “intriguing,” but I was not at all amused by the writer who threatened that if I didn’t do what he wanted, he’d behave like Carlos the Jackal.)

One of those letters, a response to one of the approximately 800 rejections I was forced to send out each month, was not only my favorite such response, but was so popular with the audience I thought it worth sharing here.

And so, in the video below, you can hear me read the only response to a Science Fiction Age rejection I ever liked … as well as offer a few words of advice.

I wish I could have shared the laughter and applause as well which attended my performance of this letter Saturday night, but as they say, you had to be there.

As those who’ve followed me for any length of time know, if I’m at a reading or panel, and I have the permission of those involved, I’ll record the event and toss it up on YouTube. My earliest such video was of Cory Doctorow back in 2010, and since then I’ve added more than 100 others. So I, of course, captured the three readings I attended at last weekend’s World Fantasy Convention.

On Friday, I watched as Alaya Dawn Johnson read from her YA novel Love is the Drug.

(more…)

Life Itself, a documentary about film critic Roger Ebert, will be released July 4th. I have no idea how much time will be spent on his period as a member of science fiction fandom—something you can learn more about in an interview I did with him for Sci-Fi Entertainment in 1997—but his SF life did make a brief cameo in the documentary’s trailer.

Visible on screen at the 29-second mark as one of the interviewees says, “he wrote a novel,” is something that isn’t a novel—the opening spread of Ebert’s short story “After the Last Mass” from the February 1972 issue of Fantastic. As far as I know, Ebert only published two SF short stories, the other being “In Dying Venice,” which appeared in the May 1972 of Amazing Science Fiction, so I was glad to see one of them making an appearance. (more…)

I went into D.C. Saturday to attend Awesome Con, where I took part in the panel, “Rise and Prevalence of Dystopian Science Fiction in Pop Culture” along with Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Robert Chase. When I arrived at the room in which the panel was to be held, I was surprised to find (since I’m used to programming at SF cons rather than media cons) a long line of con-goers that stretched down the hall and vanished around a corner.

Which meant that our panel was remarkably well attended, with at least 250 people showing up to hear us pontificate. (Perhaps there were even 300 or more. Once a room gets past a certain size, I lose all ability to guestimate.)

I’m fairly certain that the audience wasn’t there because they had any idea who we were. I’m guessing they’d shown up because the topic, which promised that we’d touch on such things as The Hunger Games and The Walking Dead, was compelling. But based on the reaction we received, I think we kept people entertained. There was much laughter, and many great questions.

Here we are after the panel ended, appearing remarkably cheery for three guys who’d just spent an hour discussing dystopias. (more…)