I just found out that my story “Working Out Our Salvation” is going to be appearing in next month’s Weird Tales, which is celebrating its new look with a wider distribution and a stellar deal: subscribe now (6 issues) for only $12. Weird Tales is one of my favorite magazines out there and I sincerely hope the new look and subscription push means it starts getting the attention it deserves. It’s one magazine that no matter when I pick it up, the stories are going to be just like what it says on the cover:weird. Kindy creepy. Sometimes funny. Usually dark. But always weird.

The only downside to this news? This is the last story I’ve sold that’s yet to appear in print, which means I need to sell more stories. So I’ll be getting right on that then…

More great news. I’ve been torn about my audiobook situation. I’ve run out of books I really, really want to consume during my commute. The local library either doesn’t have what I want or there are long waiting lists. Audible is pricey, doesn’t have a number of things I want, and the things they have that I do want tend to be short which means I wouldn’t get my money’s worth. What to do, what to do?

Well, pulling my head out is the first step. The UW’s university library database is difficult to use for searching for audiobooks which is why I’ve been avoiding it. WorldCat, however, rocks. In the search box, you check the sound recording box and say you want to search for CDs only. WorldCat scours all the libraries affiliated with your university via their system, which means a lot of libraries and hence a lot of selection. I ordered up nearly all the early 20th century stuff I was looking for: Farewell to Arms, Death in the Afternoon, Three Soldiers, Main Street, Babbit, Winesburg OH, East of Eden, and Tortilla Flat. Dos Passos’ USA Trilogy is only available on tape and, for some reason, Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy is only available on audio at two libraries and those copies can only be checked out by the visually impaired. Lucky bastards!

The downside is that I need to rip these CDs to MP3 myself if I want to put them on my iPod. The upside is that most of these are pretty short, all but East of Eden which is 20+ discs. When I get to the point that I want to take on the Russian novelists or Victor Hugo or Thucydides or Herodotus, then I’ll shell out the $150 and download those suckers which are 25 to 60 hours (!) long. East of Eden wasn’t available through Audible anyway.

Did you know that Paolo Bacigalupi has a blog? Paolo is a swell fella and an awesome writer. I have a term paper due for my sci-fi seminar and Paolo may well end up being the subject. We just read a bunch of essays on utopia, anti-utopia, dystopia, and critical dystopia and the readings kept bringing me back to the visions of the future Paolo’s shown us in stories like The Calorie Man and The People of Sand and Slag.

And the last bit of good news (anymore good news and my skin would rip open) is that I found Paolo’s story The Tamarisk Hunter on the High Country News website, where the story was first published. I see it’s being reprinted in an upcoming F&SF, but why wait?

Current Mood: Exhausted from Excitement |
Currently Listening To - Mississippi Fred McDowell - “Blues Masters”