Nick Mamatas's Blog, page 15

Gladys Knight and the...

I'm not a member of SFWA and haven't been for years, but I was interested to see that they had made their reading list (not a long list, not a nominee list) public. This will certainly have an influence on other awards, especially those durn Hugos, since it does make for a lovely "Hey, check this out" sort of thing.

I was happy to see that in the novelette category my We Never Sleep got two "pips" so for lack of a better term. It's not much, but it is twice the number that Buttception: A Butt Within a Butt Within A Butt got.

In short story, my one-sentence story Anti-Fragile also got a pip. That pleased me.

THE PLEASURE MERCHANT by Molly Tanzer

Remember when every author had an LJ and you could just say "New book by vegan_vulcan and everyone would know you meant Molly Tanzer? Those were the days. But these days, today, Tanzer's new book The Pleasure Merchant is out today and I hope some of you look at it. I was pleased to write this blurb for the back cover.

" The Pleasure Merchant is a hilarious, sensuous, and ultimately ferocious quasihistorical novel about that most crucial of periods: the dawn of the modern era. The merchant class flexed its muscles, scientists turned their attentions to the workings of the human mind, sexual mores were challenged in public and in secret, and in every corner of society the unseen hand of the marketplace dominated all. Tanzer’s clever slicing of the era reveals every social stratum of her world—their conflicts, their compromises, and their kinks. Read this book to learn what you’ve been soaking in your whole life.”

The long-awaited terrorist massacre?

The main obstacle for ISIS doing shooting attacks in the US is that they may just blend in with all the other mass shootings in the US.
Imagine the interrogation:

"Why did you shoot all these people?"
"American women are sluts!"
"You're not really distinguishing yourself with that crazy complaint."

"So seriously, give us a unique reason: why shoot all these people?"
"Your government is CORRUPT!"
"Uh...concentrate and try again?"

"Okay, one last time, one good reason why haven't heard before: Why shoot all these people?"
"God demands it."
"Now you're trolling us."

France

Un massacre atroce et inqualifiable.

Found on Facebook

It's always so funny, the people in a "community" who have no role other than to try to make themselves the arbiter of who is in and who is out.

The lower the status of the individual in the community, the more they are obsessed with the question as well.

The New World Fantasy Award statuette

So, was was announced yesterday, after several years of controversy, the World Fantasy Award will no longer hand out busts of Lovecraft ('the Howie'). Instead, the award will be...hmm, nobody has said yet. Well, time for a poll!

Yes, this is a push-poll!

View Poll: #2027398

Opie's Halloween

Opie was alive last Halloween, when we went to Vegas, but he didn't really know what was going on. This year, he noticed the pumpkins, and the candy, and after a bit of coaxing enjoyed his bat costume:



And he went trick-or-treating, both at school and with some local kids. Four-year-old girls are good leaders, see?



He's now been trick-or-treating twice, which is twice more than his old man has been. The combination of Brooklyn in the 1970s and 1980s (four- and five-story apartment buildings), neighborhood ethnic animosities (You Italian? No? Get offa my stoop!), kids throwing eggs everywhere, and the Tylenol-based hysteria basically made it impossible for me when I was a kid. I didn't go with him either, as I was chasing a deadline and so stayed home (it was for a "ghost"-themed issue of a literary journal at least), but maybe next year.

Some Halloweeny treets. My Lovecraftian/Nixonian novel THE DAMNED HIGHWAY (with Brian Keens) ebook is on sale for a mere 3.99 for Amazon KIndle, B&N's NOOK Apple iTunes, Kobo, and Google Books. No idea when it might snap back to its usual high ebook price of $12.99, so do not delay if this sounds good to you. (Indeed, I only learned of the sale thanks to automated websearches of my surname; some cheap-ebook blog found the sale and listed it.)

Another little thing for interested parties might be the alternative history/steampunk/ghost story anthology Ghost in the Cogs, which inexplicably went on sale yesterday for e- and print-on-demand p. It includes my post-Carnacki Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder story "The Twentieth Century Man", as well as interesting stories by Rich Dansky and others.

LJ is still the best, even though nobody reads it anymore

Twitter is trying to do what LJ managed years ago, by offering polling power. Except you only get two options, and short phrases. See?

The Impact of Social Media Engagement on Author Popularity.

— Nick Mamatas (@NMamatas) October 30, 2015

I Still Got It

My first murder mystery

I Am Providence

August 2016