Nice And Moist Now, Thank You

Stop helping now! You're awesome! Thank you!

http://bewarethehairymango.com/stop-helping-now-youre-awesome/

The Mango Needs A Little Watering

And so do I. I'll let my latest post at the podcast site explain:

http://bewarethehairymango.com/help-little-tiny-donation/

Thanks!

The Writing Advice At The End

I wanted to record Mango 100 today but both The Boy's voice and my own are jacked up due to sickness. Yes, he's going to be in it and so is his sister. But don't remember this in case it falls through.

Saw a beautiful movie called Somewhere with the daughter. She hated it. She claimed nothing happened. Don't listen to her. She's the one who picked it out and she can't remember why. I just wanted to see it because it was a Sofia Coppola film. It was my second and Sofia's two for two. Looking forward to three.

Here's some advice for the writers out there. It's one of those obvious things that we still need to be reminded of from time to time. You non-writers can probably get something out of it too:

Don't waste your time reading work that doesn't excite you. Don't waste your time writing what doesn't excite you. You don't have nine hundred years here. Get to the good stuff.

The Itchy Mind

It's one of those days when I've got nothing that needs to be done and I can just sit and write and yet I can't do more than a half hour's worth of work without having to get up and distract myself. It's what I call the itchy mind. I went to get help for this years ago, figuring I had ADD or something. Turns out I did and my psychiatrist threw in some depression there as well, which made sense. The good news was there were meds for that; One drug which handled both, which made me wonder if they're related. The bad news was that the meds took away my desire to write. I chose to drop them. I'd rather be fucked up and getting some work done than happy and getting no work done.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I'm avoiding work again.

Kicking The Horse Again

I posted a link to the audio for this story a couple of years back but since The Moth just released the video, I wanted to tell you about it again. Jerry Stahl is funny as hell. I think this was the first Moth story I heard and it made me a permanent fan.

Moebius

Moebius passed away today. If you're familiar with Heavy Metal - either the magazine or the first movie - you're familiar with his work. I'm grabbing things for this post by way of posts from Neil Gaiman, Jimmy Palmiotti and Scott Edelman. I would loved to have seen his Dune on the big screen. I first read about it in Twilight Zone magazine just before Lynch's version hit. Here's a little article with some beautiful art from Edelman's wonderful mag, Science Fiction Age. And below is a great and inspiring (to me) documentary, In Search of Moebius.

It's awful to lose him, but great to have had his work.


In Search of Moebius - Jean Giraud clip1/3 by foivosloxias


In Search of Moebius - Jean Giraud _clip2/3 by foivosloxias


In Search of Moebius - Jean Giraud_clip3/3 by foivosloxias

Héctor Pineda Reupholsters The Sofa

Holy crap! There's a new StarShipSofa out today and check out Héctor Pineda's incredible cover art!

StarShipSofa No 228 Allen Steele

Coming Up

Fact: Covering The Sofa by Skeet Hector Pineda

Fiction: Atom Drive by Charles Fontenay 

Fact: Movie Soundtracks by David Raiklen

Main Fiction: Observation Post by Allen Steele 

Narrators: Jim Philips, Nathan Lowell

All You Need Is Money

My natural state is brokety-broke, but I had a nice influx of dough last week, tax refund and an insurance refund. Paid off a credit card and another bill and caught up on some others and spent a little something on myself. When I was a kid, say eleven and twelve, The Beatles were like a religion to me. Honestly, you wouldn't have wanted to spend time with me. I actually got the words "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" embroidered in big letters on the back of my windbreaker. Total douche. Anyway when high school rolled up, I moved onto other things like Black Sabbath and masturbation and put The Beatles aside. I had pretty much ODed on them anyway. I still dig a little Beatles here and there, but I didn't own the music anymore. So with said dough in hand, I downloaded The Beatles Box Set from iTunes. To put it in metric figures, this set equals 1 assload of Beatles music, Pretty much everything a fan who has a life outside of The Beatles would ever want to own.

I'm loving the shit out of it.

Six Sins To Go

I won a small victory against gluttony today and as a reward I get to wear my regular-sized pants tomorrow.

Some of the Best from Tor.com

My story, Beauty Belongs to the Flowers is available in a free Tor.com e-book today! Lots of great stuff from some big name authors as well. Some of the Best of Tor.com, 2011 edition.  http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/02/out-today-some-of-the-best-of-torcom-a-free-mini-ebook-anthology

Read One Of My Mango-Inspired Stories!

My story, Electric Ladyland, is available in StarShipSofa Stories, Vol. 3. It started as a plain old science fiction story, until I asked myself, “What if the narrator spoke like Beware the Hairy Mango sounds?” And then it got nutty from there. If you want to get your hands on a copy, click the link. There are lots of other great stories by others great authors as a bonus!

Some Other Martian Chronicles

Check out this week's StarShipSofa before it becomes next week's StarShipSofa!

StarShipSofa No 221 Cory Doctorow Part 2

Coming Up
Main Fiction: The Martian Chronicles Part 2 by Cory Doctorow
Fact: The Heta Of The Mind by Paul Finch
Vintage Serial: Exit Center Stage Part 2
Fact: Looking Back At Genre History by Amy H Sturgis
Narrator: Jeff Lane, Peter Seaton Clark



And if you missed part 1 of the Cory Doctorow story, click here.

Sucky At Internet

I am so sucky at Internet. I'm hardly ever here. You know what it is? It's that damn Twitter is what it is.

Don't ask me what it was before Twitter.

My 2011

First, the personal stuff: My dog of thirteen years died at the beginning of the year, which made me miserable for longer than I could have imagined. The Boy graduated from high school and started college, so that was awesome. No, Elke, he's still not ready to be called The Man yet. I gave many driving lessons to my daughter. I appeared on the SFF Audio podcast for the first time (touting Grant Morrison's incredible Supergods), read some awesome books and saw Cirque du Soleil for the first time (a birthday gift for the girl).

On the writerly front, I had an awesome start to the year with the publication of my story, Beauty Belongs to the Flowers at Tor.com. I followed that up in April with my story, Steve Sepp, Tasty! Tasty! in Nature. I donated The Girl with the Halo to a fundraiser for my pals at Chizine (Sorry, that one's no longer up), had my story, Losing Touch, published in Polluto #8, and Electric Ladyland published in StarShipSofa Stories Vol. 3. Accepted, but not yet published, is my story The Empire State Building Strikes Back!, to The Dunesteef podcast.

With the sales of Beauty and Steve Sepp, my second and third pro sales, I was able to join SFWA as an active member, which felt fantastic. It's a great club in which to be.

It was a startlingly small output of short stories for me this year. Only five! Worst year in a long, long time. Oh, Matty, you're not going to reach one-thousand that way. I am, however, full of excuses. I was working on longer things. In the spring I got about 24,000 words into a novel that was put on hold because I got wild with Beware the Hairy Mango and pulled off MuchoMangoMayo, thirty-one new episodes in the thirty-one days of May. I'm happy to say that it was such a success I'll be doing it again in 2012. Then I put the novel on hold again to work on a novella. I did a couple of short stories, then decided to turn the novella into a novel because I had a lot more to say on the subject. I'm deep into that one now and hope to have it done by June. That first novel I mentioned will get done eventually.

Only 51 submissions this year, but the paucity of stories produced helps explain that.

Having said all this, my word output has skyrocketed this year. In years past, 1,000 words was a good week, no matter what I wanted, tried or hoped for. I started cranking that up in a big way in the spring and for the last three months or so, I've averaged about 8,000 words a week.

I didn't want to mention specific goals on this blog last year, so there's nothing to comment on except that I went in a different direction than I expected to with the longer works.

As for 2012, the first five months of next year will be consumed by the novel and the Mango. After that. I need to hustle out lots of short stories. I'm hoping that my increased word counts will help me gain a lot of ground there. Okay, so officially, I'm shooting for the completion of a novel, fifty-three episodes of Beware the Hairy Mango, thirty new short stories and two hundred submissions.

It's a good thing I have no life.

I hope all of you reading this had a great 2011 and will have an even greater 2012. Let's hit it!