Wednesday Quick Notes

Amazon.com sent people who pre-ordered Love is the Law from its site a letter yesterday saying, basically, "OMG, we have NO IDEA WHEN THE BOOK IS SHIPPING!" That's because the books weren't in the warehouse yesterday, due to the delay regarding the price change. Orders are still 'safe' and will be fulfilled on or before the new on-sale date. The letter came from a machine that sends out letters. Don't sweat it.

Re: yesterday's post, a Twitter conversations seems to have influenced the editor to change the premium from "pay to submit" to "pay to get any sort of story edited by us, the editors" which is a fine replacement. We'll see if that change actually gets carried out. I suppose the two people who signed up for the dubious opportunity might object to not being allowed to pay to submit.

The Best American site is live for the forthcoming anthologies including Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories (which I am in), and all the other "bests." Apparently there is now a Best American Infographics volume. Which is weird.

The ebook version of the anthology Where Thy Dark Eye Glances: Queering Edgar Allan Poe is on sale for only $3.99 with this coupon code: HL85M It includes my story "Eureka!", which I still like ten months after writing it, so I hope some of you check it out.

Following the news on Syria from the left has led me to a conclusion: it actually was important, all that furious energy expended over the Soviet Union and other so-called Communist countries. Today, the left has basically created two camps: those who defend Assad against "imperialism" (US intervention) and those who defend some secular section of the war against Assad (with more or less defend-not-support rhetoric for the Islamist elements of the war) and are also anti-intervention. The rhetoric has been pretty stark, to the point where even the ISO has published some polemics against other left groups. The ISO has always been like the WWF/WWE, and refused to acknowledge the existence of other professional wrestling promotions left groups. So, interesting!

The pro-Assad left (and the merely objectively pro-Assad left) aren't even Islamophobes. They seem to think that Assad is an anti-imperialist because Cuba says so, and Russia and China are in his corner. I think the fact that imperialism is an era or epoch, and not simply an activity the US and US clients engages in, has been lost, and it seems to have systematically been lost on those who politics were formed by Cold War bipolarity. And I'm sure they have some terrible things to say to me about the Russian mafia and rising inequality in China or whatnot.