Technical Difficulties

My spies, a.k.a. mirrorthaw, tell me that "Coyote Gets His Own Back" came in second in Apex Magazine's 2012 Story of the Year Readers Poll, behind tied-for-first-place Alethea Kontis and Katharine Duckett.

This has reminded me that I should make a post about the things I published in 2012. So here you go:

• "Blue Lace Agate" (Lightspeed Magazine 20)
  
• "Coyote Gets His Own Back" (Apex Magazine 38)
  
• "Extract from 'Horror in Pierre Lucerne: Suburbia, Alienation, and the Rejection of Community" (The Magazine of Speculative Poetry 9.2)
  
• "Hope Is Stronger Than Love" (Shadow Unit 4.03)
  
• "A Road That Has No Ending: Revenge in Sandman" (Chicks Dig Comics)
  
• "The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward" Part 1 & Part 2 (Drabblecast 254-55)

I did a podcast interview with Julia Rios at the Outer Alliance about The Bone Key (available in its shiny new edition here from Prime Books): podcast here.

1. My story "Fiddleback Ferns" is part of Drabblecast 201: Trifecta XV, along with stories by Jens Rushing and Karen Heuler.

2. Thank you, heresluck, for introducing me properly to Mumford and Sons. Sigh No More is about to go in the stereo for the third time in three days.

3. The Ambien only sort of works. >:\ I'll be trying something else starting tomorrow.

4. Guy riding a Harley Friday afternoon in small-town southeastern Wisconsin? Probably not actually jaylake. But I sure was excited for the split-second I thought maybe it was.

5. A question! I have to give Guest of Honor speeches this year, which is a new experience for me. So tell me, O internets, if you go to a Guest of Honor speech, what do you expect to get? What do you hope for? What would make you tell all your friends they should have come, too?

Drabblecast 189 is a doubleheader special featuring "Darkness, As A Bride" and "National Geographic on Assignment: Mermaids of the Old West."

Go forth and enjoy!

Drabblecast is doing "Mongoose" as a two part podcast, and Part 1 is up! (Part 2 should be up mid-week, and there will also be .mp3 files.)

And be sure to check out the very cool artwork by Jerel Dye.

But.

"A Light in Troy" is up at PodCastle. Rated PG for feral children and the winners who write history. It is sponsored by N. K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, sample chapters of which can be found on her website.

[Poll #1523075]

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Notes:
1. I will read up to 10,000 words. Since only two of these stories are 10,000 words long, that means I'll most likely be reading more than one thing. Vote for as many as you like and don't worry about the math. I'll sort that out on this end. otoh, if there's a specific combination totaling 10,000 words (e.g., "Katabasis: Seraphic Trains" and "Sidhe Tigers") that you want to see, cast a vote for each of the stories and then tell me in comments about the combination you have in mind. People are also welcome to second and third suggested combinations.

[Dear LJ spellchecker: why is "combination" a word and "combinations" not? Please do not make me doubt my sanity in this fashion.]

2. Some stories are not on the list:

• "A Gift of Wings," "The Venebretti Necklace," "The Wall of Clouds," and "The World Without Sleep" are all over 10,000 words.
  
• "After the Dragon" and "White Charles" both have podcasts already ("After the Dragon" here and "White Charles" here), and Podcastle is going to do "A Light in Troy" (and, yes, I will put up the link when they publish it).
  
• "Boojum," "Mongoose," "The Ile of Dogges," my Shadow Unit stories, the piece I wrote for Jeff and Ann VanderMeer's New Weird and ditto Last Drink Bird Head, are all collaborative to one degree or another.

3. For those who are interested in Kyle Murchison Booth, the stories featuring him are: "The Bone Key," "Bringing Helena Back," "Drowning Palmer," "Elegy for a Demon Lover," "The Green Glass Paperweight," "The Inheritance of Barnabas Wilcox," "Listening to Bone," "The Replacement," "Wait for Me," and "The Yellow Dressing Gown."

4. For those who are interested in elisem's jewelry and in the Artist's Challenge idea, the pieces inspired by Elise's work are: "Draco campestris," "Katabasis: Seraphic Trains," "Letter from a Teddy Bear on Veterans' Day," "National Geographic on Assignment: Mermaids of the Old West," "Sidhe Tigers," "Somewhere Beneath Those Waves Was Her Home," "Three Letterse from the Queen of Elfland," and "Under the Beansidhe's Pillow."

5. If you're curious about the origin of my catfish icon, the text is from "National Geographic on Assignment: Mermaids of the Old West."

6. Any other questions you have about the stories, please feel free to ask in comments!