ONE OF THOSE GOOD THINGS I MENTIONED

Hey, do you guys remember this post, where I mentioned that several good things were happening?  Well, I can tell you about one of them now.  My story "Swamp City Lament," which was published in the Nov/Dec issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, is now up on Suvudu.com.  You can download the story FOR FREE.  If you live in a city like mine where F&SF is too weird for Barnes & Noble and too mainstream for the independent newsstand downtown, here is your chance.  Suvudu puts up a different story from F&SF each month.  I'm really honored that they chose mine for December, so I hope you guys will go over and check out all their science-fictiony-fantasy goodness.*

*Like, for example, this preview of the HBO series being made of George R.R. Martin's book A Game of Thrones.  I LOVE HBO's Rome and Deadwood and Big Love and Carnivale and. . .  well, that could go on for a long time.  But I hadn't read Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, which is one of those required epic fantasy series you have to read if you want to call yourself a fantasy nerd.  After lots of peer pressure from my husband and our friend Nathan, this weekend I finally started reading the first book. Jeremy has done an admirable job of putting up with my utter failure to memorize characters' names so far. (Jeremy: "What part are you at?" Me: "Oh, King Fatty and Boromir are down in the crypt seeing the dead people!") But can I just say right now, I love Jon Snow?  I've been told that characters in this series tend to change and do horrible, morally-questionable things or have horrible, morally-questionable things done to them, but so far he's my favorite character. However, I haven't run into Tyrion Lannister yet, and I've been told that could change my favorite character ranking.  Ahem. Anyway, I'm looking forward to that when it eventually comes out on DVD or the magical money fairies give me the wherewithal to have HBO.

WIZARD!

My library school class this semester is all about the different ways to organize information and how to locate it once someone else has organized it.  I've just spent the past fifteen weeks reading about different types of indexes, bibliographies, almanacs, handbooks, encyclopedias, and dictionaries.  So, when I fell asleep on the couch the other night with my textbook collapsed over my chest, I had the nerdiest dream anyone has ever had.  Ever.

I was in a wizard's tower, kind of like the one in the movie The Sword in the Stone (okay, we're already in serious nerd territory here), and it was incredibly messy.  I couldn't find anything!  So I went and found the wizard, and said something along the lines of, "What kind of organizational structure are you using here?  I mean, how do you ever find the spells you need?  Don't you have an index or something!?"  And then I offered to catalog his spells for him.

The End.

I didn't know I was capable of compounding my innate fantasy and science-fiction-loving kind of nerdiness with LIBRARY SCIENCE, but apparently so.  I only hope someone out there has had an even more nerdy dream (maybe combining computer programming and the U.S.S. Enterprise or genealogical research and Dr. Who?) that might make mine seem normal by comparison.

THANK YOU, WICKED STEPMOTHER!

Some good things have been happening to me lately, which perversely makes me want to throw up from nervousness.  It also makes me temporarily incapable of writing fiction, which is part of the reason those good things are happening in the first place.  No, I can't say what they are yet, because I will jinx myself and those things will fall through and/or I will be run over while backing out of my driveway and/or burst into flames while answering my cell phone at a gas station.  But soon.  Soon!  (Hopefully.)

In the meantime, here are some other good things that will distract you and me, none of which will make either of us want to throw up.

• My friend Stephanie Perkins's novel Anna and the French Kiss is coming out Dec. 2nd.  If you've been watching my ever-growing "What have I been reading in 2010?" sidebar, you'll notice that I have a soft spot for well-written contemporary young adult novels by the likes of Sarah Dessen, Nancy Werlin, and Julie Halpern.  Stephanie unquestionably belongs in that company.  She let me borrow an advanced reader's copy of Anna, and I fell in looooooove with it.  Not in an "OMG my friend wrote a book" kind of way, but in a genuine I-can't-stop-reading-this/forget-to-eat-dinner way.  The book is set in a Parisian boarding school for American students, and it's a love story.  But that undersells it.  A lot of Y.A. romance -- and adult romance, for that matter -- is really about infatuation, but Anna is about deep, genuine, imperfect love.  The book got a starred review from Kirkus.  If you're familiar with their publication, you'll know they're known for not sugarcoating their reviews and getting downright snarky from time to time.  So a star from them is a hard-earned mark of quality.  Go find Stephanie's book and give someone who truly cares about writing quality Y.A. fiction the wherewithal to produce more of it!

A small taste of Hyperbole and a Half.

• It has been a really long time since I've read anything that made me laugh so hard I cried.  But then last month when I was home alone, running a hundred-plus degree fever, my Wicked Stepmother (who is the kind of awesome person who gives herself ironically inappropriate nicknames like "Wicked Stepmother") sent me a link to this blog, Hyperbole and a Half.  I've been addicted ever since.  If you're anywhere near as paranoid and neurotic as I am, you'll find Allie's observations about life and stories from her childhood painfully hilarious.

• And finally, the winners of this year's National Book Awards have been announced!  Go find something good to read.

R.I.P. PAUL THE OCTOPUS

Halloween is my favorite holiday.  If I could go back in time and arrange things so I could be born on Halloween or get married on Halloween, I would.  That's how much I love this holiday.  You get to dress up, and there's candy and fire involved!

So Sunday, I carved this pumpkin in honor of Paul the Octopus, who correctly predicted Spain would win this year's World Cup and died last week on Oct. 26th.  Because of Paul, I actually watched the World Cup Final along with my husband and father this summer.  And I enjoyed it! (I like soccer, but like most sports, it's generally something I prefer playing to watching.)

Anyhow, I was sad to hear Paul had died, because isn't our world the poorer for not having a psychic cephalopod in it?  That is, until my friend Nathan pointed out that maybe Paul wasn't the only psychic octopus out there, but the only one whose talents have been discovered by humans.  This led to an increasingly disturbing conversation about the mental abilities of octopuses, their tendencies to eat sharks, juggle other marine life, and generally be sea monsters.  We decided there was nothing scarier than octopuses, and I thought the best way to express this was in pumpkin form.  I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out, except that I didn't pay quite enough attention to the structural integrity of the pumpkin when I was carving one of my octopus's bottom tentacles.  But you get the idea.

Jeremy, meanwhile, went a more traditional route and created a jack-o-lantern with the most disturbing mouth I've seen yet.  See the creepy cracks at the top?  Now if only these were still good for pie-making. . .