I've been participating in a thread over at Jay Lake's Facebook page. The thread's upshot: how what some people use as normal, everyday vocabulary is seen by others as too smart, too show-offy, or even as newly-invented words, not to mention providing fuel for hot and cold running malapropisms. Mind you, I'm giving a polite distillation here.
I mentioned the time a creative writing professor had accused me of plagiarism: "...until I showed him my notes. Then he said he thought the piece was publishable. I thought it was crap. Our assignment had been to write a short story draft in one week, so I just threw something down on the page. (I still remember a line from it -- 'So cold, that telescope's shaft!' I hang my head in shame...)"
Jay pointed out the line's potential to be part of a "brilliant" haiku. To which I replied:
The stroke of midnight --
So cold, that telescope's shaft!
Burn, you swollen stars.
:-p~~
I remember the story's title, too -- "In Magnification of Touch." Did I mention I'd been reading a lot of Freud in those days?
(Thanks for the thread, Jay.)
The Land O'Lakes Library in Pasco County, FL, held its inaugural Author Fair on Saturday, March 20. I drove down with Lakisha Spletzer and her daughter Alea. Thanks to both of them for helping me haul my load to and from the car!
My display included:
1. Deviations: Covenant (paperback, Aisling Press).
2. Covenant and Appetite on CD (click here for more info and free downloads).
3. Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory (Scriblerus Press, IPPY Silver Medalist; contains my story "Arachne").
4. Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (Dark Scribe Press, Bram Stoker Award winner; contains my story "Memento Mori").
5. Issue 14, Electric Velocipede (Hugo Award winner; contains my story "Hermit Crabs," which is on the recommended reading list in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 26th Annual Edition).
6. Oct./Nov. 2009 Asimov's (Contains my novelette "Flotsam" and poem "Derivative Work").
7. Vampyr Verse (Popcorn Press; contains my poem "Neighbors").
8. General info flyers, and flyers advertising forthcoming work, including She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (Dybbuk Press), which will contain my story "Judgment at Naioth."
Kisha also took a video of me at the event, accessible here. Videos of more authors attending can be seen on her Kishaz Worlds Facebook page.
L-R: unidentified, Valerie Anne Faulkner, Susan Noe Harmon.
Chris Coad Taylor.
Seated, L-R: Philip Rice, Toni Martin, Rebecca Nunez. The books at far left were authored by Henley Holbrook.
Kisha and her daughter Alea.
Alea sits at my display, alternately writing her own story and editing her mother's book Werelove: Dusk Conspiracy.
Seated at far right: Fred Tomasello, Jr. The books at far right were authored by Kal Rosenberg.
Standing at left, L-R: Michael Dalton, Wendy Van Horn, Jerry Teske.
Coming up: I join Loretta Rogers to do cold read critiques at the Homosassa Public Library on Saturday, March 27.
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Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.)
 | Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, and Destiny in even more formats! |
 | Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.) |
