Speculative Reminiscences: Weekly Recap for 2/9/2014

I’m getting ready to head off to the Nebulas in about an hour. Ten years ago at this time, I was getting ready to go off to Clarion West for six weeks. I’d quit my job at Microsoft and my husband had agreed to shoulder the mortgage solo for a while so I could follow my dream.

Now it’s a decade later. A lot of stuff has happened. I’ve had some stories published. I got to read in New York at the KGB bar with Chip Delany. I got nominated for awards a few times. I edited some cool stuff. I ran for Vice President of SFWA and won, and now I’m coming up on being President. And I published a novel.

And now that novel is here in a big wonderful bundle of fantasy, curated by Kevin J. Anderson. Here’s a picture of all that epic goodness:

StoryBundle lets you adjust your own price to get a whole bunch of epic and excellent titles. A minimum bid of $5 gets you the basic set of six books: The Magic Touch, by Jody Lynn Nye; Gamearth, by Kevin J. Anderson, The Crown and the Dragon, by John Payne, One Horn to Rule Them All, edited by Lisa Mangum, Invisible Moon, by James A. Owen, and Beasts of Tabat. Make that $15 and it includes A Stranger to Command, by Sherwood Smith, Hard Times in Dragon City, by Matt Forbeck, The Alchemist, by Paolo Baciagalupi, The Executioness, by Tobias Buckell, The Ghosts of the Conquered, by Matthew Caine, and Glamour of the God-Touched, by Ron Collins. There’s also a bonus story by Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart from Rush, “The Bookseller’s tale.”

Want it? I’ve got five bundles to give away and I’m trying to a Rafflecopter giveaway. Spread the word and you can win!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Finishing up the final polish of a story today, titled “Reality Storage”. It fits in both the Villa Encantada series as well as the category of “stories inspired by the remodeling and moving process.” Here you go:

So there I was staring at the bank of monitors. It was still early in the morning; my coffee was half-full but I’d finished my muffin. I was thinking about the way Bonnie smelled in the morning, before she showered, still a little sweaty but with a lingering edge like lilac and mint from her bodywash, and a little musty too, when you burrowed your face down into the hollow of her neck.

On monitor three, the guy entered, got a cart, and then pretended to load stuff onto it from his car. That’s what made me look a second time, catching him lifting empty air up. He did it five or six times, then trundled the cart onto the elevator and took it up to locker 234.

I watched him all the way, sipping my coffee, wondering what he was up to. He opened up the locker, mimed lifting six things into it, closed and locked it. He even wore work gloves to protect his hands. I wondered if he was practicing some kind of act. It looked so realistic, to the point where he staggered on the last lift, as though thrown off balance by the burden’s heaviness.

He stripped off the gloves, closed up the unit, and locked it again. He didn’t bother to take the empty cart back down with him, just left it there, which made me think the worse of him. It’s shitty not to do little things like that, to make someone else clean up after you.

While he was in the elevator, he looks straight at the camera. He rubbed at his ear, frowning. Then he shrugged and gave the camera a wave, as though he saw me watching.

Then he got back into his sporty little pickup truck and drove away.

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