Blurred Line

A good final day to 2008 so far. Got word from Electric Spec that they'll be holding "Spam" for voting. I'll hear on that come February. Also, I won a contest over at Getting Unstuck for a shiny copy of Entertaining with Booze. It'll make a kickass present for the girlfriend, and I, of course, get the benefit of being entertained with booze. And my computer came! Well, I wasn't home to get it, but at least I know it's here in Ottawa, so I'll have it in my grubby little hands by Friday. Yay!

On an entirely unrelated note, please enjoy this picture of me wearing 3D glasses. Apparently, watching Journey to the Center of the Earth isn't as bad as you might think (provided, of course, that you've consumed a sufficient amount of alcohol).

On the Radioblog: Today I've gone with "Tide of Tears" by The Parlor Mob, off of their excellent album, And You Were A Crow. As far as often-imitated bands go, Led Zeppelin's somewhere near the top of the list. So, it's pretty impressive when someone comes along and does a halfway decent job of it. Wolfmother managed the feat a few years ago and The Parlor Mob might be even better. "Tide of Tears" is an eight and a half minute long (so settle in if you're listening) slow burning track that has shades of Zeppelin's "Since I've Been Loving You" in it.

Keyword of the Day: Lots of interesting choices lately, but it's hard to go with anything else when you've got "why is my porn blurry". I have no idea, but given how much 3D glasses rock, I'd recommend trying on a pair of those to see if it enhances the experience. Of course, it's all fun and games until someone takes a nipple (or worse) in the eye.

I'm back from the vast cornucopia of turkey, chocolate, and alcohol that was my holiday break. It was a pretty good time, though, if a little stressful -- so, a relatively typical holiday, I guess. For the first time I got caught up in the Boxing Week sales. I didn't actually go out to any stores -- I don't have a hardy enough constitution to subject myself to something like that, but I couldn't resist the online sales. Ended up buying myself a brand new computer, which I can't wait to get. I imagine I'll pounce on the UPS man when he shows up (but who knows, maybe he'll enjoy it). I've been running the same Dell for almost four years now and although there's not anything wrong with it, I can't play any game that was made after 2005, nor can I watch DVDs on it. Plus, my hard drive was pretty much full (and now I get to upgrade from 80 gigs to 320). Woot!

The highlight of Christmas Day was probably the fact that my Dad got an old-fashioned toboggan. The sight of my Dad, my brother and I all getting on a toboggan seemed to amuse the rest of the families on the sledding hill, though I'm not sure they were particularly impressed with our familial brand of insults and heckling.

Anyhow, I'll be glad to get back to the routine (although I've been at work all week, so I'm halfway there as it is).

Hope everyone had a good holiday!

Well, Christmas is just about here. Somehow, it's only three days, which I find a little bit disturbing. It seems to be coming around with less and less fanfare each year. But maybe it's because I've resigned myself to the fact that I won't be getting a pony this year, or any year. Sniff.

More likely, it's because I'll be working through the Christmas season -- I'm only taking Christmas Day and New Year's Day off. The rest of the time I'll be putting my nose to the grindstone and trying to rake together some sweet, sweet commissions. And, as the blogosphere tends to get pretty quiet around this time of year, I figure I'll save all my post ideas for January and just wish everyone a Happy Holidays for the remainder of the year.

Still, it just wouldn't seem right to go without handing out a few fun toys first. So, here you are:

Wordle! This is a fun little tool that'll take recent blog posts from your RSS or XML feeds and turn it into a funky word cloud. Clearly, I've been talking about covers lately. And I say "Just" a lot. Go play!

Assess your blog's reading level! Even small children can enjoy my blog, preferably ones who are jaded writer types. (That totally just gave me an image of an eight year old in a black turtleneck, a soul patch Sharpied onto his face, puffing on a Popeye cigarette and making air quotation marks whenever he says the word literature). Anyway, just admit it...you wanna know how smart your blog sounds.

Typealyzer! Apparently I write like an ESTP, or a "Doer" (I note with interest that a comprehensive personality test I took established me as an ISFP, which I think is a lot more accurate). As a point of interest, if you've never had the opportunity to take a Myers-Briggs test somewhere, it's kinda cool. Anyhow, the diagram shows what parts of my brain were active when I was writing. If the assessment is accurate, the interesting thing is that the personality of my writing and my own personality are totally different. Craziness!

Anyway, have a good holiday, everybody!

I was doing some submission reading for Fusion Fragment today and one of the things that struck me was how many submissions there were without any cover letters. Just something that said "Please consider my story" or, even worse, an entirely blank email with the story attached. Now, before I start out here, let me just say that having a cover letter has pretty much no effect on whether I choose to pick up a story or not.

That said, write a cover letter! Most of the stories I've accepted (I can think of only one exception) have had cover letters. And I think this has a lot to do with the fact that writers who've been around a while know enough to include them. So, no cover letter = newbie writer = probably not a good story, until the writing proves otherwise. Now, I'm just one man, but I'm pretty sure that the general consensus is that it's a bad idea to give an editor a reason to dislike a submission before the story's even been opened.

There's a number of places online where you can find out what to include in a cover letter, but here's what I prefer: the name of the story, the approximate wordcount, an extremely brief description that'll give me an idea about what I'll be reading (ie. "post-apocalyptic satire" or "story of first contact"), a couple of previous publications if applicable (and a note: quality is better than quantity). Personally, if the author's got a webpage or blog, I like it when that's included -- but maybe that's just a curiousity thing. So, overall, you're looking at about two or three sentences.

Oh, and being a NaNoWriMo "winner" doesn't really count as an award. Sure, it's impressive and might make me a little envious (you highly productive bastard, you!) but it still has nothing to do with the quality of your writing. I'd have thought that was obvious, but it's happened more than once so far this month.

One final piece of advice: if you're including the name of the market or the editor somewhere in your cover letter, make sure you get it right. I've received some pretty hilarious interpretations of my name, not to mention a few times where the editor's name was somebody else entirely. That kind of stuff always makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

It's a difficult time of year to get writing. Lots of Christmas shopping to be done (I'm almost done mine), not to mention the parties and family visits. On top of all that, I've been pretty busy at work, so it hasn't been easy to find time to write (read: a giant excuse as to why I haven't written a single word since starting this blog).

I wonder sometimes how people get into the proper headspace to write. For some people, that's not a problem -- they're always in the writing headspace. Some people keep to a schedule, which has never worked for me. Some people use prompts or write stream-of-consciousness stuff to get into the swing of things. I guess I'm still trying to figure out what works for me. What's worked for people out there?

And on a completely random tangent, my Dad sent me a site that classifies all Canadians into one of 66 lifestyle types. I think you can probably still find yourself in here if you're not Canadian, though. I fall into category #32 - Grads & Pads. We're those who've just graduated, have mid-level jobs, small apartments and tend to be interested in politics and drinking. Sounds about right. See if you can find yourself here.

Well, the season of Christmas parties is in full swing. Had two this weekend, which resulted in much intoxication. Fortunately, I remained coherent and didn't embarrass myself at all...well, unless you count my terrible performance at acting as Shania Twain during a drunken came of Cranium. By the way, if you haven't played Cranium, you're missing out. It's kind of like fusing Pictionary, Charades, and Trivial Pursuit together. Fun enough on its own, but damn near perfect entertainment when copious amounts of alcohol are introduced to the mix.

Also, finished reading Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. I'm always impressed with what Stephenson can do with technology, and he really outdid himself with this one. The amount of cool tech stuff in this book basically kicks Snow Crash around the block. However, besides one of the main characters, I never found myself really into the book. Plus, there were a bunch of loose threads hanging around, which always irritates me. Still, there's more than enough to like here...but for me it didn't come anywhere close to Snow Crash or Cryptonomicon.

Keyword of the day: Unfortunately, it looks like hits to the blog have dropped off to near nothing over the past two days, so nothing too interesting to write about here. Although, someone did come to the site looking for "blurred porn". Hot.

So, I received a book from Bookmooch today -- Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Pashazade. And it made me remember that part of the awesomeness of Bookmooch is the fact that I can get British editions of books. Why is this a good thing? Well, first of all, they spell colour with a "u". Seeing it without one still weirds me out. Also, British SF books almost always have cooler covers. Examples:

Pashazade. See the outlandishly bright American cover to the left. I mean, there's nothing terribly wrong with it, but it's as if the cover designers have no idea what the word "subtle" means. On the other hand, we've got the understated British edition. I love it. The idea behind the book is that the Ottoman Empire is still massively powerful, so instead of sticking on a random Middle Eastern skyline, we've just got some text. I think it works a lot better.

Ender's Game. OK, first off the cover of the new America version is just mind-bogglingly horrible. Like, unbelievably, "holy crap I would never pick this book up in a million years" horrible. I mean, it's got the mass-market SF feel to it, which is fine, but this is really a book that would appeal to a wider crowd and the cover should reflect that. The British version isn't amazing or anything, but in my opinion it's an artistic masterpiece compared to the American.

Air. If you haven't read it yet, by the way, Geoff Ryman's novel showcases the best of the Mundane SF movement. The American version isn't terrible, but it's got a lot going on. I'm not sure all the dots and stuff really do much of anything. I mean, I know what they represent in the book, but I'm not sure it makes a great cover. The British cover has the same idea to it, but it looks like they just stuck with a simple motif. And, to my mind, it has way more impact.

Who knows, though. Maybe I just like my book covers simple.

Keyword of the day: The best of the bunch today was "when does the line get blurred out". Well, you see, whatcha have to do is take the square root of pi, divide it along the hypotenuse of x (x being the constant established by the multiplying the width of the line by the distance to the observer). No, but seriously...it's somewhere between the sixth and seventh drink.

It's officially winter. A huge dump of snow today -- about 20 cm which, if I'm not mistaken, comes out to 9 inches. As is usual when the first big snowfall happens, the plows aren't on it immediately. They've plowed a few main roads in town, but for the most part they're holding off until 1 AM (the plows here run overnight until seven in the morning). So, it makes for some exciting driving. The drives to and from work were long, but rather uneventful. The trek to my girlfriend's place, which usually takes about 10 minutes, was a long and epic journey. I saw two cars spin out (one, right in front of me, executed a perfect 180). At one point I changed lanes involuntarily (the other lane, thankfully, was empty). And I spent more time fishtailing than a 16 year old redneck who's just found a monster truck and a giant mud puddle. Now I'm waiting for her apartment's personal plowman to come clear her parking lot so I can avoid getting a ticket for parking on the streets. Yay for winter!

Keyword of the day: Without hesitation, "my girlfriend made me watch the boys and girl from county clare". Because, I mean, who searches for that? At some point or another we've all been curious about a number of ridiculous things on the internet, but searching for other people who were forced to watch date movies? Not so much. Anyhow, I watched The Boys and Girl from County Clare completely of my own volition. It wasn't a bad little flick, either. And if you're into traditional Irish music, it'd be kickass.

I've finally been able to start hosting the blog myself again. Yay! No more blogspot address!

New feeds are: http://blurredline.com/blog/atom.xml and http://blurredline.com/blog/rss.xml, depending on your preference.

Amazing how much an internet outage can mess with your workday...especially when everything you work with is web-based. Took off for home at lunch in an attempt to salvage part of the day and got a pretty significant amount of work done. Actually, I'm usually more productive at home than I am at the office because there aren't as many distractions. If I didn't think I'd get fired for it, I'd work from home all the time.

Also, I came across the Indie Next List. I had no idea anything like this even existed, but apparently the American Booksellers Association puts out a list of books that are, for the most part, a little bit off the beaten path and recommended by independent book stores. Sweet. I'll definitely be watching this list, because I love me my indie bookstores.

And if you happen to be as fascinated as I am by real world companies built off gold-farming and item trading in virtual worlds like World of Warcraft, Wired has a terrific article about the fall of the biggest company in the business.

Keyword of the day: I get about one or two hits a day from people looking for "weekly writing challenges". Anyone know of any sites running good challenges like this?

I've sent out "Between Eternities" hoping to get it reprinted, which means that I've got two different out in submission land right now. Geez, when was the last time that happened? 2006? Anyhow, I'm slowly cobbling together an outline for the last entry in what has become a little bit of a short story trilogy. "Spam" takes place over roughly the same time period as "Between Eternities" but focuses on different characters and this next story will focus on one of the background characters in "Spam" after the events of both stories.

Also requested another full manuscript over at Apodis. At the query stage I get the first ten pages of the novel and when something shows potential, I ask for the full manuscript. So far, I've gotten five. Taking into the total number of queries I've received, that puts my "request for full" rate at about 3% (and, of course, so far I've only actually accepted one of the manuscripts that I requested). A little something to think about when you're submitting your next piece of writing.

Keyword of the day: Someone came to the blog having looked up "death of the short story" and stumbled upon my post from 2005 on that very topic. The notion I put forward of the form dying out, I think, was entirely naive. The short story won't die out. The short story market, however...well, let's face it, the short story market has always been made up of writers and/or academics. As for genre fiction, there are only a few markets that manage to draw in those who aren't writers themselves, which isn't necessarily a bad state. I mean, there's only so many top notch stories to go around. No, the short story isn't dying out -- I think the mistake I made in putting forward that notion was that it was ever a massively profitable/popular form in the first place. That said, short stories rock. And Jason Stoddard, one of my favourite SF short story writers from the last couple of years, has a new story up at Futurismic, one of my favourite short story markets. Go read.

I don't actually want this, but still, how cool would it be to have a t-shirt that plays sound effects/music at certain times in your life? You know, like some techno with a heavy beat when you're engaged in slow-motion hand-to-hand combat with various baddies, a la The Matrix, or maybe a little sexy R&B for when you're romancing the ladies, or some Billy Squier when you feel the uncontrollable urge to jazzercise (I'm not the only one who gets uncontrollable urges to jazzercise, am I?).

On the Radio Blog: I've just put up "Love You Much Better" by The Hush Sound, which is one of the most infectiously cheery songs I've heard in some time. Seriously, it's hard not to dance a little bit in my office chair...so long as you can get past the fact that the band was discovered and championed by Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy (a.k.a. the man responsible for 50% of Ashlee Simpson's baby). Don't worry though, I don't think that they even seem to be on the same musical planet as Fall Out Boy. Recommended for people who like dancing, simple drum beats, backing pianos, girls who can sing and for anyone who wants to know what Pete Wentz listens to (and let's face it, we've all wondered at some point or another).

Keyword of the day: A weak field today, but I'll go with "bad short stories". This isn't actually a short story, but writer J.A. Konrath writes a couple paragraphs worth of terrible fiction that contain all the worst things he sees in stories. Entertaining and educational.

My hand hurts. I just burned myself on the wonderful chicken parmesan filling of a Bistro Crustini. It was an epic battle, but I think I got the better end of the deal. In case you were wondering, those are giant fangs on the Bistro Crustini. Errr...right. Clearly, I could come up with no interesting topics today, but it's been one of those stressful kind of days and my mind's been elsewhere.

With that in mind, I give you stuff from elsewhere on the web: If you haven't seen it yet, it's probably about time you had a look at the New York Times' Notable Books of 2008. A pretty interesting list this year, though I haven't read any of them. Even more interesting, I haven't heard of a significant number of the authors. Yes, this is the kind of thing that excites me. And a couple of interesting articles from Slate: First, here's an interesting twist on the global economic crisis...Argentina currently has a massive coin shortage. Second, a photo-essay on what to do with a gigantic Wal-Mart store when it goes out of business. Apparently, you turn it into a racetrack.

Keyword(s) of the Day: Kind of hard to pick a favourite today, there were just too many good ones to comment on. For example, "great short stories about death". Go find a Margaret Atwood story called "The Sin Eater". I highly recommend it. Also, it turns out that if you ever feel the need to google "hot swedish girls glimpse" this blog ranks as #5. If I were sleazier, I'd go find some pictures of hot Swedish girls to post. Alas, you must look elsewhere for your sexy Scandinavian goddesses. And, finally, one of the funnier keywords to send someone to this blog, "my eye bleeds". Dude, you should probably go see a doctor.

With apologies to international readers, I've got another Canada-centric post for today. If you haven't heard, the government's on the brink of toppling, as the three opposition parties are attempting to form a coalition that would have more seats than the reigning Conservative party. This has sparked a lot of outrage in the country, and not just with Conservative supporters, either. Interestingly, I'm hearing the phrase "un-democratic" a lot, which irks me, since people are throwing the term around a lot for no other reason than provocation. I mean, this kind of action is mandated by the constitution. What's more, people seem to be forgetting that we elect members of parliament, and they all get a vote, whether or not they're part of the party with the most seats. So, if the opposition parties want to work together, why is that un-democratic? They were elected just as legitimately as Conservative MPs were.

Anyhow, I'm not sure this new coalition government is a good idea, and I'm even less sure that it'll actually work should it come to fruition. But calling it un-democratic? Come on, people.

Besides that, I went to see JCVD last night. We're living in an age of cinematic reboots, so it was only a matter of time before a washed up action star tried doing the same. And Jean-Claude Van Damme went a pretty interesting root, playing himself. The movie's part drama, part comedy, part satire, part suspense, with an extremely light sprinkling of action. I won't say it's a great movie, but there's something wildly fascinated about watching Van Damme act, and finding out that he's not half bad at it.

Keyword of the day: Someone came here looking for free ebooks by Octavia Butler. Can't offer that, but anyone who's read Butler's fiction or essays would probably agree with me that she was one of the most intelligent science fiction writers of her time (or any time, probably). An interesting interview, too (keeping in mind that I think most writers make for dreadfully boring interviewees). Here she is on Charlie Rose.

On Saturday night, my girlfriend and I went to the European Union Film Festival (and saw Four Minutes, which was pretty decent). The event was held at Library & Archives Canada, which happens to be just down the street from Parliament. Anyhow, as we were walking along, I pointed out how I liked living in a country where the gates to the country's seat of power were left open, with pretty much no supervision. Maybe it's a Canadian thing that that makes me feel safer than if the gates were shut and manned by gun-toting guards and vicious attack dogs. Unless it was manned by a guy brandishing a manila folder. That'd make me feel pretty safe because, let's face it, nobody likes a paper cut. Not even would-be terrorists.

So, imagine my surprise this morning when my girlfriend sends me an email saying that some crazy guy went into the office building next to hers and tried to detonate a bomb. After a moment of shock, I realized that she was probably jumping to conclusions and/or on crack. A scan of the local news revealed that someone entered the office building, praying loudly and waving a Koran about. Apparently, in between his praying he was screaming about revenge on the Libyan Embassy (the only embassy in that office building was the embassy of Fiji, but hey, we didn't all pass geography). So, fortunately, it just turned out to be some crazy (though police still haven't released information on what they found in his bag -- my guess: the medication he forgot to take). Clearly, this guy went to the extra low-tech school of terrorism; who needs a bomb when you can just pray really loud?

Radioblog: I've got "Luckydutch" by Radio Moscow up on the player right now. Recommended for fans of Zeppelin, blues rock, wicked guitar solos, people who enjoy air guitar, and those of Dutch descent who plan to hit a casino in the near future.

Keyword of the day: Since a lot of hits come in through searching up random stuff on Google, I thought I'd respond to one of the day's search terms that sent a visitor here in each post. Today's chosen search term is "vikram lall blog". No, Vikram Lall does not have a blog, what with being a fictional character and all, but I would recommend that you check out author M.G. Vassanji's website. His personal notes on each of his books might be of special interest. Also, someone came here looking for "how to read blurred writing in a picture". I have no idea, but I imagine some combination of Photoshop and a magnifying glass might do it. If anyone knows, tell me, because now I'm kinda curious.

I have a beard (see poorly-lit accompanying photograph; note what appears to be the stubble of a 12-year old; believe writer's claims that said facial hair is, in fact, more dense than the camera might show; revel in much roguish handsomeness).

And a new "grown-up" 9-5 job. And a new car (well, newer than my last one, at least). A new internet browser. A new MP3 player. A new version of Guitar Hero. A new keychain. A new lint brush.

Yes, things have changed over the past year. I thought I'd go with the old the-more-things-change trope, but on second thought, never mind that. Both my schedule and internet access are a lot more stable now, so I don't see any reason why I can't write here on a daily basis, unlike previous attempts.

And I'm pleased to announce that, over the last 48 hours, a number of story ideas have been sprouting, which is a feeling I've definitely missed. Now all I have to do is actually get down to it and put pen to paper.

Finally, in self-promotion mode, I have to say a few words about the upcoming release from Apodis Publishing. The novel, called Burn Rate, is written by Daniel Marcus, who has been a finalist for the Campbell Award, has published in both Asimov's and F&SF, has written non-fiction for Wired and BoingBoing and is a Clarion grad. Oh, and his novel happens to be top-notch. I'd recommend checking out his blog for some info on the book, as well as a few teasers.