R.R. Angell's Blog, page 3
December 6, 2019
R R Angell Award Eligibility for 2019
(Also, a reminder that these make great Holiday presents!)
The thing I’m most proud of is… MY FIRST NOVEL!
Best Game Ever: A Virtuella Novel (Novel)
The LGBTQ YA VR AR VI Thriller you’ve been waiting for. A group of gay, nonbinary, and straight college nerds on the Virtual Campus Challenge team are racing toward a deadline when Robby’s roommate dies of an apparent suicide after playing their favorite VR first-person flyer game, Flying Squirrels. Robby suspects foul play. With the help of his teammates, Robby exposes a threat to all VR gamers, and the SaikoVR AI game engine, Virtuella, fights back. Can Robby and his friends defeat Virtuella, save the world, and find love in the BEST GAME EVER?
A Dog’s Life (Short story) Compelling Science Fiction Issue 14
Cryo-storage for pets while you’re on vacation! Well, think again.
In The Space of Nine Lives (Novelette)
Click (Flash story) Queer Sci Fi Anthology, Migration
While the wealthy are digitizing themselves to safety during climate collapse, two boys in love have a different idea.
#AwardEligibility
December 2, 2019
Compelling Science Fiction – Issue 14 is out!
Issue 14, Winter 2019, the latest issue of Compelling Science Fiction is now available!
[image error]Compelling Sci Fi Issue 14 cover
CSF Editor, Joe Stetch, writes: We start with R R Angell’s “A Dog’s Life“. It’s about a dog, a family, and cryo-storage (3937 words). Our second story is “Cravings” by Steve DuBois. In a near-future America run according to the standard that the neediest are served first, a policeman confronts the sacrifices that that principle requires (6000 words). The third story this issue, Santiago Belluco’s “The Engineering of Alyssa Langley,” is a story about a young woman who hires a black-market genetic engineer to reverse the changes her parents illegally foisted on her. But can she really trust him, especially after her modifications turn out to be far different than she expected (5300 words)? Next we have “Envoy in the Ice” by Dustin Steinacker. This one is a story about humanity’s yearly diplomatic visit to a mercurial alien entity who has set up in the Antarctic. It is a reprint that originally appeared in Writers of the Future Vol. 33 (8700 words). The final story is “Our 500-Year Plan” by James Reinebold. Noboru, a digitized drone control operative on a space ark, attempts to maintain control over his life as his environment begins to lose its fidelity (2500 words).
You can read A Dog’s Life here for free! Sit. Stay. Good reader!
After my story, keep reading because you’ll be pleasantly entertained throughout!
Sadly, the magazine is shutting down. You can read the publisher’s blog post about the closure here.
A little nostalgia: You can read my Issue 7 story, What’s a Few Years When You Get Money and Friends in High Places? for free here.
October 31, 2019
My 2019 Baltimore Book Festival Schedule – Friday Nov 1st – Sunday Nov 3rd
Hey Everybody! I’ll be at the BBF this weekend in Baltimore’s vibrant Inner Harbor along with some wonderful writers and performers. If you’re looking for fun this weekend, stop by, buy some books and get them signed by the author! My books will be available at the Ivy Bookshop kiosk.
FRIDAY, November 1st, 2019
Friday 1 PM – SFFWA stage (see note for location) From the Holodeck to Ready Player One: Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality, Fiction and Fact with Elsa Sjunesson-Henry, James Beamon, RR Angell, Sarah Pinsker, T. Eric Bakutis
Friday 4 PM – MRW stage (see note for location) World Building: Creating the Ultimate Background for a Fictional World with Pintip Dunn, Anne Renwick, L. Penelope, Margaret Locke, Bob Angell, E. Elizabeth Watson
Friday 5 PM – MRW stage A Love For All Hearts: Writing Love, Without Boundaries with Robin Covington, Ivy Quinn, Andrew Grey, Joyfully Jay, Bob Angell
Friday 6 PM – SFFWA stage area Book Signing: RR Angell That’s me!
Friday 8 PM – SFFWA stage Debut Book Party! Mingle with Your Favorite New Science-Fiction and Fantasy Authors
SATURDAY, November 2nd, 2019
6 PM – MRW stage Romantic Suspense: Balancing Life-Threatening Bad Guys and Heart-Melting RomanceWith Laura Kamoie, Robin Covington, AR Case, Nancy C Weeks, Bob Angell
Note: The SFWA stage and the RWA stage are both in the USM (University System of Maryland) Columbus Center located at 701 E Pratt St, Baltimore, MD. The building is on the northeast side of the Inner Harbor on the next pier east of Phillips Seafood, Barnes and Noble, and the National Aquarium
Full BBF Searchable Schedule: https://brilliantbaltimore.com/schedule/
[image error] 2019 Baltimore Book Festival – click for interactive map
October 17, 2019
A Song For A New Day by Sarah Pinsker
If you pay attention to music you’ll know that all revolutions begin with protest songs. In Sarah Pinsker’s debut novel, two main characters come at subtle changes from different directions. Theirs is a society that has been torn apart and individuals have been isolated by terrorism, politics, and corporate greed. Luce, the rising-star musician from Pinsker’s Nebula Award-winning short story Our Lady Of The Open Road, plays the last live concert before bomb threats shut down all the venues and then goes underground. Rosemary, part of the new generation raised in VR, works for the only VR music venue as a band recruiter. The two women’s lives weave together like a beautiful melody with points, counterpoints, harmonies and disharmonies and finish on a lovely and hopeful note.
Yes, revolutions begin with protest songs, but some of them are written down. This book is one of them.
September 6, 2019
Outside The Gates Of Eden by Lewis Shiner
I bought this book earlier in the summer when it came out because I knew I wanted to read it. Woodstock was coming up, and there is a part of the book that deals with that particularly singular event in this country, and in my own personal mythology as well. So, I started reading just before the 50th anniversary of Woodstock to celebrate. Here’s what I think of it.
Outside The Gates Of Eden is an incredible tour de force of the evolution of music and American culture from before Woodstock to the near present. At 860 pages, it looks a bit daunting, but it is a great read. Shiner pulls us easily through with great characters, perspectives, and prose so perfect you don’t notice it or the time flying by. He writes about music and musicians like nobody else, and if you’ve ever played any instrument, ever wanted to, or just want to know what it is like to be caught up in the magic of music, read him! Then there is the historical aspect of it, watching his characters live the changes that shaped our country over the past sixty years. I loved this book, and Shiner’s optimism about our future.
Definitely recommend this one.
August 17, 2019
Woodstock and Dublin
First off, thanks to all my friends in Dublin at WorldCon for noticing that I’m not physically there. Here’s why: We had some medical issues that prevented us from flying and by the time I realized that I might be able to attend, I’d missed the boat on programming, airfare, and hotel blocks. Oh well. I’m loving all the photos everyone is posting!
I’m still on the fence for New Zealand next year, and there may be some changes in the wind that just might make me want to stay home! Stay tuned!
What I’m doing instead of Worldcon? That’s easy! It’s the 50th Anniversary of Woodstock so of course I’m watching the 1972 movie on the big screen with friends! No shenanigans this time, only beer and (maybe) some popcorn. My Big Woodstock Story remains the dashed dreams and machinations of three twelve-year-olds in Concord, Massachusetts who pleaded to be taken along by an older brother who, when it got close to actually going, got sick and couldn’t drive us.
In hindsight, I’m guessing that he hadn’t gotten permission to take their station wagon and got shut down, never mind that none of us asked permission from our parents. We knew better and, in pre-teen fashion, were prepared to run away to the festival.
We did camp out that weekend in a field near a small pond after telling our parents that we would be at each other’s houses. The old switcheroo. Nobody bothered to check up on us, and this wouldn’t be the only time we pulled that trick.
That’s my Woodstock story.
[image error]Outside The Gates Of Eden, and am about 360 pages into this 880 page book. It’s about the evolution of rock and roll from 1965 on and I’m coming up to the Woodstock section. Lew writes about music and musicians like nobody I know, and if you’ve ever played any instrument, ever wanted to, or just want to know what it is like to be caught up in the magic of music, read him!
July 25, 2019
Off to Confluence this weekend
Hey there! I’m off to Confluence this weekend in Pittsburgh. It will be a relaxacon for me as I’m not on any panels so all I have to do is listen, chat, and have fun! And it is a smallish convention so I’ll get to hang out with a lot of folks I haven’t see in ages.
Here’s a link if you don’t know what that conference is all about: http://parsec-sff.org/confluence/
Tobias Buckell is the guest of honor and I’m psyched to see him again. It’s been at least a decade.
Cat Rambo will be there doing a writer’s workshop, and I’m looking forward to seeing her when she is free. She was kind enough to blurb my book, Best Game Ever! So, yeah!
Here’s a link to the program: http://parsec-sff.org/confluence/program/ Lots of good stuff and great participants. I’m looking forward to it.
See you there!
July 24, 2019
I’m back!
Did you notice? I hope the transition was somewhat painless for you. but I am aware that the site has been messed up for the past couple of months. You see, I was hacked. Maybe.
You can see the original post about that here.
So I had to everything on the affected sites and move to the actual WordPress.com for hosting with the idea that WP would recognize their own update files as correct. A lot of that involved hand recreations of old posts that were not recoverable. The good news is that the hand-recreations helped me redesign things more to my liking. The bad news is that I lost a lot of blog posts from 2005 on and some other stuff.
Here we go with a clean start. Sign up for the newsletter and you’ll get them when I start being diligent about making them. The box for that is on the upper right. And go check out my books and the stories online.
Cheers!
July 23, 2019
Stay connected!
I’ll eventually be sending out a monthly newsletter with publications, happenings, and convention notes. Stay in touch. Please sign up below. Thanks!
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July 17, 2019
Readercon, Frank Robinson wins the Cordwainer Award, and other stuff
I was at Readercon in July when they awarded Frank M. Robinson their Cordwainer Award with the intention of reviving interest in writers whose work may have fallen out of view but deserved to be remembered. A kind of signal boosting, and a very good idea.
Frank was a great friend and mentor of mine who wrote his memoir, Not So Good A Gay Man, addressed to me. Yes, crazy, huh? Read the afterward that I wrote and you’ll understand why. There was a panel on Frank’s life and work as dictated by the Cordwainer Award, delivered by Graham Slight and Robert Kilheffer. It was fairly well attended. I do wish that I’d been on that panel as I could have contributed a bit more than I did from the audience when they opened it up. I offered to chat with anyone about him, but no one took me up on it afterwards.
Obviously, all that brought up lots of emotions for me, and I was pretty quiet and aloof for the rest of the conference. I was thankful that my husband was there with me, and that there were friends and family in the Boston area.
By the way, next year’s honoree will be Carol Emshwiller. I had the good fortune of having my novelette, In The Space Of Nine Lives, appear in the same January 2006 issue of Asimov’s along with her short story, The World Of No Return. It was lovely to meet her later that year at a conference.
Here’s Frank’s memoir: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31702795-not-so-good-a-gay-man?from_search=true
