Alex Wilson

(Momentarily resurfacing to say...)

Beth Wodzinski & co put up a partial reading I did of my Shimmer story "Spoils of Springfield."



Even as a stage actor, I was never a fast memorizer. Add a brain injury, and these one-and-a-half pages took me four weeks (and it was far from a perfect performance or recital).

My novelette "Outgoing" which appeared in Asimov's in 2007 has been accepted for M-Brane's anthology Things We Are Not, due out this year or next. And doubly cool because I share a TOC with fellow Clarion Oh-Sixer Stephen Gaskell.

My two page comic "You Got Your Shwarzenegger in My President" appears/will appear in Supergrrrl Adventure Comix #2, edited by (Don't Hate, Menstruate creator/illustrator) Jen Vaughn and (Dark Horse Comics assistant editor) Rachel Edidin. Should be available for order shortly at the MySpace link.

At about two weeks away from being caught up with "freed" Telltale releases.

Yeah, I've totally missed what's been going on at Facebook/LiveJournal/Twitter lately, but I'm caught up enough on email that if you're expecting a reply, you might want to resend. And--friends, family--please let me know what I've missed in your lives lately.

On the health front: I had my deviated septum surgery, and then two more surgeries (and I think nine days in the hospital) to fix the complications from the first surgery. The short version: a week after the relatively routine procedure, I started having terrible nosebleeds, the gushing kind where you're not sure whether the loss of blood or the choking on it is the thing to worry about more.

Since the bleeding location was way back in those hard to reach places, there was the second surgery to cauterize the wound. That didn't take, so a third surgery, a type of embolization, was where they went in through the, um, lower half of my body, ran a tube or something all the way up into my face and basically "shut off" the vein that was supplying the blood. Kind of like hiring a plumber to fix a leak and he shuts off the water to your house instead. Anything else he can help you with?

This actually worked quite well and I've had no major nosebleeds since that 3rd surgery. But the embolization will wear off within the next six months and--since it's a mystery why I was bleeding in the first place and why cauterization didn't fix it (I guess it's also possible the doctors are being deliberately obtuse if something went wrong during that first surgery, but I still like to assume the best in people)--it's still a mystery whether whatever was causing the bleeding will heal on its own. So I could have to repeat this process by the beginning of next year.

No news on the brain injury front other than the obvious setbacks of being in a hospital so long, where sleep, physical activity, and nutrition (three of the most important things I focus on to help my brain heal) were in short supply. The additional month of relative physical inactivity (have to worry about hemorrhaging) since that first surgery has been particularly frustrating. Running or doing a pullup feels like I've never done either before.

So the hope for all this is still that, once the blood clots are gone, I'll breathe better, get sick less often, and get more oxygen to my brain to aid in the healing. Once I'm back on track with the physical exercise, I hope to start CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy).

And he's gone again.

No real way to look at my brain healing progress test results as positive news, and no real advantage to looking at them as negative. Not giving up or anything (though I think I've had enough of failing different medications), but I need to focus on what my options are, what kind of life I want to/can have should this be the norm from now on, as well as how to pay for continuing treatment.

I've been treating my brain injury as an obstacle, doing almost every reasonable thing I can to maximize my chances of recovery, but I haven't figured out how to live with it. Just so sick of not being able to rely on my own body and sick of it being such a big part of my identity. So I'm unplugging best I can, and I'll be even less available online than I have been lately, at least through the end of the year.

Tidbits before I disappear:

Wiscon was amazing. Met so many cool new people, but in spite of being in bed by ten most nights and other precautions, I got sick again at almost the exact same time as last year SUnday afternoon. I'll have to make even bigger leaps in my healing progress before I commit to returning next year. Missing my own reading and one of my panels Monday was just too embarrassing. Or would have been, had I been there. No, still embarrassing.

Among the wonderful people I met this year but kinda already knew online was my Thoughtcrime Experiments editor Sumana Harihareswara, who let me know that Erica Naone reviewed my story (along with all the others in the online anthology), calling my Mrs. Claus "one of the most badass characters I have ever read." Thanks, Erica!

One blessing since the accident has been the others with mild traumatic brain injuries who have contacted me with their frustrations and I've been able to at least point them toward a book I found by sheer luck (researching a science fiction brain story in the library): Brainlash by Gail L. Denton. Almost everything I've learned in the last eighteen months was either directly or indirectly because of this book. Even the typeface and linespacing are designed to increase let those of us who have trouble reading (more than a few paragraphs in one sitting) focus on it a little longer, and it remains the one non-audio book I've been able to get all the way through since the accident (not that I've retained much; might have to start it again this week). So if you have an MTBI or PCS (post concussion syndrome) and most of the other resources you've found are rightfully dedicated to more severe brain injuries, this might be the book you're looking for.

I'll continue to check email (alex AT alexwilson DOT com is the one that gets the least amount of spam, thanks), pop in for occasional Twitter conversations (and I don't autofollow, so, please let me know if I should be following you back, oh friends with obscure usernames), put up free Creative Commons audio as their five years are up at Telltale (including The War of the Worlds last week, yo!), and check messages/requests on Facebook once a month or so. But if you've posted something on LiveJournal or any other site, chances are pretty good that I've missed it.

And I'll try to break silence and post here again when/if I have big news because I still have a backlog of writing I'm trying to sell, even if the new stuff is coming achingly slowly. Yes, still writing and trying to read every day. And when I come back, we can talk about that instead of brain injuries, cool?

Be well.

Momentarily caught up on all the free Telltale releases, maybe for the first time since we hit the five-year mark in February. Late last year SF author Charles Platt interviewed me for a Boing Boing article, but his column ended before the piece ran. He has since agreed to let me run the Q+A portion here.

For what it's worth, I figured Charles would edit me down to something less longwinded...

CP: Why does spoken-word audio seem to be the poor stepchild of book publishing? My editor friends are utterly uninterested in it, and are a bit condescending about it, as if "spoken word" really means "recordings for people who are too lazy to read." Is this kind of snobbishness the root of the problem? Why are audiobooks so absurdly expensive? Why do we have companies like Audible trying to trap the buyer into "membership" schemes which are even worse than you'd find on a porno site? Do book publishers make it difficult for anyone to buy audiobook rights?

ALEX: I've never worked for a major publisher, so I can't speak to motivation, but I see things getting better. They're experimenting, figuring things out, whether it's MP3-CDs (like Neil Gaiman's _Anansi_Boys_) or DRM-free downloads with or without watermarking (like digital downloads from The Teaching Company).

This is a large, slow-to-change industry, and the numbers they're looking at are likely just too new for them to predict the economies of scale. Looking at the cost and availability of audiobooks when I launched Telltale just five years ago... I bet they're adapting faster than they're comfortable with even if to you and I it looks like dragging feet.

And professional audiobooks are still expensive to produce. Sure, electronic delivery cuts costs, but, as with the big music labels, there's still a significant investment required--audio engineers, studio time, performers, etc--on top of what has already gone into producing a text in paper book form. So they kinda understandably want to see how at least the hardcovers perform before they make decisions on further investment.

Now, the last audiobook CD I purchased retailed for $30 while the hardcover retailed for $26. Not too bad, but not exactly a cheap piece of entertainment. Until that comes down even more, there will always be those who won't consider audiobooks (just as I try to avoid buying hardcover when possible). But I can't predict the speed or likelihood of that happening.

Going back to the music industry comparison, one of my visions five years ago with Telltale was to encourage an "indie recording scene" alternative to the big publishers, where people with home studios or even narrators with prosumer recording equipment in their closets could produce something of reasonably high quality. And indeed the earliest Telltale contributors included as many indie musicians with recording gear as stage actors interested in trying something new. Obviously I wasn't the only or first one to have this idea. Podcasting became huge within the next twelve months.

Don't know about audiobook listeners being called "lazy." Was it recently that you heard this? I guess I'd want to have a conversation with them about it. And while I'd respect any _author_ who specifically didn't want her work released as audio (beyond where required for vision-impaired readers), I think it's probably short-sighted for someone in an industry that's competing with video games and television to insult customers if they don't agree exactly on how to best enjoy a product. Can you imagine a director admonishing his audience ("What, they couldn't be bothered to see my film in the theatre? Fuck them and their stupid couches.") and refusing to release a DVD?

I haven't looked at it in depth, but I'm not sure I have a problem with Audible's subscription model. The DRM there's the dealbreaker for me as a potential customer. Without the DRM, you have something similar to eMusic's audiobook program, which I'd argue is a pretty good deal for listeners. And if the subscription _is_ a problem for a customer, then Audible offers a good portion of its catalog a la carte in the iTunes store via a different DRM scheme.

I don't know about book publishers making it difficult for others to buy audio rights to things. I don't think so. I think they either purchase the audio rights to a work or they don't. Certainly short fiction moves around more freely. I have no knowledge of the specific deals, but I believe Audible has worked directly with authors and/or agents for many of their exclusives, and eMusic has commissioned content from McSweeney's (and/or its contributors). And I've worked with authors directly for their short fiction reprints, as have podcasts like Escape Pod and PodCastle.

CP: Do you know how many audiobooks are in circulation from all sources? Is it still a niche market, and could it be bigger?

ALEX: No idea about circulation, sorry. I think it's a shame audiobooks don't get more "foot traffic," in that you aren't likely to find them if you aren't specifically looking for them. The selection in brick and mortar stores is tiny. Searching for audiobooks on Amazon can take a few extra steps (probably to avoid confusion for those simply wanting a "traditional" book). I'd bet this makes the tiny "Audiobooks" button in the iTunes store a huge deal for spoken word visibility overall.

It'll be interesting to see whether the major sellers and publishers are going to be too late in adapting. Podcasts already fill a lot of that spoken word niche for the digitally connected, and there's only so much audio one can listen to in a day. If those hours or minutes are filled with free, equally interesting NPR interviews, then $10+ fiction has a tougher fight ahead of it. And woe to them if they think they're in the "audiobook business" rather than the "entertainment" business, and have nothing to worry about from those silly little people with their cute computer mics.

It's really a matter of what you want to listen to. Some of my favorite authors have never had work available in audio, many only abridged, a bunch of others only in out of print cassette formats, and a few with DRM that's on one side or other of the tolerable fence. So my own listening is often a study in second choices. If you can be flexible (I want to listen to x genre, and/or I can wait a week to get it), you'll find it, free or otherwise. If you're looking for something specific (Miranda July's story collection on eMusic as of 12/2008), you'll probably be disappointed, especially when the item doesn't yet exist in any audio format.

CP: I tend to think that if audiobooks were cheap enough, they'd be very popular. Does your experience support this?

ALEX: I think podcasting proves it, though ease of use is also an important factor there. I never owned a portable CD player, but I keep more than 24 hours of spoken word content on my MP3 player at all times.

CP: Why did you start Telltale Weekly? Has it been as successful as you hoped? Will it continue? Do you plan to expand it significantly?

I was interested in new business models, micropayments, Creative Commons licensing, literature, and acting (other things, too, but I couldn't fit them into Telltale). I also wanted to be a singer-songwriter and I sold off my recording equipment when it was clear I was only pretending. I think in the back of my mind I was always looking for an excuse to buy some of it back.

But specifically: I had a road trip ahead and I wanted to listen to certain public domain works on the drive. Though they were all freely available in text form at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere, audio versions were either hugely expensive, out of print, or completely non-existant. I think I ended up re-listening to a Sarah Vowell audiobook, which was fine. It's funny, but if podcasting had taken off a few months earlier, I probably never would have started the project.

The big goal was to continuously fund and build a spoken word library by producing and selling work and then releasing it free after five years. We're about to see that start to pay off, because--while I've released some work for free without ever selling it--I started with multiple, weekly releases in February 2004. The focus eventually changed to fewer, longer works (and making fun of the site name), but that's just a "listening to the audience" thing.

I had other goals and milestones which I changed and/or missed completely, and a lot of that has to do with podcasting becoming so big within Telltale's first two years. But I can't and won't complain too much about this, because podcasting was born from the same technology and ideas that made Telltale possible with little upfront investment in the first place.

The big thing is that, after failing to build and/or manage a significant network of insultingly-compensated audio contributors, I hit the point where Telltale's growth was limited by how much I could do, how much I could record and edit myself, and how many contributors I could work with as essentially a one person operation. This was about the time that projects like Librivox and Escape Pod were starting up and rapidly, successfully assembling networks of volunteers to provide similar services in entirely free, donation-based models.

Their good work was helpful in a few ways. It showed me that I might be many things, but I'm not much of a leader. I decided there was a ceiling on how big I could grow, and I became okay with that. And it encouraged me to focus more on recordings that interested me--the texts which inspired me to start Telltale, like Bulfinch's Mythology--and less on trying to broaden the selection so much. I believed then and believe now that there's a place between podcasting's free audio of variable quality and "professional" recordings of Twain or Poe stories for which we're somehow expected to pay a dollar per minute because they are our only option.

So it's not something I'll ever be able to do full time, but even this past year--when I've been recovering from a mild traumatic brain injury and was severely limited by what I could do for the project--there's never been any doubt that Telltale would still make good on its promise, and there are over a hundred audiobooks which will be Creative Commons licensed in the next five years, thanks to just a few wonderful contributors.

The future? There'll be a higher ratio of free stuff, by the nature of the project. I might sneak and read some of my own published fiction once in a while. I'm working on an original comedy project, but I haven't decided for
sure whether that's going to be under the Telltale umbrella.

It's been fun. I was more of a physical actor when I started Telltale, but I think I've learned a trick or two. Always happy to surprise my contributors with larger than expected royalty statements (which somehow only works after you set the bar low enough...). A narration I did for Escape Pod resulted in a film option for the author, for which I should totally take credit but unfortunately it was a good story. Hey, I get to discover and study great literature and introduce them to new audiences. What could be a better hobby?

[Though it's tempting to edit and clarify what I wrote back in December, I'll leave it be and just add: Thanks, Charles!]

Memorial Day weekend (May 22-25, 2009):

Program can change, but the schedule is public. We'll get there Friday night and leave Monday afternoon, I think. I'll be posting my whereabouts frequently on Twitter (@alexotica) if you're trying to find me or (I'm guessing) look for the #wiscon tag to keep track of more than just me over Memorial Day weekend.

But I'm kinda required to show up for these:

Saturday 10AM
Joss Whedon's Dollhouse with Jenny Sessions, Sigrid J. Ellis, Britt Flokstra, Annalee Newitz, Deb Stone, and Alex Wilson. This one should be fun.

Sunday 1PM
The Obligatory Workshop Panel with Keffy R.M. Kehrli, Julie Andrews, Erin Cashier, Tina Connolly, Alex Wilson. I'm a late edition to this one, but I should be able to remember some of what happened at Clarion.

Monday 8:30AM
Tech Tools For Writers with Morven Westfield, Kelly Jones, S. N. Arly, Caroline Stevermer, and Alex Wilson. I might end up talking more about brainhacks, if the more traditional tools I'm using are as well covered as I think they are.

Monday 10AM
SFPA Reading with F. J. Bergmann, Sandra J. Lindow, and Alex Wilson. Haven't decided what pieces I'll do yet, but I'm convinced that readings should be fun.

Very cool: for the second year in a row (and my second time attending the con), a former Cajun Sushi Hamster (my old critique group) is guest of honor: Maureen McHugh last year, and Ellen Klages, this. Go Cleveland.

With Trinic-con canceled and uncertainty about my brain injury, this is the only con I'll be doing this year. And afterwards, I expect to be available online even less than I have been, while I catch up on Telltale and other projects, figure out what I can and should be doing during this stage of healing, etc.

FWIW I have started to grow my hair out, but haven't decided whether I'll still have it by the end of the month. Looking forward to seeing people!

3-15-09 ETA: I've been added to the workshop panel on Sunday.

Okay, if you haven't read The Last Christmas of Mrs Claus as discussed here, go ahead and do that before I spoil you with some spoilish spoilers below. And if you don't care to read the story, what follows will be confusing and uninteresting, so you might as well skip this, too. For everyone else, you may only skip it because it's uninteresting. Cool?

Wanted to talk about two of the changes the story went through, specifically the ones I probably wouldn't have made if it hadn't been for the suggestions of some very smart people. Generally speaking, the humor's more broad than most of what I write (clarification: most of the unpublished stuff I write, and someday I'm sure I'll see a correlation there), and I did get suggestions from my Clarion buddies as well as the editors to remove a few of the more esoteric gags (i.e. the stuff I enjoy most). I acquiesced often, but fought to keep the ones that I felt were important in another area of story, theme, or character.

In my 2006 Clarion draft, the most often-asked question in the workshop circle was "What was Santa making in the toy factory if he wasn't making toys anymore?" To be honest, I just didn't think it was so important to the story. In an earlier outline, where this was the first chapter of a larger, way-too-didactic narrative, I think it was Abercrombie & Fitch sweatervests, but thought, in short-story mode, that that would've pulled focus. So the story ended without that reveal.

At least one Clarion critiquer had thought, with all of Santa's "crystal" talk, that I was telegraphing crystalmeth, thinking that his dark secret was drug use instead of (or in addition to) adultery. Now, I'm not sure exactly what this says about me, but at the time I had four or five other irreverent, deconstructionist Santa stories (mostly intended as comics) either ready to get outlined or starting to get fleshed out, and one of my weaker plots cast Santa as a drug dealer.

So when I revisited the story mid-2007 before sending it out, methlabs struck me as a particularly good fit with both Betty's isolation and the hint of possible socioeconomic consequences of Santa's labor policy. Ta da! And, though I probably tweaked a sentence or two after most rejections, the story stayed where it was until editors Sumana Harihareswara and Leonard Richardson asked for a rewrite.

There were multiple areas where their questions and suggestions led to marked improvement in the final draft, but the one thing they helped me focus on most was in the finding the balance between Mrs Claus's ignorance of her husband's affair, and her intelligence and strength as a human being. And, while no single change solved everything, focusing on that balance for the final revisions led to at least a dozen tweaks in wording and detail, where things have begun seriously falling apart only in the last few years vs Santa's always been like this; he just used to be better at hiding it.

There were multiple revisions of the final gunshot especially: she can't take too long it figuring out the bear's identity, but she's no premeditated murderer either. Hopefully the end result worked for those who read the story through the end.

Finally: few readers questioned (to my face, anyway) the veracity of Betty as an ex-marine who was stationed in the Middle East. My Thoughtcrime editors wanted me to cement the story in time (so I put her at Camp Doha post-Desert Storm), but otherwise I owe additional debts to the sources of background research I did prior to outlining. In the Spring of 2006, I read Love My Rifle More Than You by Kayla Williams and Jarhead by Anthony Swofford, and I stayed with a marine buddy at MCBH and picked his brain for a week or so. Still, I didn't yet know how or if any of that stuff would be applicable to this or any other story. I was just... interested.

Thanks to all those who helped make the story work, and especially for letting me keep the byline on the end result.

I share a table of contents with some amazing authors this week in Thoughtcrime Experiments, an online anthology created and edited by Sumana Harihareswara and Leonard Richardson.

(Direct links to my story The Last Christmas of Mrs. Claus and to the free PDF. Print-on-demand book version coming soon.)



Can't think of what else to say about this one that I haven't talked about before. I'm usually good with titles, but this was the initial working title and I've struggled unsuccessfully at least since 2006 (alone, with my Clarion classmates, and with the editors here) to figure out a better one. Best alternatives:

A Whistle of Wind and Snow

Betty Doesn't Glaze Here Anymore

North Pole, Half Mast
Mrs Claus and the Crystal Kissoff

The Things in the North Pole That Kick All Kinds of Ass

Blood and Eggnog

Mrs. Claus's Last Oorah

In the Snows of Far-off Northern Lands

Mrs. Fucking Claus

But nothing I loved and nothing I liked better than the original title.

I would like to talk about the ending when I'm feeling up to it, but I'll wait until a few people have a chance to read it before I make with the spoilers. For those interested in how these things sell, this one got nine rejections and a few more non-replies before selling to Thoughtcrime (after requested rewrites). The editors have been awesome to work with.

I almost didn't write "Mrs Claus" IIRC. I'd outlined it long before Clarion and it was only when another story fizzled that I dug up this outline in desperation and turned it into something. I only remember that abandoned story because it had such a great title. What a shame.

This'll probably be the last time I crosspost from Twitter to LJ, so please follow @alexotica or get the RSS feed if you want to continue reading these.

• 09:53 For Carrboro folks: blood drive at OWASA from 11AM to 3:30PM. Free snacks and that whole life saving thing. OWASA.org #
• 11:52 Gave blood for the first time since the accident. Think today's pint puts me at 4 gallons lifetime. Could've made a horror film with that. #

Crosspost/twitterdump courtesy of LoudTwitter.

Resurfacing for a minute because I just found out a short film I wrote (back in 2007 maybe?) is finished and screening tonight at Duke University at 7PM in the Griffith Film Theater in the Bryan Center. It's a free and catered event, and that's about all I know.




I'm not even sure about the title; my screenplay was called "I'd Rather Owe It to You Than Cheat You out of It" but I think the director liked my working title better: "I Get Half." I have a tiny bearded cameo (filmed in late 2007, I think), though that might've been cut.

It's the last Duke/Freewater Screening listed for the spring calendar, and I have no idea who you'd contact for more info. Glad I'm not driving because I don't know my way around the Duke campus, but I believe it's the same theater where I saw Chip Delany and David Gordon Green speak for the Festival of the Book in 2006.

Conversations @alexotica:

• 14:32 Okay. Friend got tix for Unmistaken Child. This has been a busy weekend. Radio #
• 21:10 Probably off twitter most of this week. Any brainpower I can muster goes to taxes an Telltale statements. Later, chums. #

Crosspost/twitterdump courtesy of LoudTwitter.

Conversations @alexotica:

• 09:10 Dear Gatorade. It's "Fewer Calories," not "Less Calories." Thanks. #
• 09:13 Dear Alex. So NOW you're suddenly gonna start paying attention to grammar? When you're watching Dollhouse?! #
• 09:24 @marrael That fan is beautiful. (and sorry about the crapstorm at work) #
• 10:19 Time for a walk to the Carrboro farmer's market. Beeeyutiful day. #
• 10:23 @jedbob hmm. comparing our last twits, perhaps we're not a match made in wherever. #
• 11:17 Flatbread from Farmer's Daughter foods. Hunt wine from Benjamin Vineyards. Greens from multiple farms. Mmm. #
• 13:13 Off to The Regulator (Durham) for writerly discussion with James Maxey and Edmund Schubert. Anyone else? tinyurl.com/regulator-april4 #
• 15:45 @sarahdessen Brocolli is a fav topping of mine at Peppers... #
• 20:10 @mightymur Great to see you tonight. Let's not go so long between next times. #
• 21:49 In case this hasn't gotten around: Trinoc-con 2009 canceled, sadly. www.trinoc-con.org/ #

Crosspost/twitterdump courtesy of LoudTwitter.

Conversations @alexotica:

• 12:55 @dennisculver Eerily calm polygraph taker? #
• 13:21 @dennisculver tough one. If captions are out, would a pretty math problem (2 + 1 = 3) work? #
• 14:00 Grr. Food Inc, the ONE DOC I really wanted to see at Full Frame this weekend, is playing at the ONE TIME I have a prior commitment. Grr. #
• 16:51 @tobiasbuckell wow, things got pretty bad in Ohio after I left, huh? #
• 16:57 @CBCebulski Ooh, just starting Solanin. Will buy gummy bracelets to compensate for feeling older then, thanks. #
• 20:12 @betsydornbusch Thanks, Betsy! And thanks for the note. #
• 22:30 @tobiasbuckell don't worry. I'll show up again in the third act. #

Crosspost/twitterdump courtesy of LoudTwitter.

Conversations @alexotica:

• 11:06 Wow, that was perfect Carrboro weather for a run. Need a boolean Google Alert for Accuweather = 57 AND Accuwidget = 55 AND Weather.com = 61. #
• 14:40 My kinda-zombie story "Spoils of Springfield" (+ interview) is in the current Shimmer. Free PDF available.
  tinyurl.com/alex-shimmer10 #
• 21:10 I guess Hulu's no longer working on PowerPC Macintoshes, eh? (Could be just mine?) Ah well. Thanks for the extra time to do other stuff. #
• 21:15 @tobiasbuckell Crap, Toby. And I can still remember when we were invincible. #

Crosspost/twitterdump courtesy of LoudTwitter.

Shimmer #10 is out now, and includes a pseudo-early story of mine "Spoils of Springfield," which is kinda my first attempt at zombie fiction, but not really because it cleverly fails to satisfy any of those things readers look for in their zombie fiction. Yes, it's a complete mystery why I don't sell more fiction, why do you ask?



There's also an online interview with me, which was conducted over email shortly after my brain injury. I vaguely recall being hesitant to answer any questions for public record at the time because I was so uncertain of what would come out of my mouth, but then I realized that many of the first interviews I read as a kid were with musicians who were coked out of their skulls and I turned out okay.

The issue is available via subscription, individual issue, or (and they don't do this every ish) free PDF.

I've long been a subscriber to Shimmer and I'm so happy to finally be a part of it. And thanks to the crack editorial staff for confronting me during copyedits about my compulsive overuse of hyphens. I've been clean for almost three paragraphs now.

Conversations @alexotica:

• 12:43 @smuu It's rare that there's not _something_ I respect about someone's work, even with creators I don't take to at all. #
• 12:55 @Livia_Llewellyn Crap! 33 and heart disease?! I had no idea. Breaks my heart. #
• 13:01 RT @Folio_Ninja: Check out: "DSI Comedy Theater | Yes We Can Food Drive | 919-338-8150" twitthis.com/icp26p #
• 13:03 @GrayRinehart easy for y'all to joke about. I _have something on JJA's desk currently. #
• 13:37 @smuu tough one, but i liked his Uncanny aliens invade Australia issue w/Claremont as a kid. still think he was a great fit for that story #
• 14:15 @mightymur Congrats on the milestone, Mur! #
• 22:36 @MaryRobinette Ditto, which I also do say so yourself (being that one is bad at pronouns. He.) #

Crosspost/twitterdump courtesy of LoudTwitter.

Originally recorded/for sale five years ago; now free with a Creative Commons license:

The Magic Shop by H G Wells

Leaves of Grass Book I: Inscriptions by Walt Whitman

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Switft

And then there's a new one you'll have to pay for:

Lost Hearts by M R James

An early ghost story by James about a kidnapper/dabbler in the occult who has a keen interest in removing the hearts of children. You're welcome.

Conversations @alexotica:

• 21:36 Still alive. Surgery delayed. Seeing Watchmen tomorrow. Finally found an afternoon that works for everyone. Most of these are unrelated. #
• 22:41 @mightymur I was just singing that with my 5 year old nephew who was in town this week. Sister and I memorized it as kids. she passed it on. #
• 09:31 @AletheaKontis yeow, Lee. Glad you're all right. #
• 09:32 @bethwodzinski but I hate crossing things off my to do list when I'll just have to do them again tomorrow. Grr. #

Crosspost/twitterdump courtesy of LoudTwitter.

Conversations @alexotica:

• 19:06 @RickNovy Think it's only something you notice if you stop eating at chain restaurants for a few years. I never used to notice/mind anywhere #

Crosspost/twitterdump courtesy of LoudTwitter.

Conversations @alexotica:

• 19:30 @radiomaru they do but I wouldn't. Never know when Apple'll decide on a system change, causing a system hiccup. I click yes monthly at most. #
• 21:22 Misses cable. NBC did not play well with the antenna + tinfoil tonight. Ah well. Hulu this weekend. #
• 17:32 Just used a coupon from the mail: free burrito from Chipotle. Now I remember why I haven't eaten there since we moved away from Cleveland. #
• 17:54 @RickNovy Or a longtime avoidance of fastfood has turned my stomach into a delicate little flower that would rather taste tomato than salt. #

Crosspost/twitterdump courtesy of LoudTwitter.

When I signed up for Twitter in August, I saw great potential for use in the future (especially for finding people at cons/on the road), but right then it seemed like just one more thing to keep track of. But at the end of last month, I upgraded phones to something that can do Twitter, and--just in time for Jon Stewart & co. to make fun of me for jumping onto a fad--I'm finding it useful now.

The brain injury is what makes this interesting. Yes, it's perfect for my attention span--I currently have trouble processing long blog entries I want to read, and writing them can exhaust me. And yes, making my less filtered thoughts so accessible is more likely to attract train wreck fetishists than friends and readers.

Still. Though this lowers the barriers of entry to communicate with my online friends and peers, I'll have to be careful. But I look at it as a way to jump in and out of conversations as my energy levels and processing abilities permit. No scheduled chats, and less pressure to keep track of everything that was previously written (I say "less" because I'm a too much of a completist to not want the whole story.)

And--while Twitter's not meant to be a permanent archive or anything--my memory sucks right now. Which means I don't remember who I've told what to and where. So there's going to be twitterdumps/crossposting involved for my benefit more than for anyone else's, to alexotica.livejournal.com, but not to alexwilson.com/journal/ (which is what LJ mirrors for me).

Most people can keep reading/ignoring how they are now. But I know not everybody likes Twitterdumps (I tend to skip over them myself), so if this is something you just don't want as part of my blog, you can pick your poison:

http://alexotica.livejournal.com - Journal with commenting, includes Twitterdumps. (RSS Feed)

http://www.alexwilson.com - Journal with no commenting, no Twitterdumps. Some basic tagging. (RSS Feed)

LJ Syndicated Feed of original blog without Twitterdumps. (where I won't see comments, but hey it's still LiveJournal)

http://twitter.com/alexotica/ - My Twitter feed only (@alexotica)

Enjoy or ignore.

Conversations @alexotica

• 22:07 @Hillsborough Sign said Andy's opens Thursday. Looks fun, but the milkshakes'll need to be amazing to compete with Mapleview next door. #
• 09:36 Realms of Fantasy (it's a glossy genre mag, for the comickers out there) reopens to art submissions. Http://tinyurl.com/rofartnew #
• 13:27 @tobiasbuckell yeah evernote OCR is amazing, though my handwriting quality is definetly the weak link. #
• 13:42 @tobiasbuckell Only used searchability but thought the desktop client did more. Requires 10.5 or XP. I'm on 10.4 w/ win98 under vpc. Boo. #
• 13:45 @thadman what do you rec for a first meal there? #
• 15:20 @tobiasbuckell I must be misremembering/thinking of a 3rd party OCR+Evernote solution/inflating the unreachable desktop client in my mind. #
• 16:55 @radiomaru On Macs, you have to agree to the tos on your first purchase or freebie download after updating the software. #
• 16:58 @thadman Cool, thanks. IIRC the husbpuppies were the main reason I went back to Crawdaddy's after my first adequate visit, so bonus. #
• 17:46 Testing loudtwitter. I have a feeling this will not be pretty. #

Crosspost/twitterdump courtesy of LoudTwitter

The title might change, the story revised multiple times, but my Week 3 Clarion Story has been purchased by Sumana Harihareswara and Leonard Richardson for their online anthology Thoughtcrime Experiments.

Very helpful feedback from the editors both on this story and on another subbed story which they didn't end up buying (though, with their comments, I think I now know how to sell it elsewhere). And Leonard has posted some interesting postmortems on the slush process on his weblog:

Lab Report 1

Lab Report 2: What The Slush Pile Looks Like

Lineup


Thank you Clarion friends, and thank you editors!

My LCRW story A Wizard of MapQuest was a nominee in the 2nd Annual Micro Award for very short fiction published in 2008, which means (if I understand correctly) I was a pick of at least one of the three judges.

Thanks for the note and for running the Micro Award program!

My phone finally gave up the ghost yesterday, but because of some technical/connection difficulties at the wireless place (yes, I will one day look back and enjoy that), there was a longer than expected time period between the time I last checked my (now paved-over) voicemail and the time my new voicemail system replaced the old.

Though it occurs to me there's almost no overlap among the people who read my blog/livejournal/twitter and those who I communicate with on the phone, if you called yesterday and haven't had a call back, that means I didn't get the message and never will. Please call again or thank whatever deity you feel appropriate that you don't have to face any embarrassment over yesterday's drunk dialing session.

Thanks.

--The Management.

I'm here to come through on a promise.

I launched Telltale Weekly/Spoken Alexandria on February 27, 2004. Five years is an especially big deal here, because, as longtime followers of the audiobook project might remember, the heart of the business model is how inexpensive recordings are released free under Creative Commons Licenses after... yup. Five years.

Since Telltale started out with multiple, weekly releases (vs the focus now on fewer, longer works and making fun of the site name), expect regular additions to the free podcast (iTunes page) for a while.

Of the three "Funding a Free Audiobook Library" recordings released that first week...

The Glove and the Lions by James Leigh Hunt was free from the start.

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death by Patrick Henry broke its 25-cent bonds early. It's been free since 2006. Don't remember why I did that. Maybe I was trying to impress somebody.


And today A Dog's Tale by Mark Twain joins them. This one was only recently unseated by Edgar Allan Poe's Tell-Tale Heart as the bestselling title since the launch. Still one of the most popular recordings, but, boy, did I talk fast before I found my narrating groove....

Yes, there will continue to be new releases (some cheap now, free later; some free from the start) as my health improves/allows.

In other news: Sold another story today! I'll share details when I get the editorial go ahead.

Real quick:

Webcomicker Karen Ellis (of the wonderful Planet Karen) just lost everything in a housefire.

More details in Rachel Edidin's blog

Please help if you can.