Coming up on Thursday is the start of this year’s Nebula Awards Weekend. I expect to be kept pretty busy with an action packed few days complete with a tour of the Air and Space Museum, a workshop on e-book design, a presentation on memory (okay, I’ll be running that one), a mass signing, and more brilliant authors than you can count!

Now, to be fair, part of the problem with counting all those authors may be due to their tendency to not cluster in any one place for too long that isn’t a bar, or just as likely a problem with your ability to count because you’ve followed them to the bar and as part of your disguise you’ve been drinking.

While attendance at the various panels, programs, and workshops does require a membership, anyone can come to the mass autograph session on Friday from 5:30 p.m. until 7:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City.

There will also be a “Book Depot” where you can pick up copies of books by many of the authors who will be present. That will run Friday from 11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. and again from 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m., Saturday 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., and Sunday 10:00 a.m. – Noon. I’ve made arrangements for the Book Depot to have some of my titles, as well as copies of books published by Paper Golem.

Hope to see you there!

Hey there, nice to see you. You’re just in time for the latest installment of Eating Authors, the weekly blog feature that invites writers of speculative fiction to come on by and tell us all about their most memorable meals. Our guest this week is John Brown. John’s the author of an epic fantasy series being published by Tor Books. The first volume, Servant of a Dark God came out in 2009. Other books in the series, coming soon, include Curse of a Dark God and Dark God’s Glory.

I don’t know all that much about John (other than that we both had short stories reprinted in Brian Youmans’s The Best of the Rest 4). He lives in the hinterlands of Utah with his wife and four daughters, and according to his official biography his father and grandfather were both florists and boxers. There’s either an interesting sociological case study waiting to happen there, or the basis for a weak joke that could end with a knock-out punch and a bouquet of forget-me-nots, but we won’t be going there. Instead, let’s focus on why we’re here: the food!

There are four towns in our ranching county: Garden City, Laketown, Randolph, and Woodruff. And there are thousands and thousands of acres where the ranchers run their cattle. There aren’t many trees, which means you can see for miles and miles. Every spring the ranchers do various ranchey things. They help their cows deliver recalcitrant calves, they inoculate, they brand and tag, they cut massive testicles off of their bulls and figure they’re good eating.

Our first year out here we drove past this sign:

The ad in the paper that went along with this said, “Come on in. We’ll have a ball.”

Who can resist that? I’m an author. I seek novelty.

We stood in two lines out in the open by the rodeo arena. I paid my money and got a Styrofoam plate and plastic utensils. They served them up with Dutch oven potatoes and beans, which were both cooked with plenty of onions and bacon and butter.

My wife, bless her heart, is not an author. Alas. But my brother-in-law is a guy and decided it might be worth a try.

I grabbed a Hires root beer out of a cooler full of ice and sat down on the bleachers with my meal. He looked at me. I looked at him.

I’m an author.

I have learned the secret of testicles. And they do not taste like chicken.

On June 16th, a little over a month from now, my wife and I will be heading out to the wilds of York, PA, where I will be participating in the glory that is known far and wide as Sci-Fi Saturday (clicking the graphic to the right will take you to the Facebook Event page where all the up-to-the-minute info can be found).

The event takes place at the York Emporium, a huge bookstore located at 343 W. Market Street in York, PA. I’ll have a table there, and though there’ll be just the one of me I’ll be there wearing three different hats: As an author, I’ll have copies of my own fiction for sale and signing. As a publisher, I’ll have copies of all the Paper Golem titles. And as the Director of the Klingon Language Institute, I’ll have a nice assortment of both KLI books, and Klingon language materials from Pocket Books and elsewhere (including foreign language translations of The Klingon Dictionary).

In addition to my wife Valerie at my table, I’ll be joined by famed children’s book author and recent fantasy novelist Alethea Kontis, who is always a lot of fun to be around (and not just because she’s a princess).

At some point in the festivities, I’m told I’ll be on stage, yammering on and on about Klingon, language in general, and my own fiction. The schedule is still coming together, but when I know the time be assured I’ll share it with you.

Last October, I told you about Transtories the anthology from Aeon Press edited by the late Colin Harvey. Among many other fine works of fiction, it contains my story, “Yesterday’s Tastes,” which is another tale in the ongoing saga of the Amazing Conroy.

I’m posting about it again because I recently heard from Aeon’s own Bob Neilson with the news that the electronic version of the anthology is now available. This is particularly exciting because the trade paperback version appears to be somewhat tricky to get your hands on outside of Ireland (though you can order it directly from the Aeon Press website by clicking here. Or, if you prefer your Trans-fiction to be composed of photons, you can follow this link to pick it up at Amazon.

I’m told there’s an ePub version available, but I haven’t heard yet where you can go to acquire a copy. If/when I find out, I’ll post a follow-up and let you know (and if I remember, I’ll include the link in a reply to this post as well).

Welcome once again to Eating Authors, the weekly blog feature that asks writers to reflect on their most memorable meals. Joining us today is another past winner of the Writers of the Future competition, Bradley P. Beaulieu. Brad’s one of those writers who has honed his craft not just from reading the works of others, but by actively studying with them. In addition to the celebrated Writers of the Future workshop, he’s also a graduate of such critical venues as Viable Paradise, Orson Scott Card’s Literary Bootcamp, and Clarion.

It took him a few years to digest all of that insight, but the results can be seen in The Winds of Khalakovo and The Straits of Galahesh, the first two books of a promised trilogy being published by Night Shade Books, The Lays of Anuskaya.

So for the best meal I’ve ever had, I’m going to pick a soup. This was the best soup I’ve ever made (or consumed, for that matter), and it was one of Rick Bayless’s recipes. It’s called Sopa Azteca. Basically, it’s tortilla soup with wonderful, authentic central Mexican taste. The depth of flavor in this soup is amazing. And if you like it with chicken, you can get one of those rotisserie chickens that are available in most grocery stores, chop up the breast meat and drop it in at the end. It’s really amazing stuff. As for where, it would be right here in my home in Racine, WI. And why? It would be because of that connection I mentioned, because I got to make it myself, and because my wife and I shared it together.

Small Press publisher Paper Golem has just opened the reading period for its “prompt-themed” anthology Cucurbital 3!

What is Cucurbital?

It’s the name of a theme anthology series in which all of the authors write their stories starting with the same handful of prompts.

What are the prompts?

There are three of them:

          MADNESS

          DARKNESS

          MATTRESS

Successful submissions will take these three prompts and weave a unique and compelling story of no more than five thousand words.

When can I submit for this anthology?

We’ll be accepting submissions for Cucurbital 3 from May 1st through June 30th, 2012. Any submissions received before or after will be ignored. Our intention is to respond to all submissions by July 15th.

What’s it pay?

Upon publication, contributors will receive one cent per word for their fiction, and a copy of the physical book.

How do I submit my story?

Follow the directions specified on our submissions page.

If you’ve done everything correctly, you should receive an email confirmation within three business days.

]]> http://www.lawrencemschoen.com/news/calling-all-authors/feed/ 0 http://www.lawrencemschoen.com/plugs/eating-authors-will-mcintosh/ http://www.lawrencemschoen.com/plugs/eating-authors-will-mcintosh/#comments Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:30:52 +0000 Lawrence Schoen http://www.lawrencemschoen.com/?p=1332

Today on Eating Authors we’re reuniting with another author that last year graced this blog with a Q&A interview. I’m referring to none other than Nebula Award Nominee and Hugo Award winner Will McIntosh.

Will’s second novel, Hitchers came out from Night Shade Books three months ago, and his short story, “Followed,” which was published in the anthology The Living Dead, is being made into a short film, directed by James Kicklighter. But don’t take my word for it, follow this link to view the trailer for it yourself.

And if that’s not enough, you should know that Will’s first novel, Soft Apocalypse has been nominated for the coveted Compton Crook Award, which is handed out next month at Balticon.

Clearly not your usual dinner and a movie kind of evening, Will. After reading your account of it, my mind is filling with all sorts of zen-like questions, such as “what is the sound of one hand eating pizza.” We may never know.

Next Monday: Another author and another meal!

The forty-seventh Nebula Awards Weekend is coming up in just a few weeks. In addition to the awards banquet and the massive author signing there will be various field trips and lectures.

I have the great pleasure and privilege of offering one of the lectures, drawing on my experience as a professor of cognitive psychology and my research in human memory. On Saturday, May 19th, from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., I’ll be giving a talk entitled How to Remember Anything.

I’ll review some of the different types of memory, the four underlying principles that modulate most memory, and then discuss a few different mnemonic techniques and systems.

The typical limit of most people’s “short term memory” is seven items (plus or minus two). In the last few minutes of the presentation, I’ll load up everyone there with a list of twenty items — courtesy of an incredibly easy to use mnemonic system — that they’ll be able to hold on to for days and days.

Mondays are hard enough for most people, marking as they typically do the return to the work week. Mondays that also happen to be beautiful Spring days (as is the case hereabouts) are tougher still. To help ease your soul, here’s another installment of Eating Authors, the weekly blog segment that asks Science Fiction and Fantasy authors about their most memorable meals. Our guest this week is Jim C. Hines. I had the great pleasure to include Jim in the pages of Prime Codex, the first book from Paper Golem. On the (ahem) off chance that you haven’t read that anthology, you might have come across Jim’s work in his Jig the Goblin series (Goblin Quest, Goblin Hero, Goblin War, and Goblin Tales), and his Princess series (The Stepsister Scheme, The Mermaid’s Madness, Red Hood’s Revenge, and The Snow Queen’s Shadow), and more recently Libriomancer , the first of a promising new run.

That was a mistake. My girlfriend was a very skilled cook. I was not. I didn’t have the recipe or the ingredients for making my own pasta, so I started with boxed macaroni. I didn’t know how to make sauce, but I remembered the wine-flavored vinegar. Sadly, all we had was regular old vinegar, and I had no wine to mix with it … but I did have Grape Kool-Aid!

I would not recommend these particular substitutions, especially in combination.

And this is why, when it’s time for me to make spaghetti for the kids, they get noodles out of a box and sauce out of a jar.

I keep forgetting to mention it, but there’s a new addition over on the B.W.O.P. page.

Professional translator Sabina Trigueros has very kindly provided a second Spanish version of “Buffalo Dogs,” this one in the Mexican (as opposed to the continental) idiom.

And yes, that is very cool!

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