Book Giveaway Winners!
Two lucky people have been selected to win copies of The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett! And they are: Loopdilou And: redhead Congratulations to the both of you! You’ll receive an email from me shortly.
Crimethink SF in Print (proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders)!
You all might remember that I had an essay published a few months ago in Crimethink: Politics and Speculative Fiction. You might also remember that I mentioned the upcoming print edition for charity purposes. Well, that print edition is officially here, and it’s only $6.99! The best thing about it is that all proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders, which is a fantastic organization. Copies are available here (or Amazon). Please get a copy or two and help out. Here’s the cover image and some information about the book (the image is small right now because the only large image I can find is on Amazon, and you can’t cut it out of their “Look Inside” feature. I’m working on getting a bigger image for you all): Crimethink contains essays by Jay Lake, Gary Westfahl, Deborah Walker, Nisi Shawl, Greg Beaty, Romie Stott, Lisa Agnew, Ross Hamilton, Jordan Humphreys, and myself. Yes, the collection is awesome. Yes, you have to buy it if you’re my friend. Yes, I will disown you if you don’t, because it’s not about me, but the folks at Doctors Without Borders. Okay, so you don’t have to buy it if you don’t want to, but you could at least donate a few bucks to DWB.
My First Publication: “To Paint the Kingdom Red, Part One” in Residential Aliens!
You read that right. I’ve had my first short story published in Residential Aliens. The story has been split in half due to length, but the first part is currently available here. Part two will be available in October. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go jump up and down like a lunatic for an hour.
Quick Announcement: Zoe Winters is Giving Away and Kindle
I just found out about this today, and unfortunately the contest ends tonight. Zoe Winters is apparently giving away a Kindle 3 (3G). It’s fairly easy to enter, and obviously she’s doing it to try to boost her sales for her new book, Blood Lust. Hopefully she sees a spike. In any case, you should enter the contest!
WISB-aversary: Four Years!
That’s right. As of today, The World in the Satin Bag is four years old! The date snuck up on me, so I don’t have anything planned. However, I would like to point out some odd coincidences, which might hint to a conspiracy: 4 is also roughly the number of readers I have in hundreds via RSS. The number of posts I have published before this one is divisible by 4. 4 + half-of-4 equals the number for the day of my personal birthday, and when you add that number to 4, you end up with the number for the month. The 3rd is the day Britain and France declared war on Germany in 1939. Today is also the day in which a hurricane struck the Dominican Republic with 200 MPH winds, killing 8,000 (in 1930). It’s also the day that the Viking 2 landed on Mars. And lastly, this is also the day that Iran’s Parliament approved Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi as the first female minister. What this means for all you conspiratorial types is that Britain, France, Mars, and Earth’s Climate have been secretly planning to invade the Dominican Republic with Iranian women on my birthday (Oct. 6th). Obviously the plan has been in the works for over 70 years. We should all be scared. Anywho.
The New Template: Changes Around These Parts
If you’re one of my RSS or email subscribers, you might have missed that this blog has been going through a design overhaul. The old template was, understandably, very “old school,” and did not fairly represent the best of WISB’s potential. So, I set out to create a new template using Blogger’s template designer (a handy little thing, if you ask me), and came up with something I think works quite nicely. What’s new on WISB now that I have a different design? Here’s a list: One sidebar instead of two. That one sidebar is slightly wider as a result. A wider post body section. The previous section was a little thin. A sleeker look. You’ll have to see to understand what that means. A Formspring “ask me a question” box in the sidebar. You can ask questions anonymously, by the way. An updated header image. You should see it. The new text on the image is awesome. The image is the same, but instead of boring standard text over it with the title of my blog, I now have nice text that makes it look much more appealing. At least, I think so. Pages! The great thing about the pages feature is that it allows me to move whole chunks of text and links off of the sidebar. You’ll now find pages for The Skiffy and Fanty Show podcast, my fiction (including The World in the Satin Bag, free shorts, excerpts, and so on), my bibliography (including publications and conference appearances), Survival By Storytelling Magazine (which is still available for purchase, by the way), my review and advertising policies, ways to contact me, and info about the blog and me (i.e. the About page). Plus, instead of burying my contact information in the sidebar, it is now available in a handy location: the Contact page. Good stuff! Some things have remained the same, such as the color of the website, though some text colors are different. I didn’t want to change the color of the site primarily because that would require me to change the header image, unless I went with black. Blue is my favorite color, but the header image, which is one of my favorite things about this blog, only works with yellows and greens (or black). Feel free to let me know what you think. If something looks ugly, then I’d like to know about it. Otherwise, welcome to the new millennium of WISB-ness.