Friday Quick Notes

I am reading at Beastcrawl tomorrow, at the Hella Sexy event, at 1703 Telegraph, 8PM. Come on down. I'll be reading from Love is the Law.

The BART strike has ended though there is no contract in place yet. I wonder if the zillionaires at the America's Cup pulled some strings. In my week of carpooling with liberals, I got to hear not only the "I support unions generally, but..." but also "I know all this electronic surveillance stuff is supposed to be bad, but..." and "All those people protesting in Egypt just seem scary to me..." and, of course, "Finally, the Supreme Court did something right with gay marriage."

Of all the social media, I think Twitter is my favorite, because when I need a laugh I can just click on the magnifying glass icon and type in "SFWA." That's been working for me for months! I'd be worried about the precedent of expelling people, except that SFWA doesn't matter. Neither does HWA, MWA, RWA, etc. They may have mattered when Publisher 1 was doing mysteries and Publisher 2 was doing SF, but these days, given how relatively few publishers are producing the majority of commercial fiction, there's no reason for genre-specific trade organizations to exist when the mystery imprint is just down the hall (or something on the same desk as) the romance imprint. If these writer organizations really want to have influence over more than fan-run small presses and start-ups, the search for fifty good Bolsheviks to run the various organizarions is counterproductive. They should all merge their memberships, and use internal affinity groups to run the various awards people like to win.

A bit of hype: if you live in the East Bay, the Cupcake of the Month Club is always wonderful. Sign up if you like that sort of thing.

And how dare I forget! The ninth issue of The Big Click is live, with fiction by Jason Ridler and Ann Sterzinger, and non-fiction by Tom Pic and Barry Graham! Plus reviews!