Erik Amundsen's Blog, page 12

One last Cinderella Jump-Rope Rhyme

Cinderella, dressed in blue
went and lost her vagina-shoe
stopped to wonder what it means
and did that make her foot a peen?

(for skogkatt and Dr. Freude.)

Dear OSC

We will not make you marry a man if you don't want to.

Love and Kisses.

Here Under Stars Far From Home

As for you, you don't remember how it all happened.  You were young then, and everything you heard and saw was a little beyond you, back then.  The end came in the middle of the night, when all was shapes and sounds in darkness, you bundled off and led away.  When you turned to look back, maybe you saw fires.  Since then, you've been a guest or a theif or a traveller, without a place to call your own, and the people you ask about back then, well, they don't want to talk, and maybe they didn't understand any better than you.  It's been 8 years, and you who were the older children, helping to shepherd the little ones, you're almost adults, and your home has been quiet and still and empty.  You have some friends.  You have some weapons.  You have some smarts and skills and secrets.  Your home is right there, where you left it, as a child, in the middle of the night.  Do you dare?

Foolish question, you wouldn't be here otherwise.

So tell me how things have been.  There are six statements that follow and three of them are true and three of them are false.  You get to decide which ones are which.  Everyone works together, dividing the authority to say or coming to a consensus as they please.

Most everyone died when your home fell.
Your people stayed in one more or less coherent group after.
Many of your people went... bad in the last days before.
Other communities have accepted some of you as their own.
Many of your people never stopped moving.
Your leaders approve of your mission to scout out your home.

You've gotten a chance to see your home from a distance, pick your way around the areas you know are dangerous.  Tell me what you have seen.  Again, three of these are true and three of them are false.  Again, everyone works together to decide which is which.

There is new construction in your home.
Your burying place is much expanded, with marks of funerary rites you've never seen.
The lake has flooded, and a lot of the low-lying parts of your home are under water.
The thoroughfares are blocked with detritus and creeping plants.
There's a giant sink-hole in the middle of your town and lights moving about below.
Animals and birds, even insects avoid the place.

Your home is full of monsters, traps and challenges.  This is their home, now.
Last, before we get to the parts that make the person you will be in this world, there is the reason.  In the ideal situation, these should be on cards, passed around, and each person should take the card corresponding to the reason they think drove them to this mission.  Otherwise, pick from a list, and cross it off.  No two came for the same reason.  The other parts, you needed to talk about those in order to choose.  This, you can, or you can not, as long as everyone knows not to double up on reasons.  It would not be bad to have a scene wherein you talk about your reasons for coming with the others (whether you tell the truth or not is up to you and says a thing), but you don't have to.  What you know and do not know about one another’s' reasons for being here is up to you.
You plan to stay, and set up an outpost to help reclaim the place.
You are in love and your love is interested in this aim, so you came to impress them.
You lost a thing that links you to the people you lost.  You know it's here and you want it back.
You have reasons to believe that someone you left behind when you fled is still here, somewhere, alive.
You want to gather wealth and treasures left behind, whether for your benefit or for that of others.
You've since become known as a coward or a fuckup and you want a chance to redeem yourself.
You were too too young and weak to go down fighting before.  You want your chance now.
You have this dream that draws you on.
You are done with this life and want to die, but do not wish to be found out as a suicide.
Someone is holding over you a threat or fate worse than anything you'll find in your former home.
You miss the place and want to see it one more time before you move on.

So yeah.  That's the beginning.

A Wild Medical Bill Appears. It Uses THREATEN WITH COLLECTIONS. It's Super Effective!

Anyone want their cards read online (via chat or hangout?)  Standard $20 for 10 cards with extra questions resolved.

ETA: This was a regular doctor's visit bill that, sadly, is 6 times what they used to be under my insurance to the end of 2013, which, fortunately, I was able to pay.  This does leave me kind of broke in the face of Readercon, though, so if you need readings, I am on all night.  Also, if you are going, I will have my cards and will gladly barter readings for food or booze.

I Bet You're Making Shells Back Home for a Steady Man to Wear

THE AIR CONDITIONERS are in, finally.  Two days of giving the pigglies bowls full of ice to prevent them from melting (this group is very different from all the others - they love lettuce first and last and always, where the previous line from Harriet and Magda on down to Miss Parsley were all about the carrots.  They wouldn't turn down lettuces, mind.  This crew will turn down carrots).  Previous piggits never showed this much reaction to the heat.  Deedees is now out from under the kitchen table.  She shows all kinds of reaction to the heat, poor thing.

MY GRANDFATHER was awarded 3 bronze stars in the war.  No one knows where or when or how, not even his sister.  He was shot in the Battle of the Bulge, which we did know about.  He and my other grandfather crossed paths at UNH, and the impression that my other grandfather got of him was that he was a coward.  He never elaborated on that.  I'm not how to find out more about him; Amundsens never talk.  It's frustrating.  I keep following the bullet back up the the barrel of the rifle, the squeeze of the trigger up the finger to the man who shot him.  I wonder who he was.  He could have been a terrified kid, and he could have been the Red fucking Skull.  He might still be alive, outliving the man he tried to kill.  Then I wonder about the lives my grandfather took (he operated the squad machine gun, most of the time, and I hear those things are unkind to mortal flesh).  It's frustrating.  I didn't expect to feel frustration, but that's the emotion.  The past is another country and all the guides are gone.

I AM HELLA TIRED.  I sat down a little while ago and started laughing, it was such a relief to stop moving.  I have ginger water simmering, a clean sink, drain opener working its way through the bathtub drain, and Tiger Balm.  I still need to redo my laundry.  I forgot some clothing in the washer.  Readercon is coming.

Do You Want My Spot? It's the Best Spot in the Lot!

TODAY is the kind of day I like best at work.  There's a lot to do, some of it moderately challenging (as challenge goes around here), but mostly, it's many easy things that I can finish rather quickly.  Also, there is no one here to see me in my straw hat.

THE HAT is kind of necessary, and I am glad I had it in the car.  Once everything was set to go and I could head out to grab my lunch, I decided to walk.  I got about 300 yards before I started to feel my scalp burning.  I came back, applied sunscreen and took the car to grab a sandwich (smoked turkey, lettuce, tomato, onion, a little mayo, no cheese), and found the hat in the back seat.  If I go out for my afternoon constitutional (undecided between that and calisthenics at the desk), I will be wearing it.

TEEN WOLF is a dumb show, but it keeps managing to sneak points out on me.  Last week, we had the female lead stalking the male lead for his protection and arriving (in a flashback) to save the day, pretty much managing to do so without getting caught or imperiled.  Recently, they made it a point that werewolves needed to learn how to use their sense of smell in order to track, which I thought was a nice touch.

I PICKED UP a copy of Tales of Symphonia yesterday for the Wii because I needed a bad JRPG itch scratched, and it was cheap.  The voiceover is painful, the characters deep as any paper plate, but I am finding the whole thing kind of endearing, and the battle system is less painful than Ni No Kuni. 

The continuing saga

Originally posted by supergee at The continuing sagaTimeline of the SFWA wars

Thanx to james_nicoll

Mythic Delirium--the e-zine

Originally posted by asakiyume at Mythic Delirium--the e-zineUsing phoenix power from Clockwork Phoenix 4, Mike Allen has relaunched Mythic Delirium, this time as a quarterly e-zine featuring not only poetry but also short stories--including by such luminaries as Marie Brennan and Ken Liu. (And the poetry includes some of my favorite very favorite poets--so don't neglect the poetry!)

He's also got a Kickstarter going (link here) to help pre-fund future issues of the zine, and among the prizes currently available is art by Paula Friedlander, who does amazing cut-paper work.

Mike's so good at this Kickstarter business that by the time I've posted this, the project no doubt will have funded, but take a look!

CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 4 is OUT!

Originally posted by time_shark at CLOCKWORK PHOENIX 4 is OUT!

The anthology Kickstarter built is available for everyone to buy.

Kindle Price $4.99

Canada $5.07

UK £3.28

Watch Weightless Books for e-book editions in alternate formats.

Trade Paperback $15.95 (Discounted at some stores)

Amazon.com

Amazon.ca

Amazon.com.uk

Barnes & Noble

Powell’s

Indiebound

Don’t see it on the shelves at your local store? Ask for it.

If you want to get a signed copy direct from me, go here. #SFWAPro

What reviewers have said:

The tone ranges from dark to heartwarming and simple. The overall quality is high … Several of the pieces are quite challenging. Readers will do well to pick up a copy. — Locus Online

What makes this fourth edition so special is that it belongs to an impassioned community of writers and readers who went above and beyond to make it happen. … All eighteen [stories] have the power to pull the reader out of his own reality and transport or transform them entirely. — Cabinet des Fées

This 4th volume of Clockwork Phoenix contains an excellent diversity of speculative fiction ranging from cold and hopeless to harsh but victorious and warm and fulfilling. It was a pleasure to read. — Tangent Online

What kind of stories will you find in Clockwork Phoenix 4? Only those that are magical, imaginative, heart-wrenching, just plain bizarre, forward-looking, backward-looking, biological, romantic, hopeful, darkly funny and openly frightening. All the words that describe the best speculative fiction you’ve ever read apply. In fact, if this isn’t the epitome of speculative fiction, I don’t know what is. — Little Red Reviewer

Clockwork Phoenix 4 is a collection of 18 stories edited by Mike Allen. Who, I will tell you now, is a master editor. And the authors, all masters as well. This collection is really fantastic. I took my time reading it and was rewarded each time a new story began. You can call it speculative, fantasy, science fiction, but what it is, is good reading. — Just Book Reading

The stories are diverse. Yves Meynard’s “Our Lady of the Thylacines” is a tale of a young woman embracing her adrenalin-filled destiny. Alisa Alering’s “The Wanderer King” depicts a society collapsed into mutual extermination, and Barbara Krasnoff’s “The History of Soul 2065” manages to find a happy face for encroaching mortality. Of particular note is Gemma Files’s “Trap-Weed”; in its way the mirror image of the Meynard, it follows a Selkie determined to reject both the ways of its people and those of the humans it encounters. — Publishers Weekly

This volume contains eighteen original stories which can only be classified as speculative; most of them blur or even reject genre lines altogether. The common thread which runs through these stories is a sense of unsettling strangeness. There were several moments when reading that I felt physically altered, only to realize that it was the story and not my body which was causing the queasy feeling in my gut. … That is not to say that these stories are not enjoyable; they are, in a discombobulating, shiver-inducing kind of way. And there were several of the tales which left me thinking on them long after I had finished reading. — Short Story Review

The cover promises “tales of beauty and strangeness” and by god it delivers. This is a collection of stories to boggle the mind and exercise the imagination. A must read for fans of weird speculative fiction. — Goodreads review

You read Clockwork Phoenix books the way you would eat a meal prepared by a master chef: trusting that every ingredient is placed precisely and with a purpose, even if one bite is bitter, it is to allow you to savor the sweetness of the next. In that way, the book absolutely succeeds and is a triumph. — Goodreads review

Table of Contents

“Our Lady of the Thylacines” by Yves Meynard

“The Canal Barge Magician’s Number Nine Daughter” by Ian McHugh

“On the Leitmotif of the Trickster Constellation in Northern Hemispheric Star Charts, Post-Apocalypse” by Nicole Kornher-Stace

“Beach Bum and the Drowned Girl” by Richard Parks

“Trap-Weed” by Gemma Files

“Icicle” by Yukimi Ogawa

“Lesser Creek: A Love Story, A Ghost Story” by A.C. Wise

“What Still Abides” by Marie Brennan

“The Wanderer King” by Alisa Alering

“A Little of the Night” by Tanith Lee

“I Come from the Dark Universe” by Cat Rambo

“Happy Hour at the Tooth and Claw” by Shira Lipkin

“Lilo Is” by Corinne Duyvis

“Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer” by Kenneth Schneyer

“Three Times” by Camille Alexa

“The Bees Her Heart, the Hive Her Belly” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

“The Old Woman with No Teeth” by Patricia Russo

“The History of Soul 2065″ by Barbara Krasnoff

Originally published at DESCENT INTO LIGHT. You can comment here or there.

All the time it took you to get yourself straight is too late.

1) A couple of weeks ago a coworker and I were talking and she mentioned that she didn't feel like she could get away with coming into work casual (many people in my group do, but I am the worst offender by far - no one gets upset).  It took a couple of weeks to sink in, but it occurred to me that I ought to act as though I could not get away with it, either, since it's not fair that she should have to dress better than I do.  So today, white shirt.  Today, I also decided that I would make an effort to drink less soda, since I am on the binge-drinking side of my last attempt at sodabriety.  To that end, I picked up a big old iced coffee at the old DD.

You can see where this is going.  I am now in the office in a slightly smelly black T shirt that happened to be in my car.  Baby steps, Erik.  Baby steps.



2) My Readercon Schedule:


...



Yup.  I'm good.
I *did* get invited to take part in the Mythic Delirium reading, but I asked to step aside and let other people go, or other people who were going have more time.

It makes me a little sad that there's nothing structured for me to do at the con, because it does make knowing what to do next easier (and there's always the lingering suspicion that the reason I wasn't asked back is because I fucked up last year [and anyone who came to the paranormal experiences panel ... well, no one came out of that one unscathed] or because I suck in general), but I am more glad that I don't have an assload of things to do and prepare.  I am free, and I can relax, and ACTUALLY SEE EVERYONE.  Or, at least more people, and that's worth a minor (and probably inadvertent) hit to the ego any day of the week.



3) So this church, right.  When it gets hot or humid, I begin to sleep like utter shite, which means I remember a lot more of my dreams.  So a couple of nights ago, I dreamed about this church.  It had been Catholic, but they de-sanctified it and abandoned it and it got bought up by some fly-by-night Evangelical church, and I see why the Catholics abandoned it.  The thing was too big.  About 5 stories tall inside, about the size of an hangar, otherwise.  Actually kind of big for a hangar.  Nothing about this place gave glory to God, I can tell you that.  It only made all the people involved in making it look like vainglorious, tacky dicks.  Dim, with a honeycombed ceiling that looked like some giant, concave, compound eye.  The people who were using the place were of the spiritual warfare bent, and they showed some grainy, mostly black and white film on demons which was all cut together so you could almost tell that they were using sausage links for intestines.  Still, it was fairly effective, and on a drive-in movie screen they assembled behind the altar.

A few years ago, I had a dream about fringe-y antichoice religious sorts who funded their church selling HGH and had magic talismans made out of aborted fetuses in glass capsules that gave them light up eyes which paralyzed people and allowed them to see in the dark.  They didn't show up here (or, if they did, they were among the group at the extreme other end of the church, well out of magic-fetus-eye-glow-range), but they would have loved this place.