A.C. Wise

Or, Influential Authors Part III: More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About the Patterns of My Psyche

Bibliophile. Biblioholic. Bookslut. However you want to slice it, the result is the same. I’m not ashamed to admit it - I can’t walk into a bookstore and walked out again empty handed. I don’t consider it a problem, but I won’t pretend that I can stop anytime. It is a full-blown addiction. And I have never claimed to be monogamous in my author-love - you are not now, nor will you ever be, the only one.

Still, that doesn’t mean that every relationship isn’t unique and special. There’s the love-at-first-sight, the reluctant love that is denied over and over until I finally give up and give in and let myself be swept away, there are brief flirtations and passing affairs, there is the creeping love, always lurking in the background until one day I suddenly look at it a different way and realize my heart has been swallowed whole. And then there is the love that I never really realized was love until I looked back in wonder that I could have ever mistaken it for anything else.

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If you’re a crazy obsessive person (like me) with influence over the hearts and minds of others (unlike me), you can win some cool Graveyard Book swag by getting other people to read said book. Details here - scroll down a bit.

In July, a black bear cub was rescued by firefighters from a forest fire in California. Lil’ Smokey has his own rehab blog complete with pictures of his progress, pictures of his overall adorableness, a live webcam feed, and ways to support his recovery and Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care in general.

And the wonderful folks at Penny Arcade are once more running Child’s Play, a charity powered by the awesome power of apples….er, I mean gamers, to benefit sick kids across the country and around the world. You can donate games, toys, books and whatnot through Amazon.com, or make a direct cash donation through paypal.

Tanglefoot: A Story of the Clockwork Century by Cherie Priest

Kimberley Ann Duray is Not Afraid by Leah Bobet

A Splash of Color by William T. Vandemark

Speaking of influential things and turning points in my psyche, Sandman turned 20 this year. In relation to that, and his own birthday, Neil Gaiman posted a picture on his blog from back when Sandman was first published. When he was my age. Not that anyone is keeping score but, to recap: Neil Gaiman, my age, already publishing the first issues of a genre-changing, award-winning comics series, which is still influencing the industry today. And me? Well, I…um…I…well, bugger. Looks like I have a lot of catching up to do before the end of December.

It’s the title of his latest work but it also describes my love for Ray Bradbury.

There are things that come along at certain pivotal moments in your life, turning points in your psyche perhaps, that are then absorbed and become a fundamental part of your being. The times don’t have to be special, the things don’t have be to anything that would generally be considered “life changing”, but they are special to you, and they change your life. Discovering Batman was one of those right-time, right-thing combinations for me. The works (I wrote words the first time, which seems fitting) of Ray Bradbury are another.

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I spend more time than most people thinking about zombies. Possibly not more than the average horror fan, but more than the average non-horror affiliated human being. I pass parked cars at night, and think about zombies crouched in the back seat. I pass closed-up stores and think about zombies waiting to smash their way out through the plate glass. These thoughts entertain me.

The Living Dead, edited by John Joseph Adams, is designed for people like me. If you’re not a zombie fan, this anthology probably won’t win you over. In fact, it doesn’t want to win you over. It doesn’t need you.

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My flash fiction piece, The Chupacabra in Love, which originally appeared over at Every Day Fiction back in July, will be appearing in their annual Year’s Best anthology. The anthology should be available sometime in December. More details to follow when I have them.

In case you were wondering, my keyboard did not get attacked by a cat while the cursor was in the title bar. It stands for ‘Not Quite NaNo’, which in itself is short hand for NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. For the curious, more info on NaNo can be found here (though at the this exact moment, their site seems to be down).

The basic idea is to goad lazy-ass writers (such as myself) into shutting up the voice of doubt in the back of their heads long enough to keep throwing words on the page until they have a novel (or at least a 50K start on one), in one month. Which happens to be this month. I say ‘Not Quite NaNo’, because I seriously doubt my ability to stick with it. After all, I’m very easily distra….oooh, shiny!

On the other hand, I did just glue a number of words onto the beginning of something that once upon a time assured me that it was, in fact, a novel. However, I rather suspect it was lying to me. Words have a tendancy to do that, after all.