Issue 15 of Crossed Genres now out!

I'm pleased to announce that my story "The Seder Guest" is now available in Issue 15 of Crossed Genres. It features five stories and an article:

FICTION
The Turk in the Basement by Jason S. Ridler
The Seder Guest by Barbara Krasnoff
Keeli’s Ordeal by Scott H Andrews
Caretaker by Marilou Goodwin
The Prince of Artemis V by Jennifer Brozek

ARTICLE
Writing Our Own (Alternate) Histories: Fanwork As Folklore by C.A. Young

That, and a whimsical piece of cover art by Nicc Balce. Enjoy....

A few notes about "Waiting for Jakie" and other stuff

If you would like to read my story "Waiting for Jakie," it's still available on the Apex Magazine Web site (just click on the story's link).

Speaking of Apex, this weekend is your last opportunity to vote for the Apex Story of the Year (2009). "Jakie" is one of those eligible, and it would be cool if I weren't the only one voting for it. <g> You can place your vote here.

If you like the story, and the other great stories that are on the site, and want a nice printed copy (as opposed to printing it out from the Web site), they've all been collected into an anthology called Descended From Darkness: Apex Magazine Vol. I. You can click on the link to order it.

And finally, just FYI -- nominations for the Nebula are open until February 15th.  If you're eligible to vote, you should -- there is some really great stuff in the running. At the very least, looking through the current nominations offers a list of where to go if you need something to read.

"Seder Guest" sold to Crossed Genres

I'm pleased to announce (that sounds really formal, doesn't it? Oh, well) that I've sold my story "The Seder Guest" to Crossed Genres magazine, and that it will be available in Issue #15, online and in various formats, on February 1st.

Something nice to think about as I brave JFK airport tomorrow on my way to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas...

Apex running contest for best fiction

Apex Magazine is celebrating its first year of becoming a professional-level digital magazine by running a contest for the best original fiction published by the magazine. The winner will be chosen by popular vote -- and needless to say, I'd be happy & flattered if I got a few votes somewhere in there...

Anyway, even if you don't feel like voting, you can still read my story (which ran in the April issue): Waiting for Jakie.

Wanna vote? Just go here.

(Note: Apparently, Apex changed its poll service; I've fixed the link to reflect that.)

Jumping onto the PEIR

On Tuesday, I'm going to be attending a class at PEIR -- about one of my stories. PEIR -- Personal Enrichment in Retirement -- is a program at Hofstra (located on Long Island) where seniors create their own classes, taking advantage of all the academic learning and life experience that they've accumulated.

This is a class about literature, and they're actually going to discuss my story Waiting for Jakie; when they're finished dissecting it, I get a shot at defending myself .

How/why do I know about this? My mother has been a part of the PEIR program for years now. So I'm actually appearing in my character of "Dorothy's daughter."

I'll let y'all how it goes.

Things Aren't What They Seem

This afternoon, I wandered over to the Web site of From the Asylum Books, which is publishing the anthology Things Aren't What They Seem (which will include one of my stories), and it had a listing of the Table of Contents. The listing dates from August 30th; as yet, no word as to when the anthology will actually be published. You'll know when I do.

Here's the TOC:

Open for Business - Richard Dansky
Unsafe Sex - Chris Donahue
I Married an Alien - Linda Donahue
The Human Contingent - Rhonda Eudaly
Screamer - C.S. Fuqua
The Boyfriend from Hell - Fiona Glass
Lover Unseen - Ken Goldman
Word Warp, Too - Liza Granville
General Sherman - Alissa Grosso
The Perfect Barbecue - Cathy C. Hall
Three Deep Breaths - Kim Kofmel
The Call Comes - Barbara Krasnoff
The Harvester of All Things: Now and Then - Bobbie Metevier
The Pet - Tracy Morris
The Hustle - Aaron Polson
Living in Hell - Selina Rosen
The Shop on the Corner - Jennifer Schwabach
Infestation - Anna Stephens
New Skin for the Old Ceremony - David Tallerman
Making Contact - Raoul Wainscoting
Under Calcutta - John Walters
Cosmetic Purposes - Desmond Warzel
Saucer-Men of the Second City - John Weagley

Hannibal the Black-Backed Gull

Jim and I went to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Preserve in Queens yesterday. We went rather late in the afternoon, and weren't sure what to expect, but ended up seeing a lot of birds -- hundreds of them. Nothing really exotic, but interesting and very plentiful. There were flocks of starlings, ducks, terns, swans, gulls, geese, and at least one black-bellied plover, amid some smaller shore birds that I couldn't identify (partially because my binocs weren't up to the task, and partially because I wasn't).

The most exciting view of the day was of a couple of dozen herons/egrets, more than I usually see in one place. They were gathered on the shore and in a nearby tree -- at first, we thought we were looking at several different types, but then when we got home and went through my photos, we saw that we were actually looking at families -- notice on the left that there's a Great White Heron feeding its chick. (You can click on the photo for a larger version.)

The most disturbing view of the day was of a Black-Backed Gull we named Hannibal, for reasons that will become obvious. Jim first noticed a large gull dragging something across the sand; when we looked closer, we saw it was the carcass of another bird. Once Hannibal got its prize down to the water (where presumably it was safe from the competition), it started to feed. You can see Hannibal at the top right of the photo.

At first, we were a bit perturbed -- we knew that gulls ate almost everything, but other birds? When we got home, I checked with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology site and sure enough, gulls -- especially Black-Backed Gulls -- will eat fish, chicks, mammals, and anything else they can get hold of, including other birds.

You learn something new every day....