Loneliness On The Sofa

Just talked to Dad. He still sounds rough but says he's feeling better. The sisters (mine, not his) are heading into town today and tomorrow from Austin and Connecticut. The former wife and I are going to see him tomorrow after work.

Hey! I'm headlining on the Sofa this week on Aural Delights no. 89. Blast off!

http://www.starshipsofa.com/20090617/aural-delights-no-89-matthew-sanborn-smith/

Aural Delights No 89 Matthew Sanborn Smith

Editorial: Forums by Tony C Smith

Flash Fiction: The Git by Jay Lake

Fact: Search Is Too Important To Leave To One Company – Even Google by Cory Doctorow

Fact: Mervyn Peake Part 1 by English Assassin

Main Fiction: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Diplomat by Matthew Sanborn Smith

Fact: Gunfight Intro by Jeff Carlson

New Titles: Edge Of The World, In Ashes Lie, Orphans Triumph

Narrators: JJ Campanella, Paul Caggige, Ray Sizemore

Advertisment: This podcast is brought to you by Audible.com. Download a free audiobook of your choice today at audiblepodcast.com/sofa

Main Fiction first appeared www.bbtmagazine.com

www.starshipsofa.com

Bumpy Roads, Take Me Home

We thought dad might be coming home from the hospital today, but his heartbeat was irregular. He seems to have a cold. That may be because he's weak. He hasn't slept or eaten much for days. Years ago he told me of days of prolonged terror and adrenaline during the war (he was an infantryman in the Pacific in World War II) and I asked him how he was ever able to sleep under those conditions. He said eventually you collapse from exhaustion. So, I'm hoping that he'll get a good sleep tonight because his body isn't capable of staying awake anymore. I think some sleep will do wonders for him.

Thanks to all of you out there who are sending your good thoughts and vibes in our direction. He's a tough old bird who's been at death's door dozens of times and has always pulled out of it. He has an amazing will to live.

My life's been feeling extra lumpy these past few days. Part of that, I think is from working through the weekend. Friday and Saturday are usually extra busy errand days for me and when I pile the job on top of that, I get a bit worn. Mondays and Tuesdays are often rough because I have to get up early and I usually get less than eight hours sleep over that forty-eight hour period. Put it all together and I'm not at my best by Tuesday night.

But Wednesdays and Thursdays?

I'm like a god among men.

Still Kicking

We thought we might lose the old man today. He had a heart attack last night and the docs cut him open (am I sounding Runyonesque?) thinking an artery had re-closed and they'd have to do another bypass, with only a fifty percent chance of survival. What it was was fluid around his heart which they already thought might be there but unrelated to the heart attack. No need to cut further. At any rate, Cliff spits in death's eye once again.

Yay!

Can't Think Of A Title! What Kind Of Writer Am I?

Welcome follower #10, pointman74250! Normally I'll say a few words about the new follower, but I have no idea who this guy is! I'm practically a celebrity, having followers I don't know. If I do know you, pointman 74250, wait a couple of days before you tell me. I want to bask in this feeling.

New Thaumatrope story the other day. You can read it here: http://thaumatrope.greententacles.com/tweets/20090612/

The writing break is over, only it doesn't seem like it is because I haven't had any time to write. It's over in my head.

And, just because I haven't posted a vid in a while:



This is supposed to be funny, but you know you could tune into SyFy on any given Saturday night and find a gem of exactly this quality.

And-And, because I imported this blog onto my Facebook page (under my double secret codename Matthew Sanborn Smith) and last time I tried it the blog at Facebook didn't show the vids I'd posted, here's the link for today's vid(eo):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXoYK4b_q24

Taking A Breather

I'm taking a little writing break. It might last a day, it might last twenty years. Who knows? I'm going to do some reading. I'm not thrilled with what I've got on my writing plate at the moment (that's right, I write on a plate, doesn't everyone?). It all seems pretty mundane. I want to do something different but I don't know what yet. I'm thinking.

The boy's back in the house for the summer and I'm very happy to say that he's reading voluntarily and asking me for books. Yay! He's reading the Pendragon and Ranger's Apprentice series and he told me he just began the first Elric book. Double yay! His summer reading list is really lame, a bunch of that depressing shit that schools throw at kids. Racism, poverty, Holocaust, post-apocalypse. Not our thing. I think I'm going to give him a pass this summer. I'd rather he read what he enjoys now that he's finally doing so, rather than sour him to reading once again with yuchy stuff.

The high school my daughter will be attending in the fall made Newsweek's list of top U.S. high schools as, I found, it usually does. This year it's number 312. I think that's cool.

I go to Google's street view thingy every few months hoping that views of my childhood homes will be accessible. they aren't. The damn view veers off like about a quarter mile from the cool house, the one built in the 1840's. Someday. I get sad looking at the old town though. I'm cut off from that life as by an ocean.

Paul's got a trailer for a cool looking movie called Air Doll over on his site: http://www.pulpmovies.com/trailers/air-doll

Here's some of that hard-hitting shit you'll only find at The Huffington Post:
GOP Dominated By White Conservatives: Gallup Poll
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/01/poll-finds-gop-is-dominat_n_209764.html

It's this kind of investigative journalism that gives me hope that all will not be lost when the last newspaper disappears. Who knew there were conservatives in the Republican party? Or that they were white? It gives me chills to know that they've been lurking there all this time.

A Veritable Potpourri!

Just finished a draft of Chapter 11 of The Inner Workings of the Artificial Mind and sent it out to those who may have cared once.

A new episode of Tank Riot is out. If you haven't listened before, I highly recommend it. I've never had such an enjoyable time learning about stuff I didn't know that I didn't know. The new episode is on Emma Goldman. What? You don't who Emma Goldman is? Neither do I. That's why you and I must both rush out into the net and listen to episode 74! http://www.tankriot.com/2009/074/

I actually cleaned today. The boy helped. See, we had Internet intermittence (The Goog claims I've misspelled intermittence, but I looked it up, so suck it, The Goog!) so the netty entities sent a man out. Well, the place was in its usual state: catastrophic. So we cleaned. When the daughter came over today, she couldn't believe it. "You can see the floor!" she said. "You can sit on a chair!" It was like Christmas all over again. And speaking of Christmas, I took down the Christmas tree today as part of the clean-up. The fixer-man did all his business outside and never stepped in the door, but I was happy that the place was clean. Or cleaner.

Cleanish.

I think that people who have friends have an easier time staying on top of things like that because they're thinking, "My friends could come over at any time!" Now I know how the other half lives. Quite a heady sensation.

I found this wonderful thing today. Wolfgang's Concert Vault. I'd known about the memorabilia from a spot on CBS Sunday Morning, but I didn't know that there were thousands of concerts online for free. This is one of those things that I think everyone but I knew about. You have to sign up, but it's pretty awesome. Besides, what's to stop you from writing complete bullshit on the sign-in if you want? Not that I ever would.
http://concerts.wolfgangsvault.com/al/performers/all.html

Grrr!

For some reason, Blood Blade and Thruster changed the address of my story, so here's the new address in case you haven't yet read The Loneliness of the Long Distance Diplomat. But honestly, I can't believe you wouldn't have read it yet.

http://bbtmagazine.presspublisher.us/issue/issue_four-june_july_2009/article/the_loneliness_of_the_long_distance_diplomat_06-3

Where I Brag On My Girl

My daughter, Ivory, graduated eighth grade yesterday. She was valedictorian in a class of one-hundred and nineteen students. She won a reading award from her teacher, another award for a perfect score on the reading part of the FCAT (Florida's Comprehensive Assessment Test), and she won a Presidential award supposedly signed by the O-man himself. She's been accepted to a magnet school for the arts and she's challenging herself by taking on the toughest course of classes they have. This is all by her own initiative. The girl goes through books like other people change socks. I'm not only proud, I'm impressed.

My Sofanauts episode is up here: http://sofanauts.com/sofanauts/the-sofanauts-no-8 if you watched, you know the attempt at video went awry. If you didn't watch, you know the attempt at video went awry.

I mentioned two of my stories during the show, so if you've come here looking for them, here are links:

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Diplomat at Blood Blade and Thruster (I know, I posted it yesterday. Won't kill me to post it again.) : http://bbtmagazine.presspublisher.us/articles/THE_LONELINESS_OF_THE_LONG_DISTANCE_DIPLOMAT_06,3,

For the Love of Ceelie at Fusion Fragment:
http://www.apodispublishing.com/fusion/pages/09_ceelie.htm

I'm a bit pissed at myself for not entering the nanoism contest I mentioned the other day. I completely forgot about it. Hopefully one of you guys didn't forget and can wave some prize money in my fat face. But here's another contest: miniWORDS 2009. You can submit up to three 50 word stories by August 10th. The winner gets £250! Cor blimey! Don't forget this one, Matt!
http://miniwords2009.sharedspace.org/index.php

All Better Now!

Yay! Please enjoy my ridiculous story, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Diplomat, at Blood Blade and Thruster right now!
http://bbtmagazine.presspublisher.us/articles/THE_LONELINESS_OF_THE_LONG_DISTANCE_DIPLOMAT_06,3,

Once again, if you're around the Internet today (June 5th) at 11:30 AM Eastern Standard Time, check me out at http://www.starshipsofa.com/live/ as we record episode 8 (I think) of The Sofanauts, the audio of which you can enjoy on Saturday or anytime thereafter at http://sofanauts.com/

600!

No, not story 600, but blogpost 600.

Here's the link to my nanoism story: http://nanoism.net/stories/25/

I wanted to link to my story in Blood Blade and Thruster, but there's still some kinks to work out. See, I had some aliens communicating with each other telepathically and to distiguish telepathic thought from other stuff in the story, I put these greater than, less than brackets < > around the words. Here's the problem: html also uses those, and when you try to print a story with those brackets, nothing inside of the brackets shows up, because the stoopidheads at the Internet Board think those are secret instructions not to be shared with the public at large. And so, in my story right now at Blood Blade and Thruster, you get passages such as this:

Zek thought to his two companions.

thought Vron.

Krogar asked.

Which may lead whomever is reading it today to think, "What the fuck? This is some surreal shit!"

I sent an e-mail, alerting the staff to this and even sent another version of the story using square brackets [ ], so hopefully it will be fixed tomorrow and I can post the link here.

Here's a link I can safely post. Fiction Crawler 7 is up at StarShipSofa. Check it out:

http://www.starshipsofa.com/20090603/aural-delights-no-87-adam-troy-castro/

And on Friday we'll be recording the latest episode of Sofanauts. You can watch us, while we're recording, at the new LIVE page: http://www.starshipsofa.com/live/ at 11:30 AM Eastern Standard Time on June 5th. Check it out. It'll be unedited, so maybe someone will say a swear word!

Writers! Time's almost up for the nanoism nanofiction contest. Check it out:

http://nanoism.net/meta/nanoism-nanofiction-contest/

And John Joseph Adams is looking for stories to fill his anthology:

http://www.johnjosephadams.com/?p=1760

Good luck to all of you! That's it for now. Sleepy time is heading my way.

Story Updates

Sorry I've missed a few days, folks. Stories 112 and 113 are out the door. Last Supper and A Body is for Driving, respectively.

My @nanoism story isn't up yet, but you can find my new @thaumatrope story here. Mine is the one by Matthew Sanborn Smith (also known as upwithgravity). And I believe I'll have a story in issue 4 of Blood Blade and Thruster, coming to a screen near you in just a couple of days if all goes well. I'll post the link then.

Twits

Keep two eyes out for upcoming twit-fic from me. I've got a story at @thaumatrope on May 31st and my first ever story at @nanoism on June 1st.

My daughter went to her first nighttime dance tonight. They called it a prom (even though it was eighth grade) and dressed up. Her mother and I had to convince our little anti-social butterfly to go. She ended up having a great time.

Almost done tagging everything. I'll let you know.

Maybes And Might Bes

I'm finishing up a flash fiction story called A Body is for Driving though I may change the title. I'm also still fooling around with chapters eleven and twelve of TIWOTAM. And I want ice cream.

Not much else is going on. I'll be on The Sofanauts in about a week and a half. I may be on Aural Delights next week with Fiction Crawler 7.

Also, I'm working on getting all my posts tagged here because there is a small but ferocious group of people following me who are only interested in the flash fiction I used to post here. So when I get that done, I'll let everyone know, then they can just search for the flash fiction tag and all of that will come up. I think I have over two hundred pieces of flash tucked away here. Golly!

Lavie Tidhar On The Sofa

This week StarShipSofa is pleased to present Aural Delights no. 86 a day early. Blast off!

Aural Delights No 86 Lavie Tidhar

Poetry: E7 by Curtis Hilgenberg

Fact Article: Extreme Geek by Cory Doctorow

Main Fiction: Transylvanian Mission by Lavie Tidhar

Fact Article: Survivors by The English Assassin

Narrators: Julie Davis

Paul Caggige

JJ Campanella

www.starshipsofa.com