Coffee cupFinishing 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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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Book Launch!
Hydra House cover for Near by Cat Rambo. Art by Stephen Counley; cover deisgn by Tod McCoy.Today’s the official day that Near + Far is launched upon the world. Huzzah! If you’re wondering how to buy or spread the word about the book, here’s some details.
Some of you have received the mail I sent out talking about what you could do to spread word of the book. Here’s some of the pertinent details from that for those as wants such.As you know, publishing is changing and increasingly authors are part of the promotion process. I’m asking — if you should feel so inclined — for your help if getting the buzz out.
So what can you do?
Well, sure, buy the book is top of the list. But we don’t all have the budget. Here’s some other ways that you can assist in getting the word out about Near + Far:
1. Request it through your library. Most will even let you do this online.
2. Request it at your local bookstore. It’s available through Ingram, a major book distributor, so they should be able to get it.
3. Write an Amazon review or tag the book on Amazon. Amazon reviews are great! But if you don’t have the time to write one up, you can still help. One way that often gets overlooked is tagging. Scroll to the bottom of the Amazon page for the book until you see “Tags Customers Associate with This Product.” Add tags that you think might help someone find the book, if you notice anything missing, or just go through and check the boxes next to the tags you think are relevant (which is hopefully all of them.)
4. Review it or add it to your to-read list on book sites. Reviews on Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com/work/13024203/book/89765198), and Shelfari are great!
5. Blog about the book. Any mention of the book, particularly one that explains why you liked it, is awesome. There’s actually some cool little things about the book:
The tête-bêche format, also known as the Ace Double. Flip the Near side of the book over, and you’ll find Far on the other side.
The interior artwork is by long-time friend Mark W. Tripp.
If you’re one of the people who’s already received a necklace, take a picture of it with yourself to send me for the Near + Far page. Or alternately, the necklace with someone/something/draped across a rotting log/in a bookstore/whatever?
Stories range from very early to very recent, spanning markets from Asimov’s and Lightspeed to small and somewhat obscure anthologies. I’ve included some of my favorite stories, such as “The Mermaids Singing Each to Each,” “Surrogates,” and “Bus Ride to Mars.”
6. Share news of it on social networks. Sharing links on Facebook and other social networks is great. I’ll be posting links to blog entries about the book on the main networks I use: Facebook, Google +, and Twitter. Just favoriting, plusing or liking posts helps give them a little Google juice. Even going to the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/nearplusfar and clicking “Like” helps.
7. Share news of it on mailing lists and other groups. Pass the news along to your fellows on writing or SF-related discussion boards, BBSes, mailing lists, and other forums.
8. Share links on bookmarking sites. If you use bookmarking sites like Delicious, Reddit, or Stumbleupon, please think about bookmarking pages about the book. Here’s some pages that might be worth bookmarking:
Exploring Near + Far's Interior Art: Row 1 (Giveaway Day One)
Row 1
This week sees the book getting officially launched on Wednesday. This week I’ll be doing a series of five posts about the interior art. Comment on a post to be entered to win one of three pieces of Near + Far jewelry; comment on all five posts and you’ll be entered five times.
So left to right above are five of the interior illustrations from the book. One of the things Mom said to me last night was how much she was enjoying the afternotes, so I’m trying not to repeat those too much, but to add a touch more to them.
Leftmost is a star like pattern, which accompanies far future story “Timesnip,” in which 18th century Victoria Woodhull copes with life in the future as a traveling saleswoman dealing in time travel. It’s actually a version of one of the other illustrations, arranged in a star cluster, which mark didn’t point out to me till later. That seems very fitting, given the circularity of the story.
The second pattern is one that accompanies the story “Amid the Words of War.” Its cramped interior echoed the desperation on Six’s part that I wanted to convey over the course of the story. The story is about war and conflict and the distrust they force on each other. The pieces in the book are black and white and here Mark’s chosen to create a white “eye” for a number of the illustrations which (to me) just adds to the coolness and makes each one become a creature presenting itself sideways to the camera.
The third design accompanies the story “Kallakak’s Cousins”. Again, there’s that eye looking out, and sometimes it’s a creature and sometimes a face, sometimes a helmet built of butterflies and submarines.
The fourth accompanies a flash piece, “Futures.” It resembles a submarine, or perhaps a rocket ship, although once more there’s an eye, set dead center in this case.
The fifth is used with the slipstream afterlife story, “Bus Ride to Mars.” It’s one of Mark’s older pieces, a sideways slash of a piece that appears differently in here than in the book itself.
Near + Far jewelry, based on interior art by Mark W. Tripp.
