Friday, March 16, 2018

#SuperShortScifiStory, Upcoming Publications, and More Stuff




News Item the First: I’m trying this new format where I add an extra space under each paragraph to divide everything up a little better. Just thought you should know that.

News Item the Second: For some reason, I now have a Twitter account. You may have seen it already; the handle is “@ultrasonnek”. Anyway, to give myself something to do with this form of social media, I’m starting a new hashtag: “#SuperShortScifiStory”; under this tag, I encourage everyone to post tweet-sized works of science fiction. I’ve done the first, and I also plan to contribute weekly. If you are so inclined, feel free to follow me at @ultrasonnek, and odds are I’ll be more than happy to return the favor. I’m looking for people to follow too.

News Item the Third: This is mostly a reminder, really; I’ve got a couple of science fiction short stories that are soon to be published. Sonder Midwest is coming out in April, and my story “Important Transmission” will be somewhere inside. It’s a flash fiction piece I had fun writing, and I hope it will entertain you as well. Next, my story for Daily Science Fiction is in their publication queue…but I’m not 100 percent sure when the story will get out there. If my last story with them indicates the norm, I will not know when the story will be published until it has already been published. Keep an eye out for it. Once again, signing up for Daily Science Fiction is free, and for that low price you get a short sci-fi story in your inbox every morning.

News Item the Fourth: Wait…dagnabbit, this is more of a review than a news item. At any rate, I recently bought the movie Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. I’d seen it once before in theaters, and I’m hopeless when it comes to resisting good sci-fi.

But when I say “good sci-fi”, I’ve got to be honest—I didn’t buy Valerian for the movie’s story. To put it bluntly, it started out OK but then turned into Avatar; you know, a peaceful and unnaturally idyllic alien race is being persecuted by an old white military dude and the aliens need the heroes’ help to go back to living their unnaturally idyllic lives. I might write a more detailed review about all that later. But the reason I did buy Valerian was because 1) It’s got some of the best sci-fi settings I’ve ever seen, and 2) it included the Doghan Daguis, leathery-winged armadillo aliens who peddle information. Some may call them the Plot-Convenient Aliens, but never has helpful exposition been so much fun.

News Item the Fifth, and This Time I Swear It’s Actual News: Short of the #SuperShortScifiStory project, I’ve been taking a break from writing short stories. My most recent project is a field guide for my book project (although “Field Guide” is honestly not a perfectly accurate term). That’s right; I’m writing nonfiction about fiction, and it’s more fun than it really should be. I’ll probably get back into submitting soon…at some point…in the near future…but until then, publications can breathe a sigh of relief.

News Item the Sixth: There is no News Item the Sixth. I’m out of here.


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