"The Osteomancer's Son" just got posted on PodCastle, in podcast form: here.

Writing that makes me think of Milhouse saying, "Remember ALF? He's back. In POG form!"

And, no, I never have noticed that I bear a resemblance to Milhouse Van Houten, thank you very much for asking.

Woo! The fantasy podcast site PodCastle is buying "The Osteomancer's Son," my story about bone magic in Los Angeles. It'll probably run sometime next month.

And today I got my contributor's copies of Spin, a Finnish science fiction/fantasy magazine, containing "Kirjailijatalo," a translation of my story "Authorwerx."

The podcast of "Authorwerx" was in Escape Pod last year.

Now I need to get "The Osteomancer's Son" translated into Finnish ...

***

We in the USA are now assaulting teens with ultrasonic noise weapons. Because if there's one thing teenagers can't do, it's retaliate by making noise of their own. And it's always a good idea to antagonize those who will be responsible for our care in a few decades, isn't it? Our nursing homes will be pits dug in the ground. At least we'll be able to gum our earthworms.

I'm an old man with the knees of Geezer McCreakster, but I have the hearing of a young adult. I'm immune to these assaults, but not by much. I did have the Lakers game on when I took the test, though, so for all I know these emitters will melt my geriatric brains.

You are about 20 years old

The teen repellent will no longer foil you, but you can still hear some pretty high tones. The highest pitched ultrasonic mosquito ringtone that I can hear is 16.7kHz

Find out which ultrasonic ringtones you can hear!

About two weeks ago I met up with writer and podcaster Shaun Farrell, to record an interview for his podcast, Adventures in Scifi Publishing. We drank coffee and hung out and chatted about writing and personal finance and traded a little gossip, and it was a lot of fun. At one point Shaun hit the record button and shoved a mic in my face and I blathered for about ten minutes and then we went back to using profanity.

My interview's appears in a new segment, Out of the Slush, which features writers who've just signed their first book deals, and I come on at about the 37-minute mark, after the main interview with Cory Doctorow.

Listen here.

My short-short, "Chi," is up at Drabblecast, the weekly flash fiction podcast magazine.

Norm Sherman did a really great reading and production. Listening to it, I felt as if I were being read a story I'd never heard before. I liked it much better than my print version.

And while I'm on the hype, I'll mention that "C-Rock City," a short story I wrote with jaylake (Jay Lake) made the Locus Recommended Reading List.

Also, I have no underwear so I must do laundry.

I'm not sure why this panel from Atrox Comics cracks me up so much. But, really, I can't think of a better thing to do with yarn.



***

Speaking of yarn, I sold podcast rights to a flash piece, "Chi," to The Drabblecast. The text version is here, but I edited it a bit before sending it to The Drabblecast, and I think the podcast version will be superior. For one thing, the who in the first sentence should be whom.

It's 15 minutes 'til midnight where I am, but I just got an early present from Escape Pod by seeing my Christmas story, In the Late December, just now posted.

Wishing you comfort and joy, and to all a good night.

Steve Gould (you know his YA book Jumper is coming out as a major motion picture next year, starring Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, and Diane Lane?) has posted his Podible Paradise interview with me, and I have to say, he did a really fine editing job, especially considering what he had to contend with, including but not limited to a pair of horrendously loud Harleys that cruised by in mid-conversation.

If you're even remotely interested in the Viable Paradise writers' workshop, you should keep coming back to Podible Paradise as Steve posts more interviews with students and instructors.

***

Shortly after posting yesterday's entry, I did a bunch of situps, which of course didn't make me less fat, but it did allow me to convince myself that any discomfort was due to having worked my abs rather than abdominal distension from overeating. I'm such a genius.

Today's coffee beverage was made with skim milk. You can practically see all the way through the cup!

Surpassed 98k words this morning. When I'm finally done adding words, much chopping of them will follow.

I'm going to be guesting on online talk radio show The Dork Forest, hosted by stand-up comedian Jackie Kashian, tomorrow between 4:30 and 4:45 Pacific Standard Time. The show will be archived, but don't you want to catch it live to hear me say "um" and "er" a lot? I think you can even call in if you want, like I'm Anne Coulter or one of the Car Talk guys. (Only I'm less virulent and less knowledgeable, respectively.)

Yeesh, it's warm here today. I think it's, like, a billion and six degrees. The weather websites say not, but I say it's a billion and six, and I'm actually here, whereas I don't know where the hell these weather websites are actually located, so I think I'm a more credible source of local weather information.

***

Meat-loving calf eats chickens

The family decided to stand guard at night on Monday at the cow shed which also served as a hen coop, after 48 chickens went missing in a month.

"Instead of the dogs, we watched in horror as the calf, whom we had fondly named Lal, sneak to the coop and grab the little ones with the precision of a jungle cat," Gour Ghosh, his brother, said.

[via my brother]

***

For a while now, the esteemed sf podcast site Escape Pod has been posting stuff from their archives on a separate site, Escape Pod Classic. The most recent posting there is my flash piece, Slicing, which is about street hucksters and, like, physics or something.

I will say quickly that when we talk about how to attract new readers to science fiction, we should remember Escape Pod, which delivers much of what's good about short fiction in a way that's more convenient and palatable to some people who don't or won't pick up magazines and anthologies. Steve Eley and his crew are making a very valuable, non-redundant contribution to our field, and they oughta get a trophy or something.

***

State of the novel: Just a big, bloody mess of words.