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Tuesday, March 31, 2009

M-BRANE # 3 RELEASED


I couldn't be prouder of #3. As I write this, I think that all writers, sponsors and subscribers should have received their PDFs via email.  Be sure to check out and hopefully patronize this month's sponsors Zumaya and Apex, two fine, fine smallish-press book publishers.  I'll...


Ah, memories


On the brink of the release of issue #3, I have been revisiting issue #1 this afternoon because I am trying to repair its files for the Lulu POD version which I put up there a long time ago but haven't been able to sell because it was thoroughly frakked. I'm so proud of the new third issue that everyone is about to see, that I had almost forgotten how great the first one was, and it seems weirdly long ago even though it's only been two months. Writers...


Blog post labels


I didn't really get in the habit of labeling my posts (or really see much use to it) for the first three months or so of running this blog. Now that there are getting to be a fair number of posts, I am starting to see some groupings that make sense and I have made a pass through the history and labeled some of those that lacked labels with an eye toward creating these logical groups.  Now that I am more conscious of it as a thing to do on a...


Response time on submissions


In my writers' guidelines on "Page 2", I state that I try to answer submissions quickly, certainly in not more than two weeks.  I made an amendment to that today asking writers to cut me some slack on that for the near term.  I am concerned that I have issues booked too far ahead. Issue #3 releases tomorrow (or perhaps later today), but I am fully stocked for #4 and #5, probably for #6, probably for #7, and I have plugged a couple of things...


POD update


It appears that the print-on-demand version of M-Brane #3 will be able to release at Lulu at the same time as the PDF. I also have figured out to to fix the frakked up Lulu versions of #1 and #2, and will be doing that as well so I can let the "store" re-open.  I have just spent some tedious time going back to both of those issues, and I think perhaps another hour of messing around with them will do the job. I discovered that I really didn't...


Sunday, March 29, 2009

Twitter, so far


I've been on Twitter for a few weeks  now, and I have decided that I am sold on it as a way to communicate and network with people.  A number of M-Brane writers are also regular users of it, and I think it would be great if more were.  I am also pretty pleased that...


Contributor on DoorQ


Ok, I am ready to move past the Recent Unpleasantness (the Duesberg/Pournelle Affair) and share some good news related to the gradual expansion of the brane. I have been invited to be a contributor on the DoorQ website, which will give me another forum in which to promote the zine and the reading of sf in general. I'll be posting news there related to the magazine, probably do some reading recommendations and probably put up teasers for the issues...


Friday, March 27, 2009

When SF writers fight the future and make me mad


It won't come as any kind of surprise to regular readers of this blog that I am irritated by (and usually try to avoid reading) Orson Scott Card's prolific politics columns. I have huge respect for the guy as an author and, as I have said many times, Ender and Bean have a special...


Thursday, March 26, 2009

Afterwords


To writers with stories scheduled for publication in M-Brane SF from issue #4 onward: if you would like to provide an afterword for your story (some thoughts on what inspired you, or the circumstances of writing it, or whatever else you might like to say about it), I will publish...


Cordwainer Smith


During our discussion of taboos (started a couple posts ago), I was reminded of how excellent the science fiction of Paul Linebarger--better known within our genre as Cordwainer Smith--is, and how bizarre and mysterious I found it to be when I first read some of the stories as a...


Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Where to live?/ Taboo


1) When Jeff and I moved to OKC, we decided we'd commit to it for a minimum of two years. The two-year point will be reached in September, so we've accepted that it's probably more like a three year period that we will live here. We had about five thousand bucks to move with when...


Monday, March 23, 2009

Taboos


Sf Signal, in its Mind Melds section, recently posed a question to some writers about whether they have had difficulty getting something published or found themselves self-censoring due to some sort of taboo that they were violating. Are there still such taboos in science fiction, they were asked. Way back in the day, especially before the New Wave, sex and swear-words were rare in sf, but are there new things that arouse similar uneasiness...


Saturday, March 21, 2009

BSG finale: loved it


The main reason I don't frequently bring up TV shows and movies on this blog is that my focus and main area of interest in the sf genre is in its written form.  And the M-Brane zine, of course, is exclusively about the written form. Another big reason that I stay away...


Friday, March 20, 2009

Science Friday: Gravitons and Buckyballs


The second hour of today’s installment of NPR’s Science Friday was chockablock with science fictional science, the cool stuff you want to hear about if you’re a reader or a writer of the genre.Physicist Lisa Randall talked about gravity and explanations of the universe involving...


Thursday, March 19, 2009

Hugo nominees announced


The list of nominees for the next Hugo awards is up on Locus. I'm still working on Anathem, nominated in the Best Novel category.  Other novel nominees included Doctorow and Scalzi, whose nominated books I have not yet read, but have been hearing a lot about lately. I'll point out that Elizabeth Bear is nominated in the novelette category for "Shoggoths in Bloom," published in Asimov's. I haven't read a lot of her novel-length stuff yet, but...


Populist rage


I guess today's a good time to suspend for a day my usual resistance to having real-world-crap being the subject matter on this brane. I've always felt that the American public is rather docile, even when pushed really hard, as compared to some other publics, like the French, who have never hesitated to call a general strike over things that barely make the news when they happen here. Apparently the AIG bonus payment situation, however, has been...


Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Book View Cafe


I meant to mention this a couple days ago: writer Sue Lange (whose fine story "Zara Gets Laid" will be a highlight of M-Brane #5 in June)  wrote a blog post at Book View Cafe about M-Brane and also about Cynthia Ward's Market Maven Newsletter. Please go there and read it.  Sue is right on in what she says (and not just because she agrees with my remarks in M-Brane #2's editorial). And while you're there, take a minute or two and browse...


Research and revision


I'm a bit more than mid-way through my first-ever reading of Haldeman's The Forever War. I'm also in the middle of Neal Stephenson's Anathem--the lethal two-books-at-once situation. But Haldeman's book is a fast-paced page-turner while Stephenson's is decidedly not, so they fit different...


Tuesday, March 17, 2009

M-Brane writers' links updated


I just added a few more new writers to the M-Brane writers' links list (in the right-hand column a few kilometers down under Twitter and the archive). If you have had a story published or are scheduled to have one published in M-Brane SF and have a site but don't see a link to you, let me know via email or Twitter or a comment to this post and I'll add it prompt...


Reminders: M-BRANE #2 still exists even though #3 is coming soon


I set a goal at about the time of the release of issue #2 that I wanted to see 25 new subscriptions or the equivalent in single-copy PDF sales or print copy sales of that issue by 3/15.  We didn't quite make it: there was a serious slow-down in new sign-ups for a couple weeks...but...


Monday, March 16, 2009

Winter: Over with


Jeff and I have decreed the winter season, at least in this part of the country, to be ended for the year. The weather is nice enough today that we have gone ahead and gotten the patio furniture set back up and Jeff is starting to gear up for the spring gardening season. Though this past winter, now ended, was relatively mild with no serious ice storms or appreciable snow accumulation, it was characterized by what seemed to be endless stretches of...


Trek trailer


OK, since I'm letting TV/movie crap bleed onto the brane today, here's another one: click to see new Star Trek movie trailer on YouTube. If this movie is anywhere near as godsdamn cool as this trailer...hmmm, I'm not gonna get my hopes up too mu...


"SyFy": Stupid


Have you all heard that the TV's  SciFi Channel (also known derisively as "Skiffy Tube") is changing it's name this summer to...SyFy? I don't talk about TV and movie affairs very much on this blog, and SciFi (or SyFy) is one of the reasons for it. I've come to view these...


Sunday, March 15, 2009

Ads


The other day I finally opened up M-Brane SF for advertising. Though I resisted it for a while, I thinks it's going to be a good thing for the future of the magazine, and will probably help us reach the ultimate goal of becoming a professionally-paying market for writers a bit faster.  So far I have been confining my sales pitch on it to other genre-related book and mag publishers because I think that's what the readers would be most interested...


Saturday, March 14, 2009

Science "Friday": Quirks and Quarks/ Grand Vision continued


1) I've been trying to ignore the existence of the CBC radio network in Canada, averting my thoughts from the idea that its programming is probably available via live streaming and podcast just like NPR's programming. I just don't have time in my listening week to add another whole...


Thursday, March 12, 2009

A Grander Vision


The last few years have featured, for me, a lot of getting beaten down: shoved out of my career, then a stupid job, then another stupid job, then my dream of owning and operating my own restaurant to then see that slip away over two years, then a whole heap of financial ruin, another stupid job, then moving to OKC (largely an impulsive blunder) where I had a lot of failure at finding a decent job and then settled on yet another stupid one…for considerably...


FLURB #7 is up


In my web notes in M-Brane #1 and in my editorial in M-Brane #2, and now on the blog, I am recommending Rudy Rucker's webzine Flurb. Issue #7 is online, and it's full of good stuff. I really like this one because of its attractive readability and its fine content.  One little thing that I don't like about it is that it does nothing toward what I increasingly see as the important agenda of finding good and fair ways to monetize short fiction....


Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Some other mag updates


I noticed that Asimov's is out with its 400th issue, which is pretty impressive. I was at a used book shop last week that had on its shelves possibly as many as 200 of those. Their website publishes online teaser portions of some of the stories but also some of the non-fic and...


Tuesday, March 10, 2009

#3 Lulu test promising/ Subscription drive anemic


1. In my ongoing effort to make M-Brane available for POD via Lulu, I uploaded the issue #3 file and examined it for for failures. It looks fine, and I think I can say with renewed confidence that this edition can be made available simultaneously with the PDF release on 4/1 (see previous post for contents and cover image of #3). The Lulu versions of #1 and #2 are still too error-ridden, but I am considering fixing that now that I know how. I...


Sunday, March 8, 2009

Announcing ISSUE #3 Contents


The April issue of M-Brane SF will rule. As a sort of teaser and to get the writers' names out there a bit early, I'd like to list the next issue's astounding contents:"Hard Frost" by Rhian Waller"Business as Usual" by Lou Antonelli"The Sufferance" by Richard Howard"See Saw"...


Saturday, March 7, 2009

Kepler Mission


I forgot about doing my "Science Friday" post yesterday...I think the biggest deal of the week is probably the launch of Kepler spacecraft, tasked with looking into space for evidence of terrestrial-type planets in orbit of other stars. Though about 300 planets outside out own solar...


Thursday, March 5, 2009

Mellonta Tauta


"Get ready your spectacles and make up your mind to be annoyed. I mean to write at you every day during this odious voyage..."Have you all read this ridiculous story, "Mellonta Tauta," by Edgar Allan Poe? (I mean "ridiculous" in the best possible way--I am not insulting the founder...


Lulu Print Wars: Episode IV A NEW HOPE


I wish to publicly thank writer Dan (D.D.) Tannenbaum (whose excellent story "The Hole That Max Found" is scheduled for M-Brane #5) for assisting me via email and phone today with the confounding Lulu font problem that I have been documenting on this page, and which has threatened the possibility of me offering the print editions of M-Brane using Lulu's otherwise pretty user-friendly POD service.It's not all completely resolved yet, but...


Second Chance Books


Today I visited a local used book shop that I hadn't been to yet called Second Chance Books and Comics. It has a very large science fiction section--actually two sections, one for hardcover books and one for paperbacks. It has even more books than the other store near my neighborhood...


Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Philip Jose Farmer Dies/ slight page re-model


1. You can read about this all over the web today, but I wanted to quickly mention that Philip Jose Farmer has died at age 91. His story "The Lovers," involving a human having a sexual relationship with an alien--described in terms quite startling for the time it was published--broke...


More on the Lulu glitch/ Print goes back to local


Those of you following the tedious twists and turns of M-Brane's print edition will have read the post below about how my Lulu plan for print-on-demand sales of it is not working out after all just when I thought all was well.  The problem lies in the fact that for some reason their system is rendering the font called "Cambria" into gibberish. Cambria is the font for the body text of 100 percent of M-Brane.  So, clearly, this is a problem....


LULU GLITCH--STAND BY


I have temporarily shut down the Lulu store.  A problem with how one of the fonts actually shows up in print (as opposed to how to it looks in the supposedly "press-ready" version on-screen) has come to my attention.  Of course this would happen the day after I gave the plan some good praise.  I need to research it further and will update later.If you were about to order the print #1/#2 volume, I apologize for the delay.&nb...


Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Lulu vs. CreateSpace


I'm not sure how badly I really want to shill for POD publishing service Lulu yet since my relationship with it only just began, but I am willing to go ahead and say that my initial experience with it has been reasonably easy, user friendly and efficient...whereas my experience with...


Monday, March 2, 2009

#2 "TEASER" up on ISSUU.COM/ SUBSCRIPTION DRIVE/ ADS/ ARTWORK


1) I put a "teaser" partial copy of issue #2 up on issuu (click). It's like one of those annoying things that you sometimes see on paid-subscription websites  where they'll let you look at parts of the stories, but not all of it. It's just another way for people to get an idea...


M-BRANE OMNIBUS ON LULU/ Print #2/ PDF #2


I have placed for sale on Lulu, the print-on-demand publisher, a double-issue edition compiling the contents of issues #1 and #2. It is available in both print and download options.  The print edition is $9.65, which is about as cheap as I could get it.  I think that's maybe a reasonable price for a printed, bound version of those 116 pages, but who knows what the shipping will be on that. That's been my whole hang-up with these print options...


Sunday, March 1, 2009

M-BRANE #2 RELEASED


Our second issue is loosed upon the world. Those of you who are subscribers or who receive it as your compensation for your fiction sales to the zine (or who have stories in it), should have the PDF in your email boxes now or within moments.  Keep watching this site for news...


FINISHING #2


I was hoping to commence the PDF release of M-Brane #2 by this morning, but I spent all day yesterday playing and still have a bit of work to do on it. It's close, but it will probably be later this evening or tomorrow morning before it starts showing up in the e-boxes of subscribers and writers. Unlike issue #1, I am not planning to put up its full contents for free on the web and will not be inviting the issue's writers to do so on their own...


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