Yesterday I picked up a copy of the 2008 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, which includes the article “Speculative Fiction: The Next Generation,” featuring commentary (about being a young writer) from me, Tobias Buckell, Tim Pratt, and Cherie Priest. The article was drawn from interviews conducted with all of us by John Joseph Adams. If you’re curious, you can check out the entire interview with me.

Check out the jaw-dropping cover art for my buddy Toby’s new novel.

Over at the Realms of Fantasy message boards, there’s now a thread for people to post comments about the October issue (which includes my story “Save Me Plz”).

Becoming Jane = Terrific

* * My opinion on The Bourne Ultimatum * *

Yeah, so you could pretty much skip this one. Or else just watch The Bourne Supremacy again, since this is almost exactly the same script, just not as good.

I updated my “Save Me Plz” page with the illustration by HyeJeong Park from Realms of Fantasy.

My short story “Save Me Plz” is available now in the October 2007 issue of Realms of Fantasy magazine. And look, I even got my name on the cover.

I just found out that the anthology The Dragon Done It, which will include my story “The Black Bird,” will feature a cover by Bob Eggleton! Check out Bob Eggleton’s cover art for The Dragon Done It.

In the supermarket just now, the enormous guy behind me in line said, “Man, you eat way too healthy.” I looked at what he was getting — two big bottles of Dr. Pepper — and said, “You think I should switch to the Dr. Pepper diet?” He said, “No, no, this isn’t my diet. This is just to give me my morning shot of energy so I can drive over to the steakhouse.”

Hey, the StarShipSofa guys came across my June 5th blog post about them, and read it out on a show 49, “Fandom.” It’s pretty surreal to be listening along to a podcast and then suddenly have the hosts start talking about you. Surreal, and nifty.

My good friend Doug Cohen (a.k.a. The Slushmaster) will soon be seeing his first fiction publication when his story “Feelings of the Flesh” appears in Interzone. Click here and scroll to see the awesome (and also intriguingly bizarre) illustration. Congrats!

So on Friday afternoon I got a call from my mom (who’s in Sweden). She asked, “Did you talk to Elizabeth?” (My cousin.) I said, “No.” Mom said, “She said she called you.” I said, “Nope. Haven’t heard from her.” Mom said, “She wanted to know if you’re going to Amanda’s wedding.” (Another cousin.) I said, “Yeah, probably. When is it?” Mom said, “Tomorrow.” Whoops. I guess I should have been paying closer attention to that. It seemed doubtful that I was going to be able to make it. I’m in L.A., and the wedding was going to be in Sonoma (north of San Fransisco). Later that evening my cell phone rang and I listened to a message from my cousins Elizabeth and Lucas, who urged me to come to the wedding. (My cell phone is kind of a piece of crap, and often messages don’t seem to reach it until hours or days after they’ve been left, but I mostly keep in touch with people through email, so I don’t usually care that much.) I thought, Geez, I really should try to make it. I’d had a pretty active day, and was already feeling kind of tired, so I didn’t think I’d be able to pull an all-nighter of driving, but it occurred to me that if I downed a Red Bull or four I could probably stay awake until 1:00 or 2:00 a.m., by which point I’d be about halfway there. I could check into a hotel, sleep for a few hours, and then get up and keep driving, and then I could probably make it in time, assuming the wedding didn’t start until late afternoon (I had no idea) and that I didn’t get lost too many times. I also didn’t know exactly where the wedding was going to be. I decided that if I sat around thinking much longer, my window of opportunity would pass, so I tossed a few things in my backpack, walked out to my car, and started driving. I figured that I’d work out the details as I drove, and that if I decided it just wasn’t going to work I could always turn around and go home. All went according to plan, except for an unscheduled trip through the middle of downtown San Fransisco when I’d been trying to avoid the city entirely. Then Elizabeth’s message vanished from my piece of crap cell phone, so I couldn’t call her back to find out exactly where the wedding was going to be. Fortunately, I was able to reach my grandma in Connecticut (hi grandma!) who gave me the lowdown. I made it to the wedding with a solid two hours to spare, and had a great time.

Anyway, I just got back to L.A. and I’m totally exhausted, so I’ll leave it at that for now.

Well, so I saw Transformers. I was pretty disappointed. In fact, if you liked it you’ll probably want to stop reading here.

** SPOILERS ** for Transformers

Reviews of the movie seem to be split between the bad reviews of “It was completely idiotic” and the “good” reviews of “It was completely idiotic, but what were you expecting? Just enjoy it for what it is.” Very few people seem to feel that the movie was not, in fact, completely idiotic, which is a shame, because I think that Transformers has a terrific premise, and could easily be made into an interesting, engaging action blockbuster on the level of Aliens, Terminator 2, The Matrix, or X-Men 2. Of course, I knew it wasn’t going to be anything like that when, for reasons only the Gods of Darkness know, Michael Bay was picked to direct. It seemed inevitable that Bay would descend — Unicron like — upon the franchise, gorging on and completely obliterating it in order to feed his own inexplicably relentless career. With him directing, 90% of the potential for the movie went straight out the window, but when I saw the pretty amazing theatrical trailer I was hopeful that Bay would be able to stretch himself to the absolute limits of his “talent” and at least realize the full remaining 10% of what the movie could be — namely, a feature-length demo reel of really amazing CGI. That’s what I went into the theater hoping to see. Instead, I’d rate the movie at more like 4% of its potential. It’s actually a sort of Moreau-esque cross between Armageddon, Godzilla (2001), and Me, Myself, and Irene.

I actually thought that the first third or so of the movie was entertaining in a cheesy way, but as soon as the Autobots revealed what I will charitably refer to as their “characters,” the whole thing just took a high dive into the shitter. I knew I was really going to hate it when one of the Autobots pissed all over Jon Turturro. There might as well have been an arrow on the screen pointing to the Autobot and saying, “This is Michael Bay,” and another one pointing to Jon Turturro and saying, “This is anyone who ever cared about Transformers.” Even the action scenes, the raison d’etre for the film, I found mostly dull and headache-inducing. The special effects shots featured in the trailer are amazing, but in most of the other shots the transformers look shiny and weightless and fake, like most CGI. And the action sequences are so incompetently staged and choppily edited as to make it hard to even follow what’s happening, let alone care. I mean, don’t blink or you’ll miss the tragic death of one of the major characters.

The movie really suffers at the end, when the transformers take center stage, from the near-total lack of character development of the Autobots and the total lack of character development of the Decepticons, which leaves Megatron nothing to say but corny villain cliches that are unworthy of even a half-decent Saturday morning cartoon. And how many characters were there — a dozen? — that I’m not even sure what happened to in the end. The denouement was so perfunctory as to be insulting. I went back and watched the theatrical trailer, and I still can’t believe it’s for the same movie. The trailer conveys a sense of menace, drama, and seriousness. Man, I still want to see that movie.

I also had the misfortune to read some of Bay’s commentary in the new issue of Wired, to wit, “I urge [rabid Transformers fans] to watch the 1986 movie, go watch the cartoon. You’ll want to shoot yourself.” Well, I haven’t watched the cartoon in decades, so I can’t speak to that, but I did watch the 1986 movie last year. It’s certainly not great, but then again, it’s a children’s cartoon from 20 years ago, and I still think it’s an open question whether Bay’s $150 million treatment is a substantial (or any) improvement. After all, people who were kids 20 years ago still vividly and fondly recall the death in that animated movie of Optimus Prime. Are kids today going to look back in 20 years with similar sentiments upon the death of Jazz in Transformers (2007)? I seriously doubt it. At any rate, the animated cartoon didn’t make me want to shoot myself, but Pearl Harbor and Bad Boys II certainly did.

My friend Detra Wilson recently put together a website for her TV production company Northern Blue Entertainment, which she started along with her business partner Melodie Calvert. The site’s not coming up in Google, even if you search for their names or the company name. I told Detra Wilson that I’d try creating some links between my blog and her Northern Blue Entertainment website and see if that helps. If anyone has any other ideas, let me know.

So the Beauty and the Geek guy got back to me and told me to send in some pictures of myself. (Couldn’t he just look at my Myspace photos? Weird.) Anyway, I picked the dorkiest-looking pictures I could find and sent them along. (Thanks here to The Slush God, who is something of a virtuoso when it comes to taking unflattering pictures of me.) I never heard back. In the absence of proof to the contrary, I’m forced to conclude that they deemed me just too damn good-looking to make an effective TV geek. Shame really, since otherwise my geek credentials are pretty impeccable. Oh well, I didn’t want to be on your stupid hit TV show anyway.

So here’s a message I just got on Myspace:

—

Currently casting for a new season of a Beauty and The Geek!

I work on the hit reality show Beauty and we are looking for our male “Geeks”. The show revolves around one male Geek paired with one beautiful ( but not too smart) girl. Each week these two individuals will have to work with one another to successful complete their weekly challenge. If they are able to remain the last team standing through all the challenges, they will split $250,000.00!

I am currently seeking the “Geeks” for the show. We are really looking for a unique looking guy, that is also intelligent. We also appreciate people who like unique things and have interesting hobbies.

If this show/opportunity sounds like something you are interested please let me know. You would have to be available for an on camera interview TODAY or tomorrow at the latest! I know this is extreme sudden but we are in the last stages of casting and I just had to reach out to you when I saw you. The dates of availability needed for the show are June 26th- August 10th. You will be moved into a mansion if chosen for the show starting on July 5th. You will also be paid everyday you are on the show as well.

Again, if this sounds like something you would be game for please contact me with your contact information.

Scott Goldstein
Casting Director

—

“Unique looking”? Anyway, I’m up for anything so I emailed the guy back. I’ll let you know if there are any further developments.

I’ll be attending the Confluence literary science fiction & fantasy conference in Pittsburgh, July 27-29th. I’ll participate in these events:

FRIDAY:

Panel: Short Form Fantasy (with Tamora Pierce, Michael Swanwick, Joshua Palmatier, and S. C. Butler)

SATURDAY:

Reading

Autographing (with Tobias Buckell, Susan Dexter, and Eric Raymond)

Literary Beer (with Daniel O’Riordan)

SUNDAY:

Panel: Writing Horror (with Lawrence C. Connolly, Michael Arnzen, and John A. Taylor)

So I really recommend Statcounter.com. It’s free, and it lets you see who’s visiting your website and how they’re finding it (what links they’re following, what search terms they’re using, etc.), which is very useful.

Though it’s a little discouraging sometimes. Back when I just had a hit counter on my site, I used to imagine that most hits represented people who were interested in my writing. Not so much, according to Statcounter. In some search engines, just typing in the word “virgins” brings up my “Blood of Virgins” page as one of the top results. In fact, more people come to my site now by searching for virgins than by searching for anything else, including my name. Wow, I guess people just really love virgins. Or rather, as many of the search parameters make clear, people really love virgins who are extremely unlikely to remain virgins in the next few minutes.

My good friend Andrea Kail just saw the appearance of her first print publication. Watch for her story “Soft, Like A Rabbit” in Fantasy magazine.

In other news, Pseudopod just bought audio reprint rights to my story “The Disciple,” which originally appeared in Weird Tales magazine in 2002. The general crappiness of my life at that time inspired a foray into out-and-out horror fiction, and “The Disciple” achieved some modest infamy as “the cat crucifixion story.” It’s really true what they say: As an author, you can kill off as many human beings as you want and nobody cares, but geez, you crucify one cat …

Well, I finally finished transcribing the Lydia Davis translation of Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way. (I copied out the whole book longhand into a series of spiral notebooks in order to really closely analyze the prose style and sentence structures.)

Wow, that took a really, really, really long time.

I did learn a hell of a lot about sentence structure though, so hopefully it will be worth it.