Curtis C. Chen's Blog, page 5
June 16, 2020
Happy Captain Picard Day
Roughly four years and three months ago, something happened in Portland, Oregon (and on the internet). Something… Wunderful.
The Oregonian reported on it at the time: “Google Maps prank officially renames Portland’s Tilikum Crossing after Captain Picard.” And a few months earlier, the likely inspiration for this act was documented in the Portland Tribune: “Should we boldly go where no bridge has gone before?”
I bring this up because today, June 16th, is Captain Picard Day, and earlier ...
June 15, 2020
All Words are Black
You may have seen the #BlackoutBestsellerList and #BlackPublishingPower tags trending on social media in the past few days. TL;DR: sometime this week, buy at least two books written by Black authors to show the publishing industry that readers want more of the same. You could even go the extra mile and buy said books from a Black-owned independent bookstore.
BTW, what’s up with the title of this post: since most physical books are printed on white or light-colored paper, the ink used is alway...
June 3, 2020
In Which LOCUS Brings Me News of the World
(The publishing world, that is.)
June 2020 (Issue 713)Because I am a bad friend, it wasn’t until I got this month’s issue of LOCUS Magazine that I learned of two recent book deals involving awesome writers. But now I’m so excited I have to blog about it!
I'm so thrilled to end the week with some good news and welcome @ac_wise to @TitanBooks! Her debut novel WENDY, DARLING is a gorgeous, feminist reimagining of what happened to Wendy after Neverland. It's dark, rich with emotion an...
May 25, 2020
#NEBULAS2020
https://events.sfwa.org/This coming weekend is the SFWA Nebula Conference Online, where this year’s Nebula Awards (for works published in 2019) will be presented. The whole event is virtual this year, so we’ll all be watching the same awards ceremony livestream on Saturday night. And if you’re attending the con, here’s my schedule:
Friday, 2pm – Office HoursSaturday, 2pm – Making Video for AuthorsSunday, 3:30pm – Forming and Sustaining a Successful Writing or Critique Group
As the curr...
May 7, 2020
Research Rathole: Three Hamburgers a Week?!
The cover story in the latest issue of STANFORD Magazine, Flipping Burgers, talks about the search for plant-based meat alternatives. And the first paragraph throws out some statistics to establish why this is important:
https://stanfordmag.org/contents/flipping-burgers/ I had two immediate reactions upon reading that
Who the hell out there is eating three OR MORE hamburgers every damn week?Where did that very specific statistic come from, and is it actually true?Spoiler alert: Nope, its...
April 30, 2020
Three Months of Free Fiction!
Okay, dont get too excited: Im only posting one thing every month, so its just three short stories. But they are all new, original works, and explicitly in conversation with the current state of the world
What if we actually had a functioning democracy? February: Cats Dont Care About Universal Basic Income in which every citizen gets UBI when they turn 25. Inspired by Andrew Yang before he lost it.
March: It Takes Two in which a Secret Service agent discovers a gruesome that the President...
February 17, 2020
Am I a bad person because I don’t wish people Happy Birthday online anymore?
Asking for a friend.
Because I do appreciate the flood of messages I get on Facebook when my own birthday rolls around, but at some point in the last few years I just… stopped doing the same for others. Partly because it’s a lot to keep track of, not just whose birthday it is but also do I take the time to craft a more specific message than just the generic “many happy returns of the day”?
I’ll be honest, the random people giving me shit about that specific turn of phrase (because I always...
December 26, 2019
Looking Back at 2019
MMXIX Every year, DeeAnn and I send holiday cards to friends and family. We used to print out a one-page newsletter to stick inside each card, which would include a handwritten note, but as our mailing list got longer the time investment became untenable. So we now compose one brief update for everyone and drop-ship the lot from PaperCulture.
Writing-wise, I didn’t have a lot of publications this year. (I keep saying I want to get back to short fiction, but something else always seems to take...
November 4, 2019
November 2019 Events
Yes, I am doing NaNoWriMo again, and if you’re in the Portland, Oregon area you might see me at some write-ins! Otherwise:
11/8-11/10 Portland, OR – OryCon 41 at the Red Lion Hotel, Jantzen Beach: my schedule (and if you’re in town, ask me about Friday Night KARAOKE!)11/10 Beaverton, OR – SF Authorfest 13 at Powell’s Books at Cedar Hills Crossing (mass autographing event)11/14 Portland, OR – SFWA Readings at Lucky Lab SE Hawthorne: FREE event with authors Shanna Germain, Jeff Grubb, and Caroline M. Yoachim. RSVP now!Nothing scheduled for December, but you can get a preview of 2020...
event)11/14KARAOKE!)11/10October 14, 2019
My World Fantasy 2019 Schedule
Good news: I’m on THREE different panels at WFC in Los Angeles later this month!
Bad news: two of these panels are at 9:00 in the morning 
