Click the “Books” tab at the top and you’ll find a page with descriptions of all my published books (so far.) Just saying.

I just returned from a week long workshop on marketing for fiction writers. We learned about the publishing business, how it works, who has the power, and how to get our novels the best chance they can get. A lot of classes, a lot of assignments, a lot of reading, and not much sleep.

I learned some interesting bits of trivia. For example, I never knew that the practice of giving writers an advance against their royalties began with F. Scott Fitzgerald. He was running out of cash so he asked his publisher to give him some advance money on the book he was writing. The publisher agreed. Turns out Fitzgerald was out of money because he drank it all. Or most of it. Other writers heard about the arrangement and demanded advances as well. (I can just see the scene: “Hey, I drink at least as much as F. Scott. I deserve advance money too!”) Advances soon became an industry standard. So all you writers out there who get paid money before your book is even published: you have F. Scott Fitzgerald’s drinking habits to thank for that fortunate circumstance.

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.