Okay, point the first: Twelfth Planet Press has offered up free e-copies of their 2009 projectsin the name of getting folks to read them prior to the Hugo nominations at this years Worldcon in Melbourne. That means there are free copies of Horn up for grabs. Make of this what you will. (I should also mention that the inimitable Robert Hoge has started a campaign to get Australian’s nominated to the Hugo ballot, and he’s compiling a small list of recommendations for people who might be interested; the real action is over in the facebook group where everyone’s pitching in names).

And so, point the second: February is the month where I combat The Fear again.

It’s a stupid thing, The Fear, all the more stupid because it commonly manifests itself when things seem to be going right. People start accepting stories and asking for submissions and nominating me for awards and suddenly this little voice in the back of my head starts saying “you don’t deserve this” and “you’re going to fuck it up” and the next thing I know I’m sitting on top of a dozen half-finished stories and binging on coke and junk-food because it’s so much easier to not finish things than to start sending them out and face the fact that maybe, just maybe, this time people will realise I suck. Nothing unusual about any of that, really. I’ve never talked to anyone who wants to write who hasn’t experienced The Fear at some point or another. It’s just part of the process, and if it wasn’t for the fact that The Fear creeps up on me in stealth-mode and messes with my head it wouldn’t actually be a big deal at all.

My way past the fear is pretty simple: I start submitting stuff. Lots of it. Writing and submitting stories is actually habit-forming, and The Fear stops being a factor after you get into the routine. It doesn’t go away, but I get to stop capitalizing it. And, as with most things, I can distract myself by focusing on numbers. Make eight submission in February. Accrue 100 rejections this year*. Make sure I write 1500 words a day. Forgo the coke and chocolate which is salving my psychological wounds as I wallow in self-indulgent panic about never getting published again.

So for February I get back to basics and focus on numbers again.

Current Project: Getting Back to Basics
Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8
Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0
Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 0
Days without coke and other soft-drinks: 0
Days without chocolate: 0
Today the Spokesbear is: Sighing and giving me meaningful looks as he gets all passive-aggressive about the fact that I *should be working* right now if I mean to make any of this happen.

*A goal picked up from my friend Chris Green, based off the theory that you can’t control the acceptances but you can send a bunch of stuff out.

1. So it’s three five-day-old news by now, but Clockwork, Patchwork and Raven won the 2009 Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Short Storyand I now have a shiny glass trophy kicking around the flat. The Spokesbear demanded I photograph him with the newly acquired, but it’s remarkably hard to photograph a curved glass trophy with a bear looming over it. Instead I’ll just mention that a hardcopy of the story is available in Apex’s Descended from Darkness anthology and sales of the book go towards keeping Apex Magazine running.

The weekend itself was freaking awesome and laden with opportunities to catch up with folks I don’t get to see anywhere near enough (the redoubtable Jason Fischerand Best-Fantasy-Short-Story-Co-Winner Christopher Green among them).

2. Finally sat down and indulged my inner Charlie Kaufman fan by watching Synecdoche New York. It felt rather like someone had cut the last twenty minutes off Adaptation and left us with the confused muddle of stuff, but it also replaced Nicholas Cage with Philip Seymour Hoffman which helped keep me watching once I realised the plot-compass was set somewhere between “meander” and “Plot? Who do you think you’re talking to, buddy?” Overall it seems to be one of those big, muddled films you can primarily admire for their ambition and the quality of the parts. I’m sure it would reward me for putting the effort into puzzling out its metaphors and meanings, but at the same time it doesn’t actually inspire me to do so.

3. There’s a partial TOC for Twelfth Planet Press’ suburban fantasy anthology, Sprawl, making its way around the internets. It runs something like this:

Liz Argall – Seed Dreams (comic)
Peter Ball – One Saturday Night, With Angel
Deborah Biancotti – Never Going Home
Simon Brown – Sweep
Stephanie Campisi – How to Select a Durian at Footscray Market
Thoraiya Dyer – Yowie
Dirk Flinthart – Walker
L L Hannett – Weightless
Pete Kempshall – Signature Walk
Ben Peek – White Crocodile Jazz
Tansy Rayner Roberts – Relentless Adaptations
Barbara Robson – Neighbourhood Watch
Angela Slatter – Brisneyland by Night
Cat Sparks – All The Love in the World
Anna Tambour – Gnawer of the Moon Seeks Summit of Paradise
Kaaron Warren – Loss
Sean Williams – Parched (poem)

4. I am so totally over summer.

5. It’s lunchtime. I’m off to scrounge up some food.

 Three things worth noting:

1) Tio Gilberto and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts @ Podcastle

The audio version of Ben Fransisco’s story Tio Gilberto and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts is live over at Podcast. Go forth and feast your ears upon it; you will not be sorry.

2) Fantasy Magazine Best Story of 2009 Poll

If you haven’t had the chance yet, hie yourself over to Fantasy Magazine and place a vote in their 2009 reader poll to determine the favourite story published there last year. My votes swung towards Angela Slatter’s The Chrysanthemum Bride and Lisa Hannett’s The Good Window, but as usual you can’t go wrong with the majority of the stories that Fantasy publishes.

3) Apex Magazine’s First Annual Reader Poll

Apex Magazine is also looking for your vote on the best story they published in 2009, although I’m steering clear of recommendations given that two of the stories involved were mine.

Data Point the First: There’s about seven days left of Twelfth Planet Press’s Silly Season Stocking Stuffer Sale, whereby Australians can pick up a copy of my novella Horn with free shipping (and everyone else in the world gets a massively discounted postage). Given Horn’s cover price of $10, that’s a pretty sweet deal.

Data Point the Second: As of about six minutes ago, there were only 9 copies of Horn left in Twelfth Planet’s inventory.

Data Point the Third: The free shipping on Horn is a total “while stocks last” kind of deal (and there are plenty of other awesome books included in the sale.

Now I’m not mentioning this to suggest you should go buy a copy of the book right away. Nope, not at all. This is the silly season after all, and folks are generally watching their budgets in order to ensure maximum goodwill and festive cheer for those they love.

I’m not even saying “get it now or forever lose the chance,” since it sounds like we’ll be doing a reprint at some point in the future.

I’m certainly not say that Horn does make a kinda neat Stocking Stuffer for those friends who might be inclined to like a story about unicorns written specifically for people who hate unicorns. ‘Cause some people just don’t dig unicorn squick, and I’m okay with that.

What I might be saying – just maybe - that it’d be pretty damn neat for yours truly if those last nine copies went to a good home between now and Christmas.

‘Cause there’s not many things you can say to those extended family members you see twice a year when they ask “how’s the writing going” that actually sounds impressive, particularly when you write more short stories than anything else. But maybe, I don’t know, just maybe, “the book sold out a few days ago” will do the trick

I’m just going to snurch this one straight from the Apex blog:

To celebrate the end of our first year of becoming a professional level digital magazine, I’m pleased to announce that we will be presenting an award to the best original fiction published by Apex Magazine. The award will be voted on by the fans, meaning you! Voting starts tonight and will continue through January 30th. The story receiving the most votes will be announced on February 1st.

The author of the Apex Magazine Story of the Year will receive a trophy and the unique distinction of being the best Apex had to offer during 2009.

Presented below are the twenty-two original stories published during 2009:
“59 Beads”(4300) by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
“Overclocking”(2600) by James L. Sutter
“After the Fire”(2900) by Aliette De Bodard
“Benjamin Schneider’s Little Greys”(2100) by Nir Yaniv
“A Poor Man’s Roses”(2400) by Alethea Kontis
“To Dream of Stars: An Astronomer’s Lament” (5500) by Peter M. Ball
“Fungal Gardens”(6100) by Ekaterina Sedia
“Advertising at the End of the World”(4100) by Keffy R.M. Kehrli
“Kenny 149″(2700) by Brad Becraft
“Pimp My Airship”(6000) by Maurice Broaddus
“She Called Me Sweetie” (4500) by Glenn Lewis Gillette
“…That Has Such People in It”(2300) by Jennifer Pelland
“Hideki and the Gnomes” (500) by Mark Lee Pearson
“Clockwork, Patchwork and Ravens” (7500) by Peter M. Ball
“Waiting for Jakie”(3000) by Barbara Krasnoff
“Hindsight, in Neon” (2400) by Jamie Todd Rubin
“The Mind of a Pig”(3000) by Ekaterina Sedia
“The Puma”(6700) by Theodora Goss
“Dark Planet”(4300) by Lavie Tidhar
“Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands”(4500) by Gord Sellar
“On the Shadow Side of the Beast”(3900) by Ruth Nestvold
“Starter House” (5000) by Jason Palmer

Place your vote here

I’m going to throw up my usual disclaimer for this kind of thing: I’m not asking you to vote for me, but I’d really recommend you go check out Apex and encourage them continue what they’re doing by voting. And if you feel like you haven’t read enough of the fiction on this years list, well, its right there in a handy list full of links – go check some out.

Twelfth Planet Press Stocking Stuffer Sale

In celebration of the release of the Aurealis Awards shortlist, Twelfth Planet Press is having a Silly Season Sale! All through December they’re offering Shipping deals on all orders of their books that earned a spot in the short-list (that’d be Horn, the New Ceres Nights anthology, Deborah Biancotti’s Book of Endings collection, and the Sirenbeat/Roadkill double).

Right now, that means you can pick up Horn for $10. And it’s just about the right size to fit into a stocking (if, say, you knew someone who really deserved a noir tale about evil unicorns and snuff films for Christmas).

Shimmer: Clockwork Jungle Book Issue

Shimmer Magazine just released its Clockwork Junglebook theme issue, chock-full of steampunk animal fables for your reading pleasure (including mine – The Clockwork Goat and the Smokestack Magi). The website has short teasers of all the stories, links to author interviews (me included), and order details if funky steampunk is your kind of thing.

‘Course, if it were me, I’d subscribe instead of ordering the single issue. Not only is Shimmerthe magazine with the good sense to publish a whole bunch of Angela Slatter’s work in the past, but I know a bunch of fine writers whose stories they’ve got sitting in inventory for future issues. Trust me when I say you won’t regret it.

When I started chatting to the spokesbear about putting a list of 15 awesome things about 2009 together, the first stipulation Fudge came up with was “do not treat every individual publication as its own awesome thing, because that will be cheating.”

“What about Horn,” I said. “Surely it deserves a spot on its own?”

And at that the spokesbear pondered and said: “Well, yes, there’s Horn. That was pretty awesome. I suppose that’s okay as an entry on its own.”

Which is just as well, because the overall experience of seeing Horn released has easily been the most Awesome thing that happened this year. Seeing the finished book for the first time was awesome. Seeing it get its first few reviews was awsome, especially given its tendency to pop up in places like the Courier Mail, Locus and Jeff VanderMeer’s blog. Getting the news that “BTW, Horn’s made a profit” was awesome. Getting asked if there were more Miriam Aster stories and if I’d be interested in writing them…well, you get the picture.

Horn turned out to be a much bigger deal than I thought it’d be, and I’m still kinda awed by the fact that people are still buying it and e-mailing me about it (heck, there’s a part of me that a little surprised I haven’t been lynched for doing bad things to unicorns).

And to leave off, since it’s traditional: Copies of Horn are still available at Twelfth Planet Press (or from Smashwords if you’d prefer an electronic version)

Alongside the release of Interfictions II comes the Interstatial Arts Foundation Auction featuring art peices, jewelry and other works based upon the stories in the two Interfiction’s anthologies. A full list of the peices is being rolled out on the IAF Auctions blog over the coming month, but allow me to call attention to Item 4 on the list, Mia Nutick’s Black Dog Forever, which is based on my story in IF2:

I don’t know about you, but I file this under “cool.” Go forth and peruse the other awesomeness on offer, for all sales go towards the IAF. Hell, let me just quote for this bit: “The Interfictions auctions have become a major aspect of the Interstitial Arts Foundation’s fundraising efforts, allowing the organization to fund other interstitial arts projects, including future Interfictions anthologies. Please join us in celebrating the anthology and support the Interstitial Arts Foundation by bidding and spreading the word.”

Interfictions II has also racked up its first review courtesy of Charles Tan’s Bibliophile Stalker blog if you’re still wondering about the book itself.

And with that, dear internet peeps, I dissappear back into the morass of the Cold Cases manuscript draft in an attempt to kill the damn thing off before it *eats my goddamn brain*. For if I don’t, the spokesbear get’s angry, and the bears got paws, man. Don’t be fooled by the apparent fuzziness and the styrofoam bean filling, the bear’s got paws.

‘Tis true, the Interfictions Two anthology has been released like a releasy thing (sorry, hard morning at the keyboard and I’m all out of simile). You can pick it up in hardcopy or DRM free PDF depending on your preferences. You can read the story by me, should you really want to, but personally I’m diving straight for the contributions by folks like Jeffrey Ford, Ray Vukcevich, Lavie Tidhar, Theadora Goss, and Brian Francis Slattery*.

The anthology’s alreadybeen named as one of Amazon ’s Top Ten Fantasy and Science Fiction books of 2009. And if you’re still left scratching your heads as to what an interfiction actually is, head over to the Interfictions Annex and peruse some of the awesome free fiction on offer as a warm-up.

*And then, just quietly, I’m going to go have a cup of tea and a quiet lie down while I recover. My inner reader is a little geeked out after perusing the TOC.

…so I may as well go with the hat-trick when it comes to blatant acts of self-promotion this week and mention the following:

1) The Coming Dark at the Internet Review of Science Fiction

A long-ish article about the apocalypse in its varied form, put together by my write-club peep Angela Slatter and featuring a bunch of talented Aussie writers (plus me, who is pretty lucky to be sounding coherent given that I was drafting responses to these questions during Gen Con Oz a few weeks back. Not to self – don’t agree to deadlines that coincide with conventions you’re working at).

Spec-fic writers tend towards the strange, the weird, the unpleasant—that’s their writing, not their personalities. We’ve had the apocalypse penciled in for a while now, so how are some of us going about documenting the coming dark? How is our changing, frayed environment affecting the writing of authors on our side of the literary divide?

A small chunk (really a thin, dietary slice) of these folk grudgingly agreed to answer some questions whilst waiting for the sun to burn and the moon to crash. So I locked them in a small room, put the kettle on and gave them some homemade biscuits to distract them. The subjects ranged across scary strangling vines, Mad Max, whether the environment really is out to get us, and the Age of the Puffin. The writers gromphing down the custard kisses and jam drops (and muttering about mandatory detention) are Deborah Biancotti, Kaaron Warren, Peter Ball and Jason Fischer.

And for the record, I’d totally support Jason’s theory about the ascent of the puffin.

2) Interfictions Two Available for Pre-order (Due for November Release)

If you’re left wondering exactly what an interfiction is, you can probably get a good taste of the style by looking over the anthology’s online annex, featuring a bunch of free stories that supplement the anthology. Or you can go check out the Interstitial Arts Foundation  which tends to be full of interesting people talking about the ways genres intersect and mutate (check out the essays, but be prepared to lose to day of your life as you move from one to the next).

Or you can just take the my word, biased as it is, and pre-order based on the fact that the first anthology kicked nine kids of butt. I mean, even if you aren’t a particular fan of the story I’ve got in there, the book contains new work by folks like Jeffery Ford and Brian Francis Slattery, and I’d happily shell out the cash for a copy based on those two facts alone