mariness

Yesterday was, to put it mildly, a hideous day, with approximately two good things in it: one, Castle got renewed, as if ABC knew I needed something, and second, it was the official launch of Shine
an anthology of Optimistic SF, available through Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Powells, Books-A-Million and through local and independent bookstores. (I was about to plug Orlando's local independent bookstore, Urban Think, here, but, unfortunately, they are closing. Sniffle. So, let me direct you to B & L Books, up in Altamonte Springs, instead. Go independent bookstores! While I'm sort of on the subject, Urban Think is apparently having a massive going out of business sale as I type, so, locals, head over.) And if you happen to be attending Eastercon over at Heathrow, various Shine writers (not me), including aliettedb and Alastair Reynolds, should be at the launch party there.

(On a completely unrelated note, while I was writing this up, I clicked on the Amazon.com link for Science Fiction > Anthologies, to find that Amazon.com regards the combined edition of David Eddings' last two Mallorean books as a Science Fiction Anthology. All together now: SIGH. Moving on.)

As I earlier mentioned, I was insanely pleased with how my story in this anthology, "Twittering the Stars," came out, largely because it fulfilled a long cherished goal of mine: to write a short story that could be read backwards or forwards. I don't know if I will ever try this narrative trick again – and it definitely requires a decent word processor – but accomplishing it the first time was a Warm Feeling Moment.

By complete coincidence, Shine just happens to include stories by Innsmouth Free Press editor and publisher Paula Stiles (thesnowleopard and Silvia Moreno-Garcia (silviamg), allowing you to see what happens when Cthulhu writers get optimistic. Well, when the two of them get optimistic. My story is a bit more bleak. As a special bonus, Paula's story has ROBOTS and for many reasons its ending made my little heart spring in joy, and Silvia wrote about one of my other fascinations, genetic crop rotation (and her story cracked me up, quite possibly not in all the places she intended to have me crack up.) So other fun stuff as well.

Here are some reviews of Shine:

Charles Tan, Bibliophile Stalker. (Singles out "Twittering the Stars" as one of the better stories in the anthology.)

SciFi Wire, Nick Mamatas (aka, nihilistic_kid (Liked "Twittering the Stars" but got the title wrong.)

Barnes and Noble bookclub (Liked "Twittering the Stars.")

And a review in…Italian? Seriously? Is here. Since I lived in Italy for several years, this is kinda beyond awesome. Finding out that geek means geek in Italian? Also awesome. With that said...they also got the title wrong, perhaps because they seem to have been following the Sci Fi interview. (I can follow Italian, sorta, but I haven't had the time to really look closely here.)

And now for today's sorely needed day trip.

The Shadows on the Reef story continues, as a new director named Dennis arrives.

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Indirectly, this reminded me that I had forgotten to post a link to the Shine Anthology competition. I won't say too much about it, except to note that if you are a long time reader of this blog, or if you are chuckling at the thought of a director named Dennis in a Cthulhu tale scribed by moi, you have a bit of a head start here.