Sorry this update is running a bit late, we’ve all been outside, trying to race the wind…
October is a blustery month, both for the weather and for our lives; this is the time of year many of us look up at the calender and swear that it was April only yesterday…and realize we’re overdue on planning for Thanksgiving and the various other fall and winter holidays. The stores are already packed with Christmas shoppers, the air is getting colder, and hot cocoa starts to sell more briskly at the supermarket….
In the midst of all this, writers keep on writing–perhaps shooting a wistful glance out the window at the changing foliage or the flocks of birds departing (or arriving) now and again. A quick poll of Mercury Retrograde Press writers yielded some interesting fall traditions: Edward Morris makes jack-o-lantern soup every year, and keeps Halloween candy in the house at all times. Leona Wisoker buys more flowers to offset the drying and dying off outside, and sets a pan with cinnamon sticks, oranges, and cloves to simmer throughout the day. More fall traditions from our authors will be posted later; meanwhile, we’d definitely love to hear about what you, our readers, enjoy doing when the wind blows the autumn gold from the trees!
Many of us, apparently, really come to life in the colder weather: Edward Morris, for example, has been busy (well, all right, he’s always busy, hot or cold weather). He recently attended the Wordstock Literary Festival, and notes that “HWA Grand Master Darrell Schweitzer and SF author Michael Swanwick helped me with my research, and I owe them both several pints of something.”
He sold two (more) short stories: “Jihad Over Innsmouth” to The Book of Cthulhu and “One Night In Manhattan”, a story about the Hart Crane as one of the first LSD test subjects, to Big Pulp’s summer 2010 trade antho. A collaboration with Lou Antonelli resulted in MUSIC FOR FOUR HANDS, a chapbook of SF stories, which has sold to Selina Rosen at Yard Dog Press. Joe R. Lansdale has already blurbed the chapbook enthusiastically, calling the stories “outstanding.”
And if that’s not enough, Ed is also: workshopping two new writers’ novels, attending the Oregon Science Fiction Convention, working on about ten more stories of various lengths, states, and stages; one, O FORTUNA, he describes as: Mythology: pre-Renaissance, FX budget: Monstrous, Body count: Incalculable. Yep, that sounds like an Ed book, all right….
Larissa Niec has been busy working on the next book in her series and tending to “day job” matters, but she’s looking forward to hosting the November episode of the Broad Pod, which is themed around teachers (great theme, in our opinion!), and which will include readings from award-winning author Carol Berg as well as several other terrific writers. (For those of you unfamiliar with Broad Universe, it’s an “international non-profit organization dedicated to promoting, encouraging, honoring, and celebrating women writers and editors in science fiction, fantasy, horror and other speculative genres.” Larissa Niec and Leona Wisoker are both members. Larissa is also a member of the Interstitial Arts Foundation)
Leona Wisoker, for her part, is one of those people who come alive in cold weather; which is good, because she’s got quite a bit on her plate at the moment: editing for Damnation Books, picking up the odd freelance editing gig here and there, a couple of local book signings at the William and Mary Barnes and Noble, preparing for DarkoverCon (at which she will have a sales table, and Minions!), writing reviews for Green Man Review and Sleeping Hedgehog, following up on contacts made at the James River Writers Conference and CapClave (both of which were faaaaantastic, she says), striving to keep regular blog posts going, and, oh yes, comprehensively overhauling book three of her Children of the Desert series. But it’s not all that much. Not really. This is the slow time of year for her….
Barbara Friend Ish hasn’t slowed down at all. She’s working on War-Lord of the Gods (sequel to her debut novel, Shadow of the Sun), the Fortunes deck, and the electronic versions of the Fortunes game. Of her current projects, she says, “War-Lord is deeper and darker than Shadow of the Sun, and it’s really making me stretch my storytelling muscles. I’m excited about the way it’s unfolding. Preliminary sketches for the Suit of Stars, the ‘Major Arcana’ suit of the Fortunes deck, are looking very cool. We’ll be issuing a call for artistic contributors to the deck in the next couple months. “
Upcoming events for Barbara include MileHiCon in Denver, October 21-23. MileHiCon is a fantastic SF/F convention with a literary focus; this will be Barbara’s first time participating. She notes, “I haven’t been in Denver in a few years, and I can’t wait to catch up with my Colorado friends.”
So blow, wind, blow–and see if you can keep up with us!
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