A.C. Wise

I have to hand it to Pennsylvania; the state has managed to produce two significant snowstorms this year, and a smattering of smaller snowfalls in-between. It’s almost like being back in Canada.

All week leading up to the storm, I was skeptical, but it ended up snowing for almost 20 hours straight. The result: everything is silent and beautiful, cars are buried, my event at work was canceled, and I haven’t changed out of my pajamas all day. I have no regrets.

Earlier, I used a rather unconventional method to measure the total snowfall - a very short dog.

The official accumulation stands somewhere between mid-ear and way over his head.

The vow of secrecy surrounding Nemonymous Nine: Cern Zoo has officially been lifted. The full TOC will be revealed in March, but in the meantime you can check out the authors who have revealed their stories here on the official Cern Zoo page. And in the spirit of telling all, let it henceforth be known that my contribution to the anthology was Mellie’s Zoo. There. Don’t say I never tell you anything.

Speaking of Cern Zoo, congratulations to Steve Duffy, whose story from the anthology The Lion’s Den, was selected for The Year’s Best Horror #2.

So far, 2010 is starting out right. I just learned that my short story The Poet’s Child will be included in the fifth Jabberwocky anthology, due out from Prime Books in July 2010. Suh-weet!

And, yes, I realize that the mome raths actually outgrabe, but they probably also practice feng shui, too. You can’t prove that they don’t!

Rich Horton posted his year-end summary of Electric Velocipede yesterday, and he picked A Mouse Ran Up the Clock as one of his favorites of 2009. Woohoo!

Yesterday, Michael Swanwick pointed readers of his blog to a collection of excerpts from his dream diary, which was published in the Readercon 13 program under the awesome title of Lord Vacant on the Boulevard of Naked Angels. As it turns out, the man is just as brilliant in his sleep as he is awake. He dreams in fascinating fragments of prose, filled with beautiful scraps and haunting imagery. I’m jealous. My dreams are nowhere near that coherent, or interesting. At the same time, I’m grateful that the world contains sleeping minds capable of dreaming like that. I’m also grateful that, thanks to Michael Swanwick, the world now contains this phrase: “Weasels wease. That’s all there is to it.” Truer words were never spoken.

I’m a writing process geek. I’m fascinated by the chance to peek behind the scenes and see how different authors do what they do. I can say - completely without irony - that I find discussions of fountain pens and moleskin notebooks absorbing. Yes, I’m weird. Given that, I’m naturally loving these posts by Jeff VanderMeer about his choices while writing Finch, one of my favorite reads of 2009. If you happen to share my highly specific brand of geekitude, you should definitely check it out.

Even though I love reading about other people’s processes, I rarely post about my own. Partly because it’s not interesting to me when I do it; partly because I don’t really have a process other than: type words onto a laptop and poke them until I don’t hate them anymore. In terms of my writing “career” I did everything more or less backwards. I jumped into the deep part of the lake, then five years later, I decided it might be a good idea to learn how to swim. So I don’t have a process right now, but I’m working on getting one. I’m learning how to learn.

Science is sexy. Science fiction is sexy. Geekitude in general is sexy. The interwebs agree, and why would a series of tubes lie to a person?

Wired Magazine is holding a poll for readers to vote for the sexiest geek of 2009. Judging by the results so far, Wired’s readership is primarily made up of straight men, lesbians, or straight women who find other women sexier than they find men. Tor.com has their own version of the poll based on their initial criticism that Wired’s poll was full, not of actual geeks, but those who play geeks on tv. Both polls are kind of fun though, and provide further proof that brains can be just as important as bodies, and when you combine the two…yowza!

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Fantasy Magazine is holding their annual best story of the year poll. Go vote for your favorite Fantasy Magazine story, and for extra bonus points, comment on your favorite story for a chance to win fabulous prizes.

And they’re not quite at the voting stage yet, but the Hugo Awards are now open for nominations. If you attended Worldcon 67, or are attending Worldcon 68, you can nominate works now. You can also purchase a supporting membership to vote.

Do it. You know you want to.

In my totally unscientific observation of things, years that end in an odd number tend to be worse for me in terms of publishing than years ending in an even number. 2009 was no exception. My submission stats for this year:

47 stories submitted
42 stories rejected
5 stories pending
1 story accepted (submitted in 2008)

I was pickier about which markets I submitted to this year, I spent more time editing and re-writing than in previous years, and overall my output was lower. (For comparison purposes, last year I had 72 submissions and 6 acceptances). I’m hoping that the odd-even pattern will hold true for 2010, making it a successful publishing year.

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To celebrate my birthday, we went to see Sherlock Holmes. When I first saw the trailers for this new version, my brain rebelled. The more I saw, though, the more intrigued I became. The movie seems designed to make purists brains explode, and I felt a little guilty about wanting to see it. But then I decided, in honor of getting older, what I really wanted to do was revel in base, immature instincts - namely the desire to see shit blow up and watch Robert Downey Jr. take his shirt off*.

The movie was actually better than I expected. If you go in expecting great cinema, or if you’re a traditionalist, you probably won’t be happy, but if you want a fun action movie, then it’s definitely well worthwhile. There are some nice nods to the source material, and Jude Law and RDJ genuinely seem to have fun with their roles. Cast with other leads, the movie probably wouldn’t be as good, since other than those two, everyone else mostly seemed to just be filling space, but those two carry the film and carry it well. If the idea of Holmes as action hero really bothers you, I suggest mentally substituting different names, say Hemlock Jones and Dr. Waterstone, then just sit back and enjoy the explosions.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I plan to spend the rest of my birthday continuing to celebrate ridiculousness and immaturity by drinking vodka out of a crystal skull, watching cartoons, and possibly playing video games.

*There was significantly less nakedness and exploding than the trailers promised, but I’m still sold on what will inevitably become a series. When Shit Blows Up and Robert Downey Jr. Takes His Shirt Off: The Sequel is released, I’ll have no qualms (or guilt) about paying good money to go see it.