Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy clawed its way up to #7 on the iTunes Literature podcasts list this morning. That’s the highest I’ve seen it climb.

Issue 108 of Rue Morgue magazine contains a “zombie anthology cage match,” which includes this bit about The Living Dead 2:

“I’ll be snagging TLD2 for one simple reason: there are tons of themes and riffs that I’ve never encountered before. This collection is recommended for zombiephiles of all stripes, albeit with the caveat that sometimes the stories by the biggest names are not the most original or compelling. But if you’re looking for a showcase for the subgenre’s versatility, or proof that short-form horror is the place to find true innovation, this is it.”

Four stories are highlighted, including my “The Skull-Faced City” (“freshest”). The other three are “Arlene Schabowski of the Undead” by Mark McLaughlin and Kyra M. Schon (“most terrifying”), ”Zombie Gigolo” by S.G. Browne (“goriest”), and “We Now Pause for Station Identification” by Gary A. Braunbeck (“strangest”).

All you podcasters out there may want to try The Levelator, a piece of software that smooths out variations in the volume level of your audio file. For months I’ve been poking around looking for a good way to do this. Really glad I saw this on Cheryl Morgan’s blog. This is going to make my life SO much easier.

Finished a new 4400 word short story, “Three Deaths,” for a TOP SECRET PROJECT. More details to come.

So I just noticed that there’s a ghost town in Texas named “Kirtley.” Here’s a photo:

The lone store that had operated in Primm moved to the highway and the community became known as Kirtley (origin unknown). A post office had been in operation from 1902 through 1927. Due to the proximity to Smithville and La Grange, Kirtley was left in an economic limbo producing only sand and gravel — an operation which is still doing business alongside the railroad tracks. The extracted sand and gravel has removed whatever was left of Primm.”

In an odd coincidence, just like Kirtley, Texas, I too have been left in an economic limbo, except instead of producing only sand and gravel, I produce only short stories and podcasts. Spooky, huh?

Anyway, I was able to dig up a few more facts about the town on Wikipedia. This is really interesting:

John Joseph Adams and I are interviewed about Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy on Episode 32 of Podcast Squared, a podcast that reviews other podcasts.

So this page just popped up in my Google alerts. Geez, who spilled the beans?

My friend Keith’s awesome iPhone game 100 Rogues is FREE for a limited time. Grab it quick.

I’m very sad to hear that Ann Cecil died a few hours ago, of cancer. Ann was one of our regular staffers at the Alpha young writers workshop, where she took great delight in baking platefuls of cookies for the students. She was also extremely diligent about reading student’s work and providing comprehensive notes, and was always saying stuff like, “It wasn’t until I read it the fourth time that I noticed that…” She was well-practiced at evaluating writing, as she owned a massive science fiction library and would write notes in each book analyzing its strengths and weaknesses. A lot of author friends knew this, and when they visited her home they would have to decide whether they dared take a peek at their own books and learn what she thought of them. There was about a two-year run at Alpha where Ann and I were in all the same critique groups, and I would give my critique and then she’d correct me and point out all these things I missed. It got to be kind of a running joke. Finally with one story I went first and gave my critique, having completely missed the fact that the piece was a retelling of a Bible story, and when the next person started talking I just groaned, and Ann laughed. She was always laughing, always smiling. She took great delight in reading and writing, in helping other people, and in fandom, which she was heavily involved with for many years. We’ll really miss her.

Yale Professor Donald Kagan discusses the organization of Spartan society

Anti-cult activist Paul Grosswald discusses how as a college student he got mixed up in Scientology

Historian Garrett Fagan discusses myths and realities about Roman gladiators

Mike Duncan of the History of Rome podcast discusses the final years of the mad emperor Commodus

Author Jonathan Maberry has convened a zombie roundtable, in which a bunch of contributors to The Living Dead 2 talk about our stories and why we like zombies.

Just noticed that The Itty Bitty Titty Committee, a political lesbian comedy that features me as a pro-gay marriage protester, is now an instant download on Netflix. (I appear on screen and yell “Shut up! We’re not anarchists!” at around 47 minutes into the movie.)

Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy is eligible for the Hugo Award in the “Best Related Work” category. Here are the details:

This year’s Hugo Awards nomination ballot is now online. The 2011 Hugo Awards will be presented in Reno, NV during Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention (August 17-21). Deadline for nominating online is March 26, 2011 23:59 PDT.

Anyone who has a supporting or full membership of Renovation as of January 31, 2011 and all members of Aussiecon 4 (last year’s Worldcon) may nominate works. If you didn’t attend Aussiecon, and you don’t plan to attend Renovation,you can still nominate by purchasing a supporting membership.

Already registered? Go and nominate your favorite works.

So I’ve been filling out questions to improve my matches on the dating site OkCupid. Here are a few representative questions. How do your answers compare? Maybe we’re compatible!

Dan Goodman mentions me on his blog:

I read some awesome anthologies and single author works this year, and have discovered some truly irreplaceable writers in short fiction, including Catherynne Valente, Saladin Ahmed, Caitlin R. Kiernan, David Barr Kirtley, and Ted Chiang.

Thanks, Dan! It’s nice to be irreplaceable.

…at least until IBM creates a fiction-writing computer. Then we’re all screwed.

I just noticed today that Kina Grannis, who I know from USC, released a new album this year, Stairwells. I’ve been listening to it, and it’s great.

By focusing on simple arrangements and melancholic pop melodies, Kina Grannis cracked the Billboard charts in 2010 with this full-length release. Stairwells is her first album since 2008, the year Grannis won a Superbowl songwriting contest and claimed an Interscope recording contract as her prize. Although she left the label one year later without releasing any material, Grannis’ time at Interscope was still influential, and Stairwells shows strong similarities to albums by Vanessa Carlton, Michelle Branch, and other hitmakers. Grannis sings with breezy grace, occasionally backing her vocals with gauzy strings but more often sticking to light percussion and acoustic guitar chords. When she’s at her best, she mixes her Top 40 melodies with a sense of coffee house ambiance, and her status as an independent musician — one who spent two years recording this album on her own dime — sweetens the deal.

You can listen to some of the songs free on her Myspace music page. My favorite of those is “In Your Arms.”

Here’s a cool video about a computer program that will be competing on Jeopardy in February. As an added bonus, the program is being developed at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Laboratory, where my parents both worked and where I spent a significant chunk of my childhood:

So for my birthday today I asked folks if they could rate my podcast over at iTunes. Seeing as I have 454 Facebook friends, I was expecting maybe one or two of them would actually do it, as prior experience has taught me that, for reasons I don’t entirely understand, persuading people to open up iTunes and rate a podcast is about as difficult as getting them to eat live scorpions.

Anyway, I actually had three people rate my podcast today, so I guess that exceeded expectations. So thanks you three whoever you are. Thanks also to Matt Squires and MythReindeer, who wrote actual reviews in just the last few days. Today’s lone and much-appreciated review comes from John Oliver, who writes:

Great Find of 2010. I’ve been listening to this show from the beginning, and I absolutely look forward to every episode. John & Dave’s humor punctuated by great interviews with a variety of people in the geek-o-sphere. This is the best variety geek show around. Not to mention my regular dose of King’s Quest references each episode. Tell your friends. Tell your hamsters. Tell io9.com. Everyone needs to know.

Thanks, John! In other news, last night I stayed with some friends in San Francisco, and today we went over to the de Young art museum. Definitely the coolest thing I saw there was this cathedral-shaped reliquary which contains an actual human spine and which is made entirely out of bullets and gun parts.

So tomorrow is my birthday. If you want to do something nice for me for my birthday, why not fire up iTunes and give 5 stars to my Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. (Here’s a link.) Thanks!

Juhan writes: “Hey, what exactly do you mean by the ‘polished up’ version? I mean: I love the podcast (both the old at Tor and the new one at io9) and I totally dig Bacigalupi’s work, but hell, I don’t want to listen to the same thing twice. How exactly are these ‘new’ versions better? And will you keep re-making all of them? Thanks.”

Hi Juhan. Our deal with io9 is to do new episodes twice a month. We also decided it would be good to repost all our old episodes from Tor.com on io9, so that all the episodes will be together in one place. In order to maximize the number of people who notice the posts, we decided to post one rerun at a time, in the off weeks between new episodes. When we started doing the show, John and I had zero experience with podcasting or audio editing, and I had zero experience interviewing people over the phone. When I re-listened to our first episode, I thought it sounded pretty bad: long stretches of dead air, abrupt cutoffs, loud inhalations, volume fluctuations, awkwardly delivered questions, etc. There’s a limit to what I can do to fix it at this point, but I fiddled around with it as best I could and rerecorded a few of the lines. The new versions don’t include any new content, so you’re not missing anything if you skip them. They’re mostly for io9 readers who never heard the episodes the first time around. I don’t know yet how much editing work I’ll do on the other old episodes before reposting them. I’ll evaluate it on a case-by-case basis.