Mario Milosevic

Kim’s done a complete overhaul of her website. Surf on over and look around. She’s put up a biography (with pics), and all kinds of juicy tidbits about her various books, including Ruby’s Imagine, which is coming out in a few months. She’s also got some big name writers (like Alice Hoffman and Jane Yolen) on board for the opening week celebration. Plus, if you leave a comment, you’ll be in the running for a free book. So what the heck are you waiting for? Go, go.

Click on the “Other Writing” tab at the top of the page and you’ll find a list of all my published short stories, poems, articles, and reviews. Also links to my previous blogs. I put this together yesterday. It was strange going through my files looking for all these items. Many many pieces I have no memory of writing at all. Also don’t remember submitting them or getting the acceptance or receiving the copy of the publication, even though all those thing had to happen for me to have the finished product in my hand. Some of them made me wince with how, ahem, substandard they were, but, thankfully, not too many.

I’m not even sure why I went to the trouble of assembling this list, except that as I was typing in the names of all those journals and all those titles I felt really good. Maybe that is reason enough.

Eventually I’ll put up a list of my books under the appropriate tab, and at some point I’ll post some of those old poems and stories and maybe even annotate the list with some personal reminiscences. Stay tuned.

Sure I was lucky. I knew it. I’d won the genetic lottery. I had a pair of working wings growing out of my shouler blades. I kept them folded up under my shirt so no one knew. It was a delicious secret. I never showed anyone my wings. I used to fly around at night. Just me, the bats, warm air, and glorious updrafts. Those were the best times. I don’t fly much anymore. The wings hurt. I’m afraid of doctors. What they’d do to me if they ever saw the wings. So I keep them folded up and trembling.

First of all, that’s not a picture of me at the top of the page. It’s the penguin who appears in one of the illustrations for Terrastina and Mazolli. He and I extend a hearty welcome to everyone who has migrated from my blogger blog, and to anyone else who has stumbled on this little strand of the web. Most of the tabs at the top are under construction. I hope to have them in working order over the next few weeks. Until then, this blog will continue pretty much as it did at the previous site. Hope you all like the new look.

Regular readers of my various blogs will know of my high regard for the works of Jorge Luis Borges. Here are some random bits of trivia about this singular writer:

1. In later life he tried to buy up all the copies of his earliest works because he believed them to be inferior and embarrassing to his reputation.

2. He loved westerns.

3. He bumped his head quite severely in 1938. It was only after this injury that he began writing the surreal works for which he became famous.

4. His first introduction to the English speaking literary world was with a story translated by Anthony Boucher and published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Yup, a pulp magazine. I love that.

I’ve got a bunch of science fiction digest magazines I don’t want anymore. They have been in boxes for seven years and I have not once felt the urge to open any of those boxes, which reminds me of that rule for getting rid of stuff: If you haven’t used something in two years, you probably don’t need it. Or something like that. I’m not exactly quoting directly, but you get the idea. Anyway. There are about 850 of these things. I’ve got issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction going all they way back to the early 50s, I’ve got Asimov’s from 1982 to 1998 and a smattering of some Analogs and Amazings from the late 80s and early 90s. None of these are complete runs, but I do have many complete years for F&SF and Asimov’s.

What to do with these? Well, it would be nice to sell them. Are you interested? I’ll entertain offers. Know anyone else who might be? A collector? A kid besotted by all things science fictional? Pass the word on. I know if I got a big box of these things when I was about twelve or thirteen years old I would have been on cloud nine for months. Years.

Let me know in the comments. I can also provide a list of specific issues for anyone interested.

Title: One Night and a Thousand Nights. Setting: The edge of the world. The Earth is flat. Some disaster in the interior (super volcano? massive drought?) has forced most of the population to migrate to the edge. Plot: We follow several people as they try to cope with life on the edge. Each chapter would be less than a hundred words. There would be 1,001 chapters. Each chapter takes place on a different night.

The concept came to me whole one afternoon while walking home from work. I don’t even know if such a book is feasible, but I’ve been thinking about it, envisioning it, and living with it for a couple of weeks now, and it still seems as juicy and cool as when I first thought of it. So that means I’ll probably attempt it eventually.

An adult patron walks into the library looking like she just got sent to the principal’s office.
Patron: I am so sorry this is so late. (Puts library book in return bin.)
Me: How late is it?
Patron: Two days.
Me: Two days? Don’t worry about it. That’s nothing. You shouldn’t lose sleep over past due library books.
Patron: (Suddenly looking much relieved.) Uh, thanks. How much is the fine?
Me: We don’t charge overdue fines.
Patron: (Looking shocked, as if I had just told her the county prosecutor had recently made it a policy to stop prosecuting murder cases because it was just such a big hassle and all.) You don’t charge overdue fines?
Me: Libraries that charge fines don’t get their books back any quicker than libraries that do. Besides, by not charging fines we gain a lot of good PR. We only bother about such things if someone loses or damages a book.
Patron: What do you do if someone damages a book?
Me: We release the hounds.

I was a library nut when I was a kid. I’d go at least once a week, sometimes more, and check out the maximum number of books they allowed. (I’m still the same way, but that’s a story for another post.) I thought there was nothing better in the world than the public library. I loved spending time in it and I loved just knowing it existed.

It took me a while to accumulate enough capital to actually buy a book of my own, rather than borrow it from the library. One of the first ones I purchased was a Dover edition of a book I first encountered on the library shelves and decided I had to have for my own: The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. The book is a collection of satirical, witty, sardonic, and just plain funny definitions of everything from Abasement to Zoology.

Who knows what drew an eleven year old to such a dismal view of the world? Could I have been as pessimistic about life as this book? Probably not. It hardly seems possible, given my more or less charmed middle class upbringing. Nevertheless, I do remember enjoying the definitions. I still own the book and still dip into it occasionally. Bierce had the sharpest wit of anyone I’ve ever encountered, in print or in real life. Also the most unrelentingly cynical grasp of human nature. His ability to find the negative in everything still warrants my admiration. Just try these definitions on for size:

EGOIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

FAMOUS, adj. Conspicuously miserable.

NEIGHBOR, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.

RESOLUTE, adj. Obstinate in a course that we approve.

VOTE, n. The instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

My copy of Bierce’s singular lexicon has a $1.25 cover price, which gives you some idea of just how long I’ve had it.

What book do you still have from when you were a pre-teen?

Five times a day, sometimes more, I showered: before breakfast, after breakfast, midday, early evening, and just before bed. Also, baths, twice a day: after lunch and during the evening meal. I washed my hands at least hourly. I bought soap only when it was heavily discounted. All this disowning of dirt contributed to my immaculate well being. I was constantly fresh and ready to face my troubles. Insects and dogs avoided me. I was so clean they did not recognize me as part of their world. People regarded me with awe. I acknowledged their understandable adoration. I positively glowed.