Hey, the new trailer for I Am Legend looks pretty sweet.

For those who don’t know, this movie is an adaptation of a terrific novel by Richard Matheson.

The December issue of Realms of Fantasy, which includes my story “Transformations,” is now out in bookstores. (At least, it’s at Borders in Santa Monica.)

I just got an email from Sean Wallace saying that Rich Horton has selected my story “Save Me Plz” for inclusion in the 2008 edition of the anthology series Fantasy: The Best of the Year from Prime Books. The book will also feature fiction by Garth Nix, Andy Duncan, and Holly Phillips. (At least, according to the cover.) This will be my first appearance in any of the year’s best anthologies.

There’s now a topic over at the Realms of Fantasy message board for discussing the December issue, which includes my story “Transformations.”

Here is the latest (and almost certainly the most purple) Realms of Fantasy cover. Once again they put the authors’ names on there, which is always fun, and look, they even put my name first. I initially thought that this must be because they think I’m terrific and special, but a more thorough analysis reveals that they put the names in alphabetical order and made the common mistake of thinking that my last name is “Barr Kirtley” when it is in fact just “Kirtley.” No big deal (especially if it means I get to be first), though this sort of thing does worry me that any potential novels I might happen to publish in the future are going to be routinely misshelved.

Wow. Check out the awesome illustration by artist Rob Johnson for my story “Transformations.” I’ve generally had very good luck with my illustrations, but this one’s better than I had even hoped for.

Just heard that ogre_san has received his contributor’s copies of the December issue of Realms of Fantasy, and he reports that my story “Transformations” made it into this issue. The issue also includes fiction by Graham Edwards, Sandra McDonald, Joe Murphy, and Von Carr.

Escape Pod editor Steve Eley will be in L.A. this coming weekend for a podcast expo, and he’s planning a Sunday brunch where Escape Pod listeners can mingle. I’m planning to go. If you’re an Escape Pod listener and you’re in the area, you should think about coming. If you want to come but are not an Escape Pod listener, why not maybe listen to this story and this one too and become an Escape Pod listener? And heck, while you’re at it, give a listen to this year’s Hugo-winning short story.

Ursula Le Guin reviews Jeanette Winterson and notes, “It’s odd to find characters in a science-fiction novel repeatedly announcing that they hate science fiction. I can only suppose that Jeanette Winterson is trying to keep her credits as a ‘literary’ writer even as she openly commits genre. Surely she’s noticed that everybody is writing science fiction now? Formerly deep-dyed realists are producing novels so full of the tropes and fixtures and plotlines of science fiction that only the snarling tricephalic dogs who guard the Canon of Literature can tell the difference. I certainly can’t. Why bother? I am bothered, though, by the curious ingratitude of authors who exploit a common fund of imagery while pretending to have nothing to do with the fellow-authors who created it and left it open to all who want to use it. A little return generosity would hardly come amiss.”

On a personal note, I heart both tricephalic dogs and the word “tricephalic.” That word kind of reminds me of how I recently heard C. S. Lewis’s “liar, lunatic, Lord” thing referred to as a “false trichotomy.” Holy crap, I can’t wait until the next time I can work “false trichotomy” into a conversation. Unfortunately, that will probably not be for approximately 17.8 years.

So I went and saw Resident Evil: Extinction. It wasn’t as good as I was expecting (and I had very low expectations), though my reaction is probably colored by the fact that I went to see it at the massive Dome theater at the Arclight and sat near the front, and I actually had to hold my hands over my ears for most of the movie to keep my eardrums from exploding like a shotgunned zombie heads. The trailer, with its sweeping vistas of a dessicated Las Vegas, had somehow led me to expect something along the lines of Beyond Thunderdome, but Extinction is much, much, much more modest in scale. It’s basically the tale of ragtag band trying to survive in a future world where just about everybody has been wiped out or zombified by a manmade T-virus that apparently selectively targets those with no perceived appeal to the youth market.

I went and saw this one in spite of its lousy predecessor, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, because the original Resident Evil flick remains one of the most intense movies I’ve ever seen, though that’s almost certainly only because I hadn’t slept for three days prior to seeing it and I was in a near-hallucinatory state of fatigue. I think that even for the well-rested that movie is illogical and disjointed, and in the state I was in the movie was really messing with my head. And for some reason I still can’t fathom, it seemed like half the audience was walking in and out of the theater throughout the whole movie, and it was extremely dark in the theater, so all these people kept tripping on stairs and stumbling/lurching toward me just like the zombies on screen. It was all I could do not to leap up and start swinging. By the time I left the theater and walked out into the parking lot I was pretty paranoid and hopped up on adrenaline, which is probably a good thing because it may have saved me from being run over by a careening minivan. Ah, good times.

Anyway, I love zombie movies, so I still got a kick out of Extinction. It had its moments. (Though many of those moments were lifted straight out of other movies — notably Day of the Dead.) The first scene and the last scene were nice touches. The action was gruesome to behold (though not as gruesome to behold as the brief and painfully perfunctory scenes in which the characters express deep emotions). I guess if you’re not doing anything some afternoon and really want to see a low-budget postapocalyptic zombie action movie, this one’s an okay way to pass a few hours.

Life on Hollywood Boulevard proceeds apace. I’m going to miss it here. (I’m moving next month to Santa Monica.) Why, in just one evening stroll last week I witnessed: a) A shirtless guy cruising along on a bicycle, and resting calmly on his shoulders a cat dressed in a devil costume. b) A red carpet with a cadre of sorta trashy-looking models with logos body-painted over their chests, where a person scanned in vain to try to identify some part — a wrist, a kneecap, a toe, anything — possessing some semblance of naturalness. I was put in mind of Jonas, the interstellar sailor from Book of the New Sun who at first appears to be a man with a few mechanical parts, but turns out to be a robot who’s had to replace almost all of himself with human parts. c) A diminutive Russian woman who got pulled over and booked for a hit-and-run DUI. The frame of her car had been completely torn away from the right front wheel, which lingered, skeletal and lonely. d) The torch-wielding host of Survivor (don’t know his name, don’t care) filming a promo where he bickers with a transvestite.

…And that’s not even counting the regulars, such as the costumed characters who prowl about outside Mann’s Chinese Theater. The best of these is the giant black guy who paints his skin a sparkly bronze and dresses like Conan except with crimson/black bat-wings. The silver robot tuxedo guy with the digital lightshow chest is pretty good too.

Ah, another satisfied customer. Okay, not so much. Of course I am speaking of visitors to my website. Now, you may remember me griping about the staggering numbers of horndogs out there on the internet who somehow manage to stumble across my “Blood of Virgins” page by doing Google searches that are decidedly not “surreal romantic short stories featuring dragons.” Well, we have a new winner in the category of “No, my website is definitely not what you were looking for,” and I think this one’s destined to stand for a while. Someone managed to come across my “Save Me Plz” page by searching for “stories how she used her strap on on me,” due to the fact that my page contains such distinctive keywords as “stories,” “she,” and “strap.” Great job, Google. Seriously. I mean that. And of course this visitor departed instantly. Dang it. I hold out this sad, naive hope that somehow, someday, someone who visits my website will be like, “Hmm … what’s this? Geez, I was looking for German dungeon porn, but these science fiction stories look kind of interesting too. I think I’ll explore the site a bit.” Alas, today is not that day.

So the other day I passed a crowd of protesters assembling in front of the local KFC. The protesters held signs advising that KFC slashes the throats of live chickens and also boils chickens alive. One protester was in the process of donning a chicken outfit, and another was dressed as a blood-spattered Colonel Sanders. I was sorely tempted to amble over and join the protest. Not only do I too hate KFC (though largely due to their history of giving me absolutely crap service), but of course I’m always up for some good rabble rousing, and also the female protesters were all really, really attractive. I silently weighed these factors against the fact that I had been on my way to the grocery store to buy chicken, and perhaps the vague feelings of hypocrisy that might ensue should I be required to undertake the otherwise hilarious task of hurling a bucket of chicken blood onto the uniform of an unsuspecting teenage KFC worker. In the end I passed on by, motivated not only by the whole hypocrisy thing, but also by the fact that, to be honest, I was getting kind of hungry.

My short story “Save Me Plz,” which appeared in the October 2007 issue of Realms of Fantasy, is now available as a free audio download from Escape Pod.

So today as I was trying to navigate through a busy intersection in Koreatown a crazy lady wildly attacked my passenger window with her keys. I guess she thought I was in her way? I don’t even know. Amazingly, the window doesn’t even seem to be scratched.

Wow, going grocery shopping on Sunday afternoon in Hollywood is like attending a cosmetic surgery expo.

Oh, and since a few people have asked, I found a place to stay, at least temporarily. I’m renting a room in a pretty nice 2B2B near La Brea & Sunset with an aspiring filmmaker, Matt, who I found through craigslist. The place is just for September while his actress girlfriend is away filming a movie and he’s got a spare room. I LOVE the location, right in the heart of everything. The Walk of Fame is one block away, and I’m also within walking distance of the Sunset Strip and the Grove. This afternoon, strolling the Walk of Fame, I passed a homeless guy with a cardboard sign that said “Kick me in the nuts $20.” They’re also filming a movie up there right now, and the whole street is cordoned off in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater, and there are all sorts of smashed up cars and cranes and giant lights, and what appears to be a cement mixer that was dropped upside down from a great height.

So yesterday afternoon I popped over to T. C. Boyle’s office before class to chat, and the first thing he said was, “So … you’re a sci-fi guy.” Crap, my cover’s blown. (T. C. Boyle doesn’t read and doesn’t have any affection for quote-unquote science fiction, as may be gleaned from interviews like this.) I tried to explain that it was all my parents’ fault for reading me all those Madeleine L’Engel, Robert Heinlein, and William Sleator books when I was a kid. I said, “Did you look at my website?” and he said, “No, James told me.” (James is another student who knows me.) So, with some trepidation, I showed T. C. Boyle a copy of the issue of Realms of Fantasy with my story “Save Me Plz.” He looked at my story and remarked, “Great first paragraph.” I said, “Thanks.” He flipped a few pages and read some more. After a minute he said, “I just read the beginning and the end. You seem to have a good story sense.” I said, “Thanks,” again. So then I talked about some of my experiences reading fantasy & science fiction and reading literary fiction, and my impressions of them, mentioning Kelly Link and Jonathan Lethem and Aimee Bender. That discussion carried over into class, in which we discussed Fiskadoro, a postapocalyptic novel by Denis Johnson. Toward the end of class, T. C. Boyle brought up the issue of whether the book was “science fiction.” The other students are mostly English PhD candidates. One guy said he’d call it more of a “literary thought experiment,” and that the book wasn’t science fiction because it didn’t deal with stuff like “clones and brain swapping.” Someone else opined that the novel couldn’t be science fiction because it dealt with “serious themes.” I finally put in, “Well, you know, I’ve read hundreds of science fiction novels, and I guess I don’t see anything that makes this book somehow categorically different from any of dozens of other science fiction books that I could name. I think any story set in a semi-plausible imaginary future, whatever other categories the story might fall into, has to be read as a work of science fiction.” No one challenged me on that. I had the strong impression that none of the detractors had ever actually read any science fiction, and were therefore at something of a disadvantage when it came to arguing the point. Then T. C. Boyle brought up the issue of whether writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges should be considered “science fiction.” I pointed out that Borges had acknowledged that his biggest influence was H. G. Wells, so obviously Borges’ work at least had something to do with science fiction. After class, T. C. Boyle told me that my comments were brilliant. All in all, not a bad afternoon.

I’ll be appearing at Skylight Books (Los Angeles) on October 5th at 7:30 p.m. alongside other students from USC’s Master of Professional Writing program.

So I got back to L.A. last night. I decided to stick around L.A. for one more semester so I could take T. C. Boyle’s class, except now I have no place to live. If anyone knows of any good temporary housing opportunities in the L.A. area, please let me know. My class only meets once a week, so the place could theoretically be pretty far outside L.A.