NAZGUL WHISTLE?

I'm going to post my annual completely subjective best of/worst of 2010 list soon, but first, a tale of nerds at Christmastime.

So this year, I got Jeremy this little battery-operated fob thing that you can attach to your keys.  In theory, if you lose your keys, all you have to do is whistle, and the key fob emits a cheerful beepbeepbeepbeep.  And guess what?  It actually works!  Whenever Jeremy whistles, it blips on in a flurry of flashing lights and beeps loud enough to be heard from beneath a laundry pile.  Awesome.

Unfortunately, the key-finder also thinks my voice sounds like a whistle and responds accordingly.

On top of the utter indignity of an inanimate object mistaking my voice for a whistle, I am one of those sad people who actually CANNOT whistle.  And what else does the key-finder think sounds like a whistle?  The ear-piercing screech of the horrible bat-dragon-snake things the Nazgul ride in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies.  That's right.  The foul-smelling, leather-winged mounts of the Ringwraiths.

Not me.

We discovered this because we are complete and utter nerds.  It's become a tradition in our house to watch all three Lord of the Rings movies at Christmas each year.  Jeremy and I were snuggled together on the couch, watching Sam, Frodo, and Gollum trek into Mordor while the snow fell outside our window, when one of the Nazgul's horrible beasties showed up and shrieked, triggering an emphatic response from the key finder.  Thanks, key-finder.  I'm glad to know I sound like both a whistle and a horrible bat-dragon-snake thing.

Happy New Year!

FOR REALS

A quick post, because I'm sick with a pre-Christmas cold and the off-brand Robitussin in my medicine cabinet is singing its siren song.  Rich Horton's The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2011 (which includes my story "Amor Fugit") has a release date, June 22, 2011.  It's now available for preorder on Amazon.com.  I don't know why, but somehow seeing it on Amazon makes the whole thing more real.

I AM INTERVIEWED!

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has an interview with me up on their blog, in which I discuss writing "Swamp City Lament."

I've never been interviewed before (at least, not aside from this one time on the local evening news when I was one of those people saying something inane like "people should go vote" in an interview montage), so it was pretty exciting.  I'm glad the whole thing was conducted in writing, since I'm hopelessly inarticulate in person.  I tend to stammer and forget words like "microwave" and "lobster" when I'm nervous.  Luckily, neither of those words came up in the interview.

"AMOR FUGIT" IN THE YEAR'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY, 2011

Woo hoo!

So, there it is, the other good news I had that was making me want to vomit out of sheer nervousness.  My story "Amor Fugit" has been selected for The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2011 edition, edited by Rich Horton.  The news is elsewhere on the internets now, so I feel okay announcing it here.  I'm happy to report that I did not get run over or burst into flame in the meantime.

I'm incredibly excited.  Of everything I've written so far, "Amor Fugit" is still my favorite story, the one I measure all my other ones against before they go out into the world (or don't), so I'm thrilled to find other people like it, too.  And beyond that, I'm really honored that I get to be a part of this anthology.  Look whose names are on the cover!  Neil Gaiman! Yoon Ha Lee! Elizabeth Hand!  Gene Wolfe!

I'm so grateful for all my friends and family who helped me get up the nerve to send this story out into the world, and to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for publishing it in their pages earlier this year.  But most of all, I'm grateful for my husband Jeremy, who has endured my paralyzing bouts of self-doubt and numerous requests to read and re-read my stories with grace and very little desire to throttle me.  Without him, I wouldn't have understood love well enough to write about it.

I'll post more info. about where to find the anthology as it becomes available (probably some time in the first half of the new year.)